Canadian Opposition to the 1936 Olympics in Germany

Abstract

I think I always knew that sport was political, in the ‘small-p’ sense that those in sport and those outside it continually jostled over the decisions and conditions that determined meanings, opportunities and rewards. I also came to realize when I studied and then became involved in the Fitness and Amateur Sport Program that the different mainstream Canadian political parties – the Progressive Conservatives, the Liberals and the New Democratic Party – brought different perspectives and priorities to Canadian sport policy. But during the 1960s, none of them took strong political positions on the sport issues of the day; it was almost as if they agreed with the widespread mantra that ‘sport and politics do not mix’. So, I was well along in my athletic and political careers before I discovered that there had been an explicitly political, openly contestative sports movement a generation earlier, and that that movement had not only opposed the 1936 Olympics in Germany but also attempted to hold their own coun...