‘We must maintain a balance between propaganda and serious athletics’ – the workers' Sport Movement in Canada, 1924–1936^†

Abstract

In its heyday, the international socialist movement sought to create a completely alternative way of life for its members and potential recruits, with its own political organizations, rituals and traditions, solidarity networks for health and welfare, and cultural organizations for the arts and sports. Some of the most ambitious European socialist or workers' sports organizations had their own facilities, their own system of training coaches and instructors, their own newspapers and their own calendar of events. In 1913, the European associations banded together to form the Socialist Workers' Sport International. When the socialist movement split into social democratic and communist camps in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and World War I, the newly formed communist parties sought to turn sport into a weapon of recruitment and struggle. One such effort was the Workers' Sports Association of Canada (WSAC). Initiated by a top-down directive from the Communist International in Moscow, it nonetheless resonated with the sporting activities of hundreds of left-wing and working-class people and clubs in both urban and hinterland Canada, especially among immigrants who brought the socialist tradition from Europe and felt shut out of mainstream Canadian sport. For a time, despite the tensions between the Community Party of Canada organizers who demanded strict adherence to the political line of the day, and the coaches and athletes on the ground who wanted to focus on their sport, the WSAC provided both a pan-Canadian network of opportunities and a public face for these activities. This article was my first attempt to document this history. It was a ‘recovery project’ because despite extensive historical literature on Canadian parties of the left, no one else had ever mentioned sport.

Notes

^†Originally published in the Proceedings of the 5th Canadian Symposium on the History of Sport and Physical Education, ed. Bruce Kidd, 330–9. Toronto: School of Physical and Health Education, University of Toronto.

^1.Toronto Daily Star, November 26, 1934; The Worker, November 28, 1934; Buck, Beeching and Clack, Yours in the Struggle, 242–6.

^2.Toronto Daily Star, December 3, 1934; The Worker, December 5, 1934; Several photographs of the WSA procession were printed in The Worker, December 8, 1934.

^3. For example, Ivan Avakumovic (Communist Party of Canada) and William Rodney (Soldiers of the International) mention the WSA, but once, in their respective histories of the Communist Party in Canada. The same is also true of Penner, The Canadian Left, despite his own membership in the Universal Athletic Club of Winnipeg. There is no mention of the WSA in the unpublished M.A. theses of Grimson, ‘Communist Party of Canada’, and Pelt, ‘Communist Party of Canada’.

^4. For example, in 1937, Ontario Premier Mitch Hepburn encouraged (Lionel) Conacher to use his public appeal to secure the Liberal nomination for the Bracondale riding (Cosentino and Morrow, Lionel Conacher, 52). During the same period, the Ontario Co-operative Commonwealth Federation sponsored teams and supported the WSA's opposition to the 1936 Olympic Games. Neither of these parties developed their own sports programme.

^5.Comité Sportif International du Travail, 50 Ans de Sport; Wheeler, ‘Organized Sport and Organized Labour’. For an example of the programme of one socialist federation, see Marie, Pour le Sport Ouvrier. For the Olympic Games, see Kamper, Encyclopedia of the Olympic Games.

^6.Steinberg, ‘Sport under Two Flags’, 44.

^7.Riordan, Sport in Soviet Society, 82–152.

^8.Steinberg, ‘Sport under Two Flags’, 234–70; Kidd (‘Popular Front and the 1936 Olympic’) has argued that rank-and-file pressure for the ‘united front’ preceded the change in Moscow.

^9.The Young Worker, October 1924.

^10.Avakumovic, Communist Party of Canada, 34.

^11. Interview with Dave Kashtan, October 6, 1981.

^12. Interview with Fred Kazor, June 27, 1977 (Kazor dropped the ‘c’ from his surname during WW2); interview with Andrew Bileski and Walter Kaczor, November 3, 1977; Walter Kaczor documents.

^13.The Young Worker, May 1928.

^14. In 1924, the YCL had instructed its member leagues to build sports clubs separate from the other mass organizations lest enlarged cultural organizations weaken political and trade union activity (Steinberg, ‘Sport under Two Flags’, 37). In this, the Canadian league complied (The Young Worker, October 1924). Although most WSAs used the facilities of cultural organizations such as the Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association, they kept a distinct identity.

^15.The Worker, February 2, 1929.

^16.The Worker, October 1, 1932.

^17.The Young Worker, July 19, 1933. This figure was the largest claimed by the WSAC; one year later, its membership target was 5000, so we can assume some departures in the interval (The Worker, November 21, 1934).

^18.Steinberg, ‘Sport under Two Flags’, 159–61; ‘Finland and Olympism’; Finnish Society for Research in Sports and Physical Education, Physical Education and Sports, 9–11.

^19.Finnish-Canadian Amateur Sports Federation, Canadan Suomalaisten Urheilukiraa, 3.

^20. Multi-Cultural History of Society of Ontario Archives, Finnish Collection, 7387–405.

^21.Finnish-Canadian Amateur Sports Federation, Canadan Suomalaisten Urheilukiraa, 4–8; Laine, ‘Finnish Canadian Radicalism’.

^22. But in 1935, the Finns re-established their own organization; see Kidd, ‘Workers’ Sports Movement’.

^23.The Young Worker, September–October, 1928.

^24.The Worker, July 4, 1931.

^25.The Young Worker, March 8, 1932.

^26.Kidd, ‘Canadian Opposition to the 1936 Olympics’; for example, The Worker, July 4, 1931.

^27.The Worker, November 1, 1922.

^28.The Young Worker, May 1926.

^29.The Worker, November 1, 1922.

^30. For example, ‘Political Resolution of the National Executive Committee’, The Young Worker, January 1929.

^31.The Young Worker, November 1, 1933.

^32.The Young Worker, July 1925.

^33.The Party Organizer, May 1931, 24–5.

^34.The Young Worker, November 1929.

^35. For example, The Young Worker, June 1926, and February 1927.

^36.The Young Worker, June 15, 1931.

^37. For example, The Worker, January 12, 1924, and February 23, 1924.

^38. For example, The Worker, May 24, 1924. Scholars have taken a similar view of the Scouts. See, for example, Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society.

^39.The Worker, October 28, 1928.

^40.The Young Worker, June 1930.

^41. Interview with Andrew Bileski and Walter Kaczor; interview with Dave Kashtan.

^42. For example, The Young Worker, July–August 1928. The development of company recreation as a means of retaining skilled workers and improving industrial relations seems to have started in the last decade of the nineteenth century; see Schleppi, ‘“It Pays”‘.

^43.The Worker, March 28, 1931.

^44.The Young Worker, June 15, 1931.

^45.The Young Worker, February 1928.

^46.The Young Worker, November 1, 1933.

^47.The Young Worker, October 1926. Interviews with Kazor, Kaczor and Em. Orlick, November 11, 1979.

^48. For example, The Young Worker, June 15, 1931.

^49. For example, Dave Kashtan spent almost half of his two-year stint as national WSA secretary in jail facing charges under the notorious Section 98 of the Criminal Code.

^50.Steinberg, ‘Sport under Two Flags’, 234–47.

^51.The Young Worker, January 5, 1935.

^52.The Young Worker, August 31, 1935.

^53. Canadian Ukrainian Youth Federation and the Universal Athletic Club, Souvenir Program, Youth Pageant, December 8, 1938.

^54. See defence of the new policy in The Clarion, July 4, 1936.

^55. The details of the seizure and the subsequent defence campaign are discussed by Kolasky (Shattered Illusion, 1–26).

^56.Palmer, Culture in Conflict, 58.

^57.Metcalfe, ‘Organized Sport and Social Stratification’.

^58.Gruneau, ‘Power and Play’; Mott, ‘One Solution to the Urban Crisis’; Berger, Sense of Power, 254–7.