About 

CentennialActivity.ca is a research project being carried out by the Centre for Sport Policy Studies at the University of Toronto. It is funded by Canada’s Sesquicentennial Initiatives Fund (University of Toronto), the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto (Dean’s Office), University of Toronto Excellence Awards, and the Centre for Sport Policy Studies. 

The aim of CentennialActivity.ca is to use the opportunity of Canada’s 2017 Sesquicentennial to look back and establish a record of the numerous different ways that Canadians participated in sport and physical activity during the Centennial. 

The 1967 Centennial was such a significant year in Canada. So many things were changing [see Blog # 1: Why Centennial Activity?], and those social and political changes were also evident in the forms of sport and physical activity in which people participated. 

Among the numerous initiatives taken to celebrate Canada’s Centennial many involved sport and physical activity. 

In official terms, the government funded the Canadian Armed Forces Tattoo, Centennial Voyageur Canoe Pageant, and the last major wave of public recreation facility construction -- resulting in Centennial arenas, pools and parks in communities across the country. 

Projects sponsored by provincial/territorial, municipalities, organizations and/or corporations included Caribana, the Yukon Alpine Centennial Expedition, the Canadian Ski Marathon, and the Nanaimo to Vancouver Bathtub Race. 

Citizen generated projects saw people finding various ways to travel (cycle, walk, canoe, dogsled) to Ottawa or to Expo in Montréal, and numerous other physical activity based initiatives. As Davies (1999) noted, “Canadians, encouraged to celebrate in their own personal way, were not forced to express one vision of Canada or Canadian identity.” 

There is no systematic record of either the official or the unofficial Centennial projects related to sport, physical activity and active leisure.* 

Reference:

Davies, H. (1999). The policies of Participation: A study of the Canadian Centennial Celebrations. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Manitoba. 

This project has two parts: 

First, we are using library, museum, and internet sources to document the projects that were undertaken. However, many of those records are incomplete; and many were not documented in ways that are easily searchable. 

So, the second, and most important part of this project involves citizen history. 

Many of the participants in those sport and physical activity projects will now be in their 70s and 80s, and the Sesquicentennial represent an opportunity to establish a record – on a dedicated web site – of those events while many of the participants are still alive [or for their families to tell the story of their parents’ or grandparents’ Centennial projects, or the community projects in which they participated]. We are also asking citizens to help us to add to or complete the record of the events that we have already posted on CentennialActivity.ca. 

We hope to reach out to people across Canada, via media and this web site, in order to capture participants’ stories in written and/or oral form, and to retrieve and post available images, tape and film of those events. 

And we hope that this research will contribute to our growing understanding of the relationships between physical culture and Canadian society. 

*We now use the term physical culture to capture all of the forms of physical activity as cultural expression (e.g., dance, physical games, sports, martial arts, systems of exercise, and so on) – activities that people engage in for challenge, self-improvement, pleasure, recreation and entertainment

About us: 

Simon Darnell is the Director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies and a professor of sport sociology at the University of Toronto with a focus on the sport-for-development and peace sector.

Peter Donnelly is the former Director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies and a Professor of sociology of sport at the University of Toronto, and the lead researcher on this project. 

Bruce Kidd is Principal of the University of Toronto at Scarborough, Vice President of the University of Toronto, a founding member of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies, and a historian and social scientist. 

Nancy Boucher is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at McMaster University, and a consultant on this project. 

Russell Field is a sport historian, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management at the University of Manitoba, and a consultant on this project. 

Greg Yerashotis is a former PhD candidate in the faculty of kinesiology and physical education with a research focus on social inclusion of marginalized youth through sport.

Madison Danford is currently working on her Master’s degree in the Department of Exercise Sciences. Her work on this research is funded by a University of Toronto Excellence Award. 

Naomi Maldonado-Rodriguez is a senior undergraduate student in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto. Her work on this research is funded by a University of Toronto Excellence Award.