The Struggle for Canadian Sport

Raymond B. Blake is director of the Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount
Allison University and the author of Canadians at Last: Canada
Integrates Newfoundland as a Province.

In The Struggle for Canadian Sport, Bruce Kidd examines the four major
sports organizations that operated on a national level during the first
and second world wars and that hoped to shape the nature of Canadian
sport. Acutely different in outlook and ambition, the organizations
included the Workers’ Sports Association, the National Hockey League,
the Amateur Athletic Federation, and the Women’s Amateur Athletic
Federation. The capitalist model, best represented by the National
Hockey League, triumphed and is in large measure responsible for the
present state of Canadian sport.

Kidd, a well-known supporter of amateur sport in Canada, regrets the
Americanization of Canadian sport and argues that the successful
commercialization of Canada’s national winter sport has come at the
expense of amateur and women’s sport.