Understanding the History of Sport in Canada
Understanding the history of sport is essential to changing its future. Since the late 1800s, Canada’s sport systems have been shaped by cultural assumptions about who sport was for, and those decisions still echo through the system today.
The learning opportunities presented below trace the history of women in sport — not as a list of individual firsts and breakthroughs, but as a pattern of structural exclusion and the conditions that sustained it. As you move through it, we invite you to think about where you see the same patterns still operating in the sport system today.
The Past - The Development of Canada's Sporting System
A concise overview of how Canada’s sport system took shape, and where women were included, excluded, or erased from that story. Watch on your own or use it to open a group discussion.
A History of Women in Sport: An Interactive Learning Module
Three short videos, each paired with reflection questions that push past the history itself into how it shows up in our present day sport organizations. The module is built for individual use or group facilitation. (Online Module 45 mins to 1.5 hours)
Additional Resources
Personal Reflection
What Binds You
Watch Video (Youtube)
Where are the female coaches?
In this article, Bruce Kidd ponders what it would take to raise women in coaching to an issue of priority.
Read the Article
Canadian Journal for Women in Coaching
Celebrating 25 Years
Celebrate the Successes
The National Association for Girls and Women in Sport
110 Years ot Promoting Social Justice and Change
Read the Article
Gender Relations, Women's History and Sport History
A Decade of Changing Enquiry, 1983-1993
Journal of Sport History
Sport and the Oppression of Women
This paper attempts to tease out some of the ways in which sport contributes to male dominance in general, rather than merely to the perpetuation of sport's own internal, unequal structure.
Journal of Sport History
Support the Movement.
Your donation helps break down barriers and create inclusive opportunities in
sport, recreation, and physical activity.
Donate Today