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.
