ABSTRACT

When bowling alleys were finally installed in the War Memorial Gymnasium in 1957, the decision revolved around revenues and only peripherally concerned principles. When the alleys were removed in 1968, the game had changed beyond recognition. Thus the story of the bowling alleys at UBC neatly captures how culture and power circulated in the machinations of university governance and student life during the 1950s and 1960s. They represented a convenient, though not altogether unique, site in which administrative and student politics – mundane interests concerning class, gender, labour, money and technology – could circulate. Indeed, this story is merely one that unfolded again and again in relation to the interior spaces of UBC’s recreational and sporting domains. Buildings and spaces

have their politics, and, in many ways, these politics wear into the very fabric of what it means to be academic. Those who come to universities seeking enlightenment quickly discover that it is premises rather than principles that provide memories and bring these institutions to life. As we shall see, the memories and politics built into campus gymnasiums and student unions are part of the larger processes of the commodification and embodiment of leisure time and recreation since World War II.2