ABSTRACT
This article was written for a conference organized by John MacAloon at the University of Chicago in 2005 in anticipation of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes. In reflecting upon the Hughes’ tradition in Canada, I argue that there was a left tradition in ‘muscular Christianity’, that it was middle-class reformers and socialists as well as upper-class conservatives who took the ideals romanticized by Tom Brown’s Schooldays and ran with them in municipal playgrounds, the amateur sport movement, the Young Men’s Christian Associations (YMCAs), church sports associations and university sport clubs. With the disappearance of the socialist sports tradition in the 1950s, the followers of Hughes and the tradition of ‘sport for good’ have become the most progressive voice in the pan-Canadian debates about the purpose of sport and the nature and extent of state funding, championing educational sport and sport for development and peace in disadvantaged communities in Canada and abroad while cringing at the ugliness and instrumental violence of the spectacles staged by the capitalist cartels and the uncritical pursuit of the podium by the leadership of the Canadian sport system.
