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“And, Needless To Say, I Was Athletic, Too:” Southern Ontario Black Women And Sport (1920s – 1940s), Ornella Nzindukiyimana

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation presents a two-part study of sporting practices of Southern Ontario Black women, between the 1920s and the 1940s, aimed at developing a socio-cultural history of sport that includes narratives from marginalized groups. Given sport’s traditional position as a masculine domain, as well as Canada’s status as a patriarchal White supremacy, the accounts presented in this work centre Black women’s sport experiences through an intersectional perspective. It is argued that, by virtue of their simultaneously racialized and gendered identities, Black women had distinct sporting experiences from those of White women and men and Black men.

The first study used …

Esprit De Corps: A History Of North American Bodybuilding, James Woycke

History eBook Collection

The first comprehensive history of bodybuilding in North America, Esprit de Corps reveals how bodybuilding emerged from weightlifting as a popular sport. Inspired by 19th century strongmen Eugene Sandow and Louis Cyr, the muscles-by-mail icon Charles Atlas, as well as the musclemen movies of Steve Reeves in the mid 20th century, bodybuilding soon eclipsed weightlifting in popularity. Montreal brothers Ben and Joe Weider’s leadership was central to this evolution. From his parent’s modest Montreal home in 1940, teenage weightlifter Joe Weider launched his publishing and business empire, staging physique contests, and eventually founding the world’s premier bodybuilding organization, the …