This lesson plan is based on viewing the Historica Footprints Bobbie Rosenfeld, Percy William, Vic Emery Bobsled Team, 1976 Montreal Olympics, the 1988 Calgary Olympics, Gaétan Boucher and Myriam Bédard. The history of the Olympiad is the history of our lives; to study the modern Games is to examine the upheavals of the 20th century. And Canadian athletes have been there throughout, either as visitors to other lands or as hosts, experiencing the glorious and sometimes-bloodstained events that track the history of sport, of the country, and of the world.

To increase student awareness of the history of Canadian success in the Olympics; to increase student recognition of the historical context of each episode of the Olympic Games; to explore how social and cultural attitudes affected the organization of the Games; to consider athletic competitions in their political context; to question contemporary attitudes and how they influence the Games of today; and, to investigate the use of symbols to represent the Olympics.

Batten, Jack, ed. 1896-1996 Canada at the Olympics: the First Hundred Years. Toronto: Infact, 1996.

Buchanan, Ian and Bill Mallon. Historical Dictionary of the Olympic Movement. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1995.
(Explores all aspects of the Games and includes a brief review of all the Olympiads, and a chronology. By two well-known and authoritative Olympic authors.)

Findling, John E. and Kimberly D. Pelle, eds. Historical Dictionary of the Modern Olympic Movement. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996.
(Includes chapters on each summer and winter Olympics, the ancient games and the International Olympic Committee. It also has a section on Olympic films - both documentary and feature.)

Guttmann, Allen. The Olympics, a History of the Modern Games. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
(A general history of the Olympic movement and politics. Tables include Olympic sites and number of participants by gender at summer Olympics.)

Pound, Dick. Inside the Olympics: a behind-the-scene look at the politics, the scandals, and the glory of the Games. Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.
(Canadian Dick Pound, former Olympic medalist and twenty-five year member of the International Olympic Committee gives an insider's account of the politics within the Olympic movement.)

Schaffer, Kay and Sidonie Smith, eds. The Olympics at the Millennium: Power, Politics, and the Games. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

Percy Williams' July 29 diary entry at the 1928 Amsterdam Games is a reflection of who he was and who Canadians wish they could be: "My ideals of the Olympic Games are all shot. I always imagined it was a game of heroes. Well, I'm in the semi-finals myself so it can't be so hot." Modest triumph defined the sprinter, and it was and remains quality that Canadians take pride in. Heroic in his humility, Percy was peerless on the track in Amsterdam. So much about the Vancouver-born sprinter remains unequalled – his illness as a child, sudden success as a sprinter, his running style, his training regime, and his trouncing of American sprinting arrogance.

Born on May 19, 1908 in Vancouver, at the age of fifteen Percy was struck with rheumatic fever and was told by doctors to avoid strenuous exercise due to a damaged heart. He remained slight of build, weighing less than 57 kilograms as a competitive runner. Charlie Paddock, American sprinter and world-record holder dismissed the Canadian as "that skinny little kid." His stature, though, belied his speed.

In high school Williams joined the track team and his running style was unlike any other. In fact, he had two styles. "He had his driving, starting style and his finishing style," one teammate explained. "He just floated in. He just seemed to take off". Williams's speed caught the attention of a local track coach, Bob Granger, who was as individual in his teaching methods as his pupil would prove to be on the track. "Granger was one of those people who we might call a kook today, a whacko, a strange bird," says track and field writer Bill McNulty. "His training methods were way ahead of his time". Unorthodox for the era, his training program included keeping athletes warm by wrapping them in blankets and giving them massages before a race. Today, these sorts of practices are common; in Granger's day, they were considered odd in the extreme.

Granger began coaching Williams exclusively, keeping a close eye on the sprinter that would remain focused until the runner's retirement. By the spring of 1928, Williams had been racing and winning in local meets for a year, and on June 5, he and other west coast athletes were off to Hamilton and the Canadian Olympic Trials. Without the money to pay for a ticket, Granger followed two days later as a pantry boy on a CPR diner.

Not yet twenty, Williams shocked the Canadian track establishment, winning the 100 and the 200 metre races. What made these accomplishments all the more noteworthy is that Williams had never before competed in a 100m race. That his time—10.6 seconds— equaled the Olympic record then on the books spoke of great possibilities to come.

Following the Olympic Trials, Williams was off to Amsterdam to represent Canada, along with Fanny Rosenfeld and the rest of the Canadian woman's athletics team. Later dubbed the "matchless six," Canadian women have never ascended to such heights and run such lengths as this group would during the 1928 Games.

To reach the Games, once more Granger was forced to follow behind his prodigy because those in charge of the Canadian Olympic program refused to pay coaches for their travel overseas. In the end, Granger was forced to hitch a ride across the Atlantic on a cattle boat.

By the time Granger and Williams reached Amsterdam, Williams' focus on the tasks at hand became clear in a diary entry he wrote on July 30: "Well, well, well. So I'm supposed to be the World's 100M Champion. (Crushed apples.) No more fun in running now…. Now begins two days of grueling running in the two hundred metres". Two days later, a metre ahead of the rest of the field, Williams won the 200 final. The nation rejoiced, and when the fastest man in the world returned to Canada, he moved east and received an idol's reception in Québec, Montréal, Hamilton, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary and finally back in Vancouver. For the next three years, Williams kept on running, kept on winning, and kept on setting world records. On August 9, 1930 in Toronto, his clocking of 10.3 seconds would have won him the gold in the next four Olympics. Canadians cheered, Americans scowled and sought revenge for lost pride. Williams, a skinny, self-effacing 20-year-old unknown from Canada had beaten their media darlings, American sprinting stars Frank Wykoff, Bob McAllister and Charlie Paddock. As a result, the Americans arranged a series of indoor track meets on surfaces and distances foreign to Williams. And yet even under these conditions, the Canadian proved he was no fluke, winning 19 of the 21 races in the series. As was evident from diary entries, Williams took the victories in characteristic stride: "Raced okay & they say it's a new world's record. [Raced] 7 flat for the 60 metres …one of the records anyone can make if they find enough odd distances".

With his retirement following the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles Williams would try to remember how he reacted to sudden fame. He wrote: "I was just like any kid of twenty. I was simply bewildered by it all". Puzzled, perhaps, but also peerless.

Throughout the twentieth century, the United States dominated the 100m and 200m events. Indeed, following Williams' victories in 1928, he would remain the first and only non-American to double gold in these events in the Olympics. If the United States has dominated a winter sport with similar kinds of results, this sport would be bobsledding. Since the first Winter Games in Chamonix, France in 1924, the US has won fourteen medals in the men's bobsled. One of the few times when Americans have not found victory in this event would come during the 1964 Games in Innsbruck, Austria. There, at the ninth Winter Games, the Maple Leaf and not the Stars and Stripes would be triumphant.

The Canada 1 emblazoned on the hull of the bobsled spoke of how it and the four men who rocketed down a twisting tunnel of ice were one of a kind. When the 1964 Canadian Bobsled Team of Vic and John Emery, Peter Kirby and Doug Anakin won gold at the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, they came from a country with no bobsled training facilities, no organizations and no tracks.

Eight years earlier in January 1956, Vic Emery had been skiing the slopes of Switzerland. The Winter Olympics had just opened two hundred kilometres away in Cortina D'Ampezzo, Italy. Putting down his skies to travel to Italy for a closer look at the Games, Emery eventually hitched a ride just outside the Olympic venue with some British bobsledders. This meeting would be fortuitous. The British team, as it turned out, needed another member and so Emery hitched a ride on their sled. From that point forward, he was committed to his new sport. By 1964, Emery would lead Canada's new four-man team.

In assembling his team for the Innsbruck Games, Emery's choice for teammates contradicted conventional wisdom. Previous to the mid-1950s bobsledders' heft was seen as more important than their speed. According to this theory, more weight translated into more momentum on the way down the run. Emery understood the importance of a fast start, however, and so he chose his sled-mates accordingly. John Emery had been a track-and-field star in college; Peter Kirby was a member of Canada's national ski team; and Doug Anakin was a top-flight skier, a mountain climber and an intercollegiate wresting champion. Together, this group encompassed a collection of extreme sportsman before there were extreme sports.

Prior to Innsbruck, the Canadian four practiced largely on dry land in gymnasiums. They were able to take a few runs at North America's only bobsleigh run in Lake Placid, New York, host of the 1932 Winter Olympics. But when the Winter Olympiad opened on February 9, 1964, the hometown Austrians and the Italians were the favourites in the four-man bobsled.

This would all change almost immediately after the event began. In their first heat, Canada 1 broke the Olympic record. Such a result was unheard of from a newcomer to this competition and it seemed to be a harbinger of great things to come. On a course with more than 12 curves, including the famous hexenkessel, or the witches' cauldron however, the rear axle of the Canadians' sled was damaged. Normally this would result in disqualification. But, incredibly, fifteen minutes before Canada's second run, Emery found his sled torn apart by the Italians. They were fixing, not destroying, their rival's equipment because, while Eugenio Monti, the Italian driver and one-time mentor to Emery wanted to win, he wanted to compete on equal terms with the best.

In the end, the best would stand on the gold medal platform with "O Canada" playing in the hockey arena in Innsbruck. Europeans were familiar with Canadian medalists with skates and sticks but the sight of four bobsledders from Canada at the peak of the podium was bizarre in the extreme.

In 1976, Denver was scheduled to host the Winter Olympics. But after Colorado pressure groups forced through a law making it illegal to pay for events like the Olympics with state taxes, Innsbruck stepped into the breach. It was also the year that Canada hosted its first Olympiad. As we look back on the 1976 Summer Games, Québecers may have wished they had pressure groups of their own to derail the Montreal Games.

Infamously, Jean Drapeau, Montreal's Mayor and leading cheerleader for the Summer Games once said: "The Montreal Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby". If only this were true. Alas, the Games would not only produce huge cost overruns, but they would also produce a gold medal drought for Canadian athletes that to this day clouds the athletic brilliance witnessed in the summer of ‘76. When the Olympic flame was extinguished on August 1, Canada had achieved the rather dubious honour of being the first nation in Olympic history to host the Games and not win a single gold medal. Perhaps it was fitting then that an unscheduled event dominated memories of the closing ceremonies. A man, lacking clothes, streaked before 100,000 people under the Montréal sky, the retractable roof of the stadium still not yet finished.

If every Olympiad carries its own asterisk, placed there by the inevitable tide of history, consider the two Olympic Games that preceded Montreal. In 1968 at Mexico City, the army opened fire on protesting students, killing eight. Four years later at Munich, eleven Israelis were killed when eight Palestinian terrorists broke into the Olympic Village. On balance, then, Canada's first Olympiad was a relatively benevolent debacle, and certainly not the sort of political tragedy seen in the recent past. .

Twelve years following Montreal, Calgary would host Canada's first Winter Games, and if Montreal is remembered with some reservations, from the moment the Olympic flame arrived on the nation's shore in November of 1987, Calgary's Games seemed different. Indeed, the 1988 Winter Games oozed Canadian maple syrup and proved to be a sweet success.

The Olympic flame began its 88-day journey across Canada from St. John's historic Signal Hill. By the time the flame finally reached Calgary in February it had traveled more than 15,000 kilometres in cars, on snowmobile, via train, plane, on foot, and even with the aid of a dogsled. Some of the torchbearers were famous Canadian athletes—like Barbara Ann Scott, Canada's darling of the 1948 St. Moritz Winter Games—while most were average Canadians who had won the right to carry the flame in a national lottery. This would include 101-year old Joe Chase of Wetaskawin, Alberta, and 12-year old Robyn Perry of Calgary, who lit the Olympic Flame at McMahon Stadium to open Games on February 13.

Once the Games began British ski jumper Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards would steal the hearts of Canadians even while finishing last in both individual jumping events. Such affection for great spirits who were not necessarily the best athletes would also be extended to the yellow, green and black bobsled team from Jamaica. Making their debut in the bobsled at the Calgary Olympiad, the Jamaican team did not do well in the standings but they warmed the hearts of audiences around the world. (There is now a Jamaican Bobsled Federation with its own website).

When the celebrations did finally come to an end after 16 days of competition, a Canadian athlete took the occasion as his opportunity to bid adieu to the international sporting world. After two decades of competition and four Olympics, Gaétan Boucher stepped from the speed skating ice before a standing ovation of proud Canadians.

Born on May 10, 1958, Charlesbourg, Québec Boucher's father had introduced his son to hockey on the family's backyard rink. But when Boucher saw a notice for a school speed skating club, he decided to drop his stick and join. Known for his shyness off the ice, Boucher quickly proved he was confident on it. One coach commented that Boucher was like a little sheep who turned into a lion. By seventeen he was on the Canadian national speed skating team, and one year later he was at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck.

Eric Heiden, the hulking 1.9 metre, 84 kilogram American dominated speed skating over the next four years, eventually taking home more gold from the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York than Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland, West Germany, Italy, Hungary, Japan, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and France and Canada combined.

The 1.7 metre Boucher would enjoy his own gold rush four years later. At the 1984 Games, the 26-year old carried the Canadian flag in Sarajevo for the opening of the 14^th Winter Olympiad. When the Sarajevo Games closed, Canada's medal total stood at four. Boucher won three of them – two gold and a bronze. For reporter James Christie of The Globe and Mail, his skating inspired poetics: "strides that sent ice crystals dancing off his skate blades".

Twelve years later, Canadian biathlete Myriam Bédard was using her own expertise as a marksman to win Olympic gold in a picturesque alpine Norwegian town. Born in Ancienne Lorette, Québec, on December 22, 1969, Bédard joined the Army cadets in 1983. Three fellow cadets needed a fourth (and female) member for their biathlon team. The fifteen year old slung a rifle over her shoulder, borrowed skis, stuffed Kleenex into oversized boots and began a journey that would lead her to the summit of Olympic glory.

Bédard and her male teammates did not win that day as cadets, but when, in less than a decade, she arrived in Albertville, France for the 1992 Winter Games she was part of history. The 16^th Winter Games marked the first time in the history of the Olympics that the biathlon was open to women and when Bédard won a bronze medal in the 15-kilometre race, she became the first North American athlete ever to win an Olympic medal in a biathlon event. Until then, the best ever Olympic finish by a Canadian in an individual race was 33^rd place.

Four years later in Lillehammer, Norway, Bédard won gold in both the 7.5- and 15-kilometre event, becoming the first Canadian woman ever to win two Olympic gold medals, as well as the first North American athlete ever to win gold in an Olympic biathlon event. The 7.5-kilometer sprint that earned her the second gold was reminiscent of the first race she had entered as a cadet. Not until after she crossed the finish line in utter exhaustion, winning the race by a scant 1.1 seconds, did she learn that she won on a pair of mismatched skis.

Fanny Rosenfeld and Myriam Bédard, Olympians at either end of the last century. What began as an athletic competition that banned women from competing ended in a celebration of female marksmanship. One hundred years hence, one only wonders at what Canadian triumphs await the nation for the second century of the Modern Olympiad.

Lesson 1.

As a woman, Jew, immigrant and athlete, Fanny Rosenfeld was no stranger to prejudice. And neither are the Olympic Games. Whether it was the exclusion of women in the early twentieth century, the Nazi adorned Berlin Games in 1936 or the African boycott of the 1976 Montréal Olympics, intolerance has been entwined with the multicoloured rings of the Olympiad.

Distribute Handout 1, asking students to highlight the various prejudices Rosenfeld confronted throughout her life and career as an athlete. Next, each student is to select a Summer or Winter Olympics to research, exploring how intolerance was either overtly or tacitly part of the competitions. The Games in Berlin are an obvious example, but the 2000 Olympics in Sydney also had the odour of historical intolerance. When Cathy Freeman, an Aboriginal women, raised her arm to light the Olympic Flame down under, some saw it as a statement to heal old wounds. Others however, saw it as a publicity stunt to upstage the on-going protests by groups of Aboriginal peoples.

Finally, each student is to write a diary entry about a real or fictitious athlete who participated in his or her chosen Olympics. Entries should be no longer than 250 words and should make consistent references to the historical context in which the Games took place. The inclusion of photographs, ticket stubs, posters or other primary sources (actual or reproduced) is encouraged.

Handout 1

The headwinds she faced were maelstroms of poverty, misogyny and bigotry. But Fanny Rosenfeld did not simply stand against the prejudice of the first half of the twentieth century, she dashed headlong into them and thus was a wind of change in Canada and abroad.

Born in Dnepropetravsk, Russia on December 28, 1903, Rosenfeld immigrated to Canada with her family when still an infant. As a child growing up in Barrie, Ontario, she ran her first race out of need. At a local picnic she and a sister lost the money they had brought to buy their meal. Fortunately, a race had been organized for children, with a box lunch as the prize. Rosenfeld entered and won.

And win she continued to do. She excelled in every sport available to girls and women at the time. Only one writer seems to have captured the significance of her abilities: "The most efficient way to summarize Bobbie Rosenfeld's career…is to say that she was not good at swimming".

During the workday Rosenfeld was a stenographer at the Patterson Chocolate Factory in Toronto. During the evenings and weekends, however, she demonstrated that she was, as reporters agreed, "the greatest all-around woman athlete in the world". And certainly, it was Rosenfeld's accomplishments on the track that brought her national and international attention. At her first major track meet at the 1923 Canadian National Exhibition, long before the advent of women's sportswear, she raced and won in her brother's swim trunks and her father's socks and gym jersey.

At least when she represented Canada at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, she could sport the Maple Leaf. And so did the rest of the small Canadian women's track team, celebrated by the press as "the matchless six" after they won the overall team point title. On the way to this accomplishment, Rosenfeld would score more points than any other athlete at the Games, male or female.

Shortly following the Amsterdam Games, Rosenfeld was struck with severe arthritis and was eventually forced her to retire in 1931. But if she physically could not respond on the track any longer, she was able to cover and defend women's role in competition as a sports columnist for the Globe and Mail from 1937 to 1957. Her pen, not surprisingly, was as swift as her sprinting. On January 10, 1941, for instance, in her column, "Feminine Sports Reel," she responded to a scribbler from the New York Post who reasoned, "Women's place is in the home, and I never saw a girl yet who didn't look a slight better with a frying pan than a tennis racquet." She skewered him thus: "What is more beautiful in sport than this: Coloured ice surface, a blazing beam of light spotlighting the whirling figure of a human doll, effortless, without strain, a symphony of grace."

Rosenfeld was a trailblazer, running far ahead of her time and against the intolerance of the everyday. We can still hear her roar.


Lesson 2. Action figure

What is an Olympian? Ask students to consider this question. Following a class discussion, students are to identify some of the characteristics of the athletes covered in this series that make them Canadian Olympians. Are there differences between the Olympians Canadians admire and those admired by other nations? Students are to research a Canadian athlete they believe should have been included in the series. Once they have done this, students are to design an action figure to be sold to children that epitomises what it is to be a Canadian Olympian. The figurine and accompanying description (of approximately 100 words) should list the qualities, both physical and otherwise, that make their athlete something a child should admire and purchase.


Lesson 3. Filling the Olympic timeline holes.

There are three gaping holes in the timeline of the Modern Olympiad. Though politics have always affected how the Games are organised, the First and Second World Wars dictated the suspension of the athletic celebrations. Students are to imagine that the Games did in fact occur in 1916, 1940 or 1944. As reporters at their chosen hypothetical Olympiad, students are to write a 250-word piece. The article could be dated prior to, during or after the Games. Students are to consider the political context, include at least one Canadian athlete who may have competed at the Games and explain how the war affected the competition. For example, it is conceivable that the Allied powers and Axis powers would each have organised their own Olympic Games during 1940. Perhaps Switzerland hosted the VI Olympiad in 1916 considering its history of neutrality.


Lesson 4. When is appropriation appropriate?

The 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France featured "Schuss", the first unofficial Olympic Mascot. He was portrayed as a little cartoon-like character on skis. "Waldi" the Dachshund was the first official mascot and appeared in 1972 at the Munich Summer Games. Since then there has been a mascot for every Olympic Games, winter and summer, with the exception of the Sapporo Winter Games in 1972 which had no mascot. The following is a description of the mascot of the 1976 Olympics in Montréal from the official website of the Olympic Movement — Olympic Games

It was a beaver called "Amik", a name taken from the Algonquian language, which is the most popular language amongst the American Indians in Canada. "Amik" means beaver. The beaver was chosen as the mascot of the Montreal Games because it is an animal well-known for its patience and hard work. Indeed, it had an important role in the development of Canada during the period when furriery was one of the foremost activities in North America. The beaver is also the national symbol of Canada and can be found on some coins and stamps.

The mascot has a red belt with the emblem of the Games, symbolizing the ribbon to which the winners' medal is attached.

Write the word "appropriation" (the taking or using of something forcefully or without permission) on the board. Ask students to define the word. Next, after providing the definition, discuss examples of names, images and symbols in the world of sports that have been appropriated. Examples may include the Atlanta Braves, the Chicago Black Hawks, the Washington Redskins and the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds. Is appropriation ever appropriate? How does the use of symbols linked to the past affect existing ideas of a culture? For example, why are First Nations Peoples depicted in traditional garb in tourist brochures? Why do advertisements for the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver often use historic imagery of the First Nations of the province? After discussing these questions, groups of 2-3 students are to research the symbols from an Olympic Games. Each group is to replicate these symbols and identify any examples of appropriation. Finally, in a presentation to the class, groups are to point out these examples and determine whether they were appropriate.


Lesson 5. Emblem election.

Vancouver is scheduled to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, and the Games Organizing Committee launched a nation-wide competition for a new emblem. Students are to design an emblem, either for the Vancouver Games or an Olympiad of the future in a Canadian city of their choice.


Lesson 6. Your own "Big Owe".

The centrepiece of any Olympic city is the main stadium. For most Summer Games, the stadium hosts the opening and closing ceremonies and the track and field events, including the marathon finish. Sports architects have to consider many different aspects when designing a new stadium. There can be more than 100,000 spectators plus thousands of journalists, athletes and staff in a stadium at any one time.

Much of the cost overrun of the Montréal Olympics in 1976 was related to the construction of facilities and infrastructure. And much of the criticism was focused on the oval-shaped Olympic Stadium with its revolutionary retractable roof. Construction delays meant it was unfinished when the Games began. It has since been plagued by controversy and structural problems, and the "Big Owe' became a symbol of the flaws in Montréal Mayor Drapeau's original Olympic dream.

Students are to design their own Olympic Stadium for a future Olympiad. Students should consider the following criteria in their plans:

·        Locker rooms where athletes get dressed before competing

·        Showering facilities for athletes

·        Gymnasium in which athletes can warm up before events

·        First aid area where injuries can be treated

·        Parking facilities

·        Public transit access

·        Main entrance

·        Banqueting hall

·        Environmental considerations such as energy sources to provide power for the facility

·        Area for journalists

·        Wheelchair access

·        Roof structure

Designs should be basic schematics including all of the above and any other aspects of the stadium students wish to include.