- Title:
- Memory on ice : making the 1936 Canadian olympic hockey team
- Creator:
- Rorke, Thomas
- Date Created:
- 2010
- Degree Awarded:
- Master of Arts
- Subjects:
- Canada Canadians Recreation Recreation
- Geographical Focus:
- Canada Britain
- Supporting Materials:
- n/a
- Description:
- The 1936 Olympic Ice Hockey Tournament caused a re-thinking of Canadian attitudes towards their own national game. After handily winning gold in every previous Olympics, the Canadians in 1936 experienced their first ever loss, in a match with Britain. At the time, the event was passed off as an anomaly - Britain in the 1930’s was experiencing a brief fad for New World sports, and was able to assemble a team that included many British-born but Canadian-trained players. The event has since been repressed in the Canadian popular imagination. This thesis seeks to re-examine Canada’s failure at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, arguing that the failure to win must be seen in terms of unique tensions, particularly the struggle to free hockey from the grip on nineteenth- century notions of amateurism and the uniquely Canadian insistence on linking community representation with the international sport. Using archival sources and the contemporary press, the thesis concludes that the 1936 defeat played a key role in the development of Canadian conceptions of national representation and international sport.
Source
- Preferred Citation:
- Rorke, Thomas. 2010. "Memory on ice : making the 1936 Canadian olympic hockey team", Department of History, Carleton University
- Link to this page:
- https://cuhistory.github.io/grads/items/hist_112.html
Rights
- Rights:
- Copyright the author, all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.