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WOMEN'S SPORT HISTORY

Forgotten Foremother: Alexandrine Gibb

by Bruce Kidd
Published in CAAWS Action Bulletin, Winter 1994

Few Canadian women have advanced the cause of girls and women in sport more than Alexandrine Gibb. The late Margaret Lord, no mean contributor herself, called Gibb "the real pioneer". It was Gibb who gave the strategic direction to the efforts of sportswomen in the 1920s to create their own organizations. She coined the slogan, "girls' sports run by girls", started the Women's Amateur Athletic Federation of Canada (WAAF), and became its first president.

More than anybody else, it was Gibb who got a Canadian women's team into the Olympics in 1928. She became a sportswriter and spent the next 20 years of her life reporting on the happenings and controversies of women's sports in a nationally distributed column of the Toronto Daily Star.

Gibb seems to have been interested in sport from an early age. In the social milieu to which she was born in Toronto in 1892, women were accustomed to enjoy vigorous physical activity, however unfavourable the social commentary. Her mother was an avid rower, taking heavy boats out by herself across Toronto Harbour, even though her participation in such a distinctly male recreation raised eyebrows among neighbours and friends. The young Alex attended Havergal College, where sports were compulsory and British-trained games mistresses encouraged students to direct and manage their own teams.

After graduation in 1913, Gibb went to work as a secretary for a mining broker. She continued to be active in sports, becoming one of Toronto's best basketball players. Increasingly she was drawn into volunteer sports administration as women, flushed with the suffrage and temperance victories of the First World War, began to seek greater control over their own activities. In keeping with the "separate sphere" current of feminism which reigned among the middle class, Gibb and her sisters felt that they had to create their own organizations in order to do this. In 1921, they formed the Toronto Ladies Club with teams coached and managed by women. They refused all offers of sponsorship and the male involvement it would bring, preferring to keep their independence by raising funds through their own activities.

Gibb's deft leadership is well illustrated by the manner in which she brought the WAAF into existence. In 1925, there being no Canadian women's track and field organization, the British Women's Amateur Athletic Federation invited the all-male Amateur Athletic Union of Canada (AAU) to send a women's team to an international meet in London. At first, the AAU simply sat on the invitation. When it became public, they were forced to ask Gibb in a panic to conduct selection trials and manage the team. She had just two weeks to do it, but she pulled it off with great aplomb. It was the first Canadian women's team to compete internationally. In the eyes of the London Sketch, "those who did duty for the Dominion appeared to be very fine specimens of athletic womanhood."

The experience taught Gibb that Canadian women needed their own national federation to match and negotiate with the AAU. Immediately upon her return, Gibb called a press conference to propose "a Women's Amateur Athletic Union in affiliation with (the AAU)." At the same time, she announced the creation of a new club — the Canadian Ladies — to provide opportunities in track and field, softball, basketball, and ice hockey for women across Canada. The executive consisted of Gibb as president, Mabel Ray and Janet Allen, both of whom had been on the selection committee for the London team, and Grace and Tony Conacher (cousins of Lionel) who had competed there. The name was not just Toronto pretension. The new organization provided the structure for a national governing body in case the AAU opposed it.

A few weeks later, Gibb presented the AAU with her fait accompli. There could be little doubt about her resolve. The men quickly acquiesced, with more than a touch of admiration. "Women's athletics should be in the hands of a women's organization and controlled by them," AAU president William Findlay told his surprised fellow delegates. Gibb then travelled across the country to fully involve sportswomen in other cities.

WAAF helped legitimize women's sport in Canada during the interwar years, and ensured that Canadian women were able to complete in all subsequent international events including the Olympics and Women's World Games organized by the Fédération sportive féminine internationale. Gibb herself became the manager of the first Canadian women's Olympic track team, the 'magnificent six' who did so well in Amsterdam in 1928.

While Gibb was not the first Canadian sportswoman to submit articles to the press, she quickly became the most successful at it. In 1928 she parlayed her international experience into the position of women's daily sports columnist for the Toronto Star, the first of its kind in Canada. Her column was entitled, "No Man's Land of Sports". From time to time she ventured into features writing. In 1935 she entranced Star readers for weeks with her exotic adventures in the Soviet Union and the Middle East. After World War Two, she wrote mostly features until her death in 1958.

Whether in print or behind-the-scenes, Gibb worked assiduously to advance the chances of women athletes. Irene McInnis remembers her good advice during the depression years about how to get Canadians invited to American meets. In 1954, Gibb was instrumental in encouraging Marilyn Bell to take on the late American star Florence Chadwick in the Lake Ontario swim.

She was tough, too. In 1931, the flamboyant Toronto businessman Teddy Oke threw the Toronto women's basketball into disarray by circumventing the rules to pack his team with the best players. Gibb persuaded the Ontario Women's Basketball Association to suspend Oke's team. In 1934, she was appointed to the Ontario Athletics Commission by Liberal Premier Mitch Hepburn. She was the only women ever to hold that office. When Hepburn tried to dictate to the Commission, she (and fellow commissioner P.J. Mulqueen) promptly resigned.

During the early years of this century, the Canadian women's sports community produced a number of exceptional athletes and leaders, including Fanny "Bobbie" Rosenfeld, Myrtle Cook, Ada McKenzie, and Dorothy Walton. But Alexandrine Gibb was the most influential. She should be remembered in any herstory of the forewomen of Canadian sports.

Bruce Kidd’s writing reveals his astonishing range of interests and knowledge of sport. Among his published works are articles dealing with physical activity, athletes' rights, the place of sport in the modern state, physical education for adults, sport and masculinity, and the philosophy of excellence. Almost single-handedly, he has brought attention to illustrious but largely forgotten contributors to Canada's rich sporting history such as the ground-breaking Women's Amateur Athletic Federation. His most recent work, The Struggle for Canadian Sport, won the North American Society for Sport History Book Award in 1997. During the 1960's, Bruce was Canada's best known middle-distance runner, winning the Lou Marsh Trophy for his successes on the track. He was twice chosen Canada's Male Athlete of the Year.