The majestic high-wheel bicycle, with its spider wheels and rubber tires, emerged in the mid-1870s as the standard bicycle. A common misconception is that, bound by Victorian dress and decorum, women were unable to ride it, only taking up cycling in the 1880s with the advent of the chain-driven safety bicycle. On the contrary, women had been riding and even racing some form of the bicycle since the first vélocipèdes appeared in Europe early in the nineteenth century. Challenging the understanding that bicycling was a purely masculine sport, Muscle on Wheels tells the story of women's high-wheel racing in North America in the 1880s and early 1890s, with a focus on a particular cyclist: Louise Armaindo (1857?1900). Among Canada's first women professional athletes and the first woman who was truly successful as a high-wheel racer, Armaindo began her career as a strongwoman and trapeze artist in Chicago in the 1870s before discovering high-wheel bicycle racing. Initially she competed against men, but as more women took up the sport, she raced them too. Although Armaindo is the star of Muscle on Wheels, the book is also about other women cyclists and the many men ? racers, managers, trainers, agents, bookmakers, sport administrators, and editors of influential cycling magazines ? who controlled the sport, especially in the United States. The story of working-class Victorian women who earned a living through their athletic talent, Muscle on Wheels showcases an exciting moment in women's and athletic history that is often forgotten or misconstrued.

Muscle on Wheels: Louise Armaindo and the High-Wheel Racers of Nineteenth-Century America

Politics & Social Sciences

Hall, M. Ann

Women's Studies

McGill-Queen's University Press

Hall (physical education and recreation, U. of Alberta) describes her history as a feminist and applies her discoveries to the topic of women and sports. She argues that biological research is of little practical use and instead advocates for a critical analysis of power relations between the genders, and an examination of how sport reproduces and perpetuates these relations. She is entirely practical in her approach, blending new cultural criticism and feminist research into a discourse which approaches sport as a political site for feminist resistance and transformation. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Feminism and Sporting Bodies: Essays on Theory and Practice

Social Sciences

Human Kinetics

Between 1915 and 1940 the amazing Edmonton Grads dominated women's basketball in Canada. Coached by J. Percy Page, they played over 400 official games, losing only 20; they traveled more than 125,000 miles in Canada, the United States, and Europe; and they crossed the Atlantic three times to defend their world title at exhibition games held in conjunction with the Summer Olympics in Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Meticulously researched and documented-including capsule biographies of all 38 women who played for the Grads over the years and over 100 photos-the story of the Edmonton Grads will enthrall fans of sport history and women in sport. [CTV interview: http://tinyurl.com/6pxg5aq]

The Grads Are Playing Tonight!: The Story of the Edmonton Commercial Graduates Basketball Club

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

University of Alberta Press

The Girl and the Game goes well beyond the customary chronicling of women in sport. Ann Hall examines the big picture: Canadian women's sport history in its rightful context as a cultural struggle. These are the stories of ordinary women and extraordinary athletes who challenged the status quo. Meticulously researched and richly crafted. Sports writer, Mary Jollimore.

Girl and the Game: A History of Women's Sport in Canada

History

Americas

University of Toronto Press, Higher Education Division

In the second edition of this groundbreaking social history, M. Ann Hall begins with an important new chapter on Aboriginal women and early sport and ends with a new chapter tying today's trends and issues in Canadian women's sport to their origins in the past.Students will appreciate the more descriptive chapter titles and the restructuring of the book into easily digestible sections. Fifty-two images complement Hall's lively narrative.

The Girl and the Game: A History of Women's Sport in Canada, Second Edition

University of Toronto Press

Educating the Body: A History of Physical Education in Canada

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Kidd, Bruce

Vertinsky, Patricia

Exercise & Fitness

The Girl and the Game traces the history of women's organized sport in Canada from its early, informal roots in the late nineteenth century through the formation of amateur and professional teams to today's tendency to market women athletes, especially Olympians, as both athletic and sexual. When women actively participate in the symbols, practices, and institutions of sport, what they do is often not considered "real" sport, nor in some cases are they viewed as "real" women. What follows from this notion of sport as a site of cultural struggle is that the history of women in sport is also a history of cultural resistance.

The Girl and the Game: A History of Women's Sport in Canada

With the Canadian women's Olympic hockey team and other high-profile female athletes in recent years drawing a healthy share of the sports media limelight, there is a perception that Canadian women are finally getting into sport in a big way. Not true. Canadian women have been playing and competing since the latter part of the nineteenth century, eager to participate and partake of the benefits that sports and physical exertion bring.
From the beginning, social obstacles have made the playing field uneven for women. The resistance has used everything from arguments about unladylike dress and deportment and the dangers of exercise for Canada's future mothers, to barriers to sports facilities and overt harassment. Yet schoolgirls, society women and working-class women have relished sport and fought for their right to play and compete, with grit and dignity. Often their efforts have been honoured by city and provincial sports halls of fame, but their achievements are still little known.
This book, illustrated throughout, tells the story of pioneering women athletes, and of the early sports media -- some of Canada's first women sportswriters --who championed them every step of the way.

Immodest and Sensational: 150 Years of Canadian Women in Sports (Lorimer Illustrated History)

Lorimer

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Books by Hall, M. Ann