- Sports
- Sports before 1800
- Promotion of Sport and Physical Education
- The Amateur Ideal and Professional Sports
- Sports Journalism
- Sports Betting
- Women in Sports
- Violence in Sports
- Sports and Canadian Nationalism
- Creation and Donation of Trophies
- Hockey — The Sport
- Hockey — The Protagonists
- Other Winter Sports
- Summer and Indoor Sports
- Combat Sports
- Water Sports
- Equestrian and Motor Sports
- Recreational Hunting and Fishing
- The Olympic Games
The Amateur Ideal and Professional Sports

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George SLEEMAN of Guelph, Ont., a brewer and active member of his community, made significant contributions to the organization and the professional development of baseball:
“[Sleeman] loved baseball, taking it up as a pitcher for the Maple Leaf Base Ball Club when the game was introduced to Guelph in 1863. The team quickly became a source of civic pride, with hundreds of fans following it to competitions in southern Ontario and the United States [see Thomas
In the early 1900s the journalist, publisher, and philanthropist John Ross ROBERTSON was concerned that the growth of professional hockey would undermine the key principle of the amateur ideal – non-payment for participation. He worked, as did other heads of Canadian sports associations, to regulate the sport:
“A fervent advocate of amateur sport, [Robertson] became president of the Ontario Hockey Association in 1899, at a critical moment in the history of the sport. His battle to protect hockey from the influence of professionalism caused him to be called the ‘father of Amateur Hockey in Ontario.’ According to Alan Metcalfe, Robertson’s legacy was mixed: the OHA was able to set rules defining professionalism in hockey but professionalism increased enormously after 1910, with the result that participation in organized amateur hockey in central Canada was limited to a middle-class élite. When he retired as president in 1905, he was made a life member of the association, and he continued to run its affairs as one of its ‘Three White Czars.’ He worked especially hard to rid hockey of increasing violence both on and off the ice. Robertson’s donation of silver trophies to hockey, cricket, and bowling further encouraged amateur competition. He was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1945.”
A promoter of amateurism and secretary of the Canadian Amateur Athletic Union, Norton Hervey CROW found himself at the heart of the debate about payment to athletes at the turn of the 20th century. This debate, which highlighted conflicting social perceptions of sports, led to a split within the Canadian Amateur Athletic Union in 1906:
“Sportsmen were bitterly divided over whether athletes should be paid for their efforts. The idea of non-payment (amateurism), which had emerged from the aristocratic Victorian prejudice against wage labourers, reinforced the ideal of heroic, selfless play that attracted the middle class to sports, and it kept costs down. The practice of paying athletes (professionalism) grew out of carnival contests, stakes races (the structure of the championships won by Jacob Gill
“These differences made the Toronto-based Canadian Amateur Athletic Union, the association of clubs which attempted to regulate the main sports, ungovernable. In 1906 the liberal faction, led by the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, stormed out of the Union to form the Amateur Athletic Federation of Canada, which would allow a measure of professional-amateur cooperation along the lines of that found in American baseball and British soccer. During the next few years, while athletes, sportswriters, and fans argued on, Union and Federation leaders stumped the country to win adherents.”
The biographies grouped in the following lists provide additional information about the development of professional sports, the amateur ideal, and the debate between supporters of amateur and professional sports and its repercussions: