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Eva Dawes Spinks (1912–2009) was an outstanding Canadian high jumper in the 1930s. The present paper traces her early life, successful athletic career, and her decision in 1935 to join a group of athletes on a goodwill tour of the Soviet Union organized by the Workers’ Sports Association of Canada. Upon her return, Dawes was suspended by the Women’s Amateur Athletic Union of Canada. She retired from competition and became involved in the Canadian campaign to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Much later, Dawes adamantly denied any political involvement. The purpose of this paper is to examine and possibly explain the incongruity between the historical evidence and Dawes’s later denials. More broadly, it is a discussion about the relationship between history and individual memory.

This paper serves as a re-reading of the historical record concerning the participation of a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) team in the lacrosse championship of the 1904 St. Louis Olympic Games. Indigenous and deconstructionist methodological frameworks provide historians with strategies for reopening archival texts to ironic interpretation in the hope that we may better recognize the efforts of Indigenous peoples to confront and challenge colonial hegemony. Accordingly, this paper first evaluates the uncritical acceptance of a Kanien’kehá:ka lacrosse player roster comprising unconventional names into the official Olympic record. Second, a re-reading of archival texts allows us to reopen history to ironic interpretation, exposing the possibility that Kanien’kehá:ka players used humor and laughter to resist, subvert, and, ultimately, deny colonial hegemony. We may begin to support the larger missions of Indigenous resurgence and decolonization by revisiting our histories, and thus giving testimony to the past.

This essay assesses the merits of life writing in sport history as it is represented in one rare document, the Record, a diary-notebook-scrapbook constructed by lacrosse player Frank J. Grace (1878–1954) beginning in 1907. A talented athlete, Grace was a professional “tourist” who suited up for teams in Ottawa, Hamilton, Toronto, Chatham, Orillia, and Winnipeg during the twilight of Canadian lacrosse; that is, in the years preceding World War I. The highlight of Grace’s career was his selection to the All-Canada Lacrosse Team that traveled to play 16 games against teams in Australia in July and August of 1907, which prompted him to begin recording his life in the sport. This study makes sense of the Record by examining its making as an historical document, by placing it in the context of its times, and by interpreting the story it tells about Grace’s life in the game.