About Me

I’ve been a sports-nut all my life. As a kid, I was your classic tomboy, happiest when playing with the neighbourhood boys, usually baseball in summer and street hockey in winter. I was a committed athlete (although never outstanding), which led me to train as a physical education teacher (Queen’s University, BA, BPHE). I taught in high school for a short while but soon decided my vocation was to study sport in a serious way. It was the mid-1960s when physical education (now called kinesiology) was in the process of transforming itself from a teaching profession to an academic discipline. New areas, such as the sociology and history of sport, were being defined and developed.

I went back to school, obtained an MA (University of Alberta) and a PhD (University of Birmingham), and settled into a university teaching and research career in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. My teaching and research interests focused primarily on the sociological aspects of sport, more specifically gender relations in sport and leisure.

Since retiring from the University of Alberta, I have been researching and writing about Canadian women’s sport history