CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER 4

Scope and Spectrum

DR. MAX HOWELL WAS ALREADY WELL KNOWN WITHIN UBC’S RUGBY FRATERNITY WHEN HE JOINED

THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN 1954, HAVING FIRST SET FOOT IN VANCOUVER AS A BRILLIANT 19-YEAR-OLD CENTRE WITH THE AUSTRALIAN WALLABIES ON THE FINAL LEG OF A

NINE-MONTH 1947-48 WORLD TOUR. BORN IN 1927 INTO A DEPRESSION-STRICKEN SYDNEY FAMILY, HOWELL WAS INORDINATELY GIFTED AS BOTH A RUGBY PLAYER AND SWIMMER. HE WAS ALSO DEEPLY

INFLUENCED BY HIS TEACHERS AT SYDNEY TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL AND WAS DETERMINED AT AN

EARLY AGE TO PURSUE A CAREER IN EDUCATION.

After obtaining an undergraduate degree at Sydney Teachers’ College, he returned to North America in 1950 to enter a master’s program at the University of California, Berkeley, one of only three schools in the western United States to offer graduate studies in physical education at the time. He finished his master’s degree in 1952 and his doctorate in 1954, becoming the first Australian to obtain a PhD in physical education, and just the third such doctorate recipient in North America.

Dr. Maxwell Howell’s arrival in 1954 sparked a turning point in the evolution of the UBC School of Physical Education and the development of sport studies and sport science as academic disciplines at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. After almost 20 years at the University of Alberta, Howell returned to Australia in 1981 as Foundation Professor in the Department of Human Movement Studies at The University of Queensland, a role from which he begrudgingly faced mandatory retirement in 1992. In 2003, he was awarded the Order of Australia for service as a pioneer in the development of sports studies and sport science as academic disciplines and to the study of sports history. As the years went by he became an increasingly prolific publisher, having written more than 50 books and 300 articles by the time he passed away in February 2014.

During his time at Berkeley, he was at the core of the varsity rugby team, playing in every World Cup series, an annual two-match home-and-away encounter between Berkeley and UBC, with the winner laying claim to a trophy presented by the Vancouver World newspaper. After receiving his doctorate at the age of 27, he made plans to return to Australia, however a UBC physical education student and varsity rugby standout named Bill Whyte approached Bob Osborne on Howell’s behalf, urging him to find a way to bring him to UBC as a faculty member and coach. Having knowledge of both his academic credentials and rugby skills, Osborne extended an invitation that Howell readily accepted.

In addition to teaching, he became the UBC swim coach, an assistant varsity rugby coach under Albert Laithwaite, and head coach of the UBC Braves junior varsity side. The Braves were undefeated in three of the five seasons in which Howell was coach. When Laithwaite retired in 1959, Howell took over the varsity head coaching reins and began to garner national notoriety as a coaching innovator. Under his leadership the Thunderbirds won the 1960 Miller Cup as city champions, followed by the BC Rugby Union’s 1961 McKechnie Cup and the World Cup that same year. In swimming, he guided UBC to the US Evergreen Conference championship in 1955, an

experience he later recalled as one of the greatest thrills he had as a UBC coach. He was also director of BC Red Cross Water Safety programs through much of his time in Vancouver, and did much to promote swimming and swimming instruction throughout the province.

Although greatly admired by both his students and athletes, Howell made his most profound and lasting mark on the School of Physical Education by becoming the first faculty member to conduct research. His inaugural study was a two-part process using elite swimmers as test subjects. The first part comprised tests of motor ability founded on a standard US Navy physical fitness test. The second consisted of electrocardiograms taken before and after all-out training performances by Dr. Charles Gordon (“Chargo”) Campbell, assistant dean of the UBC Faculty of Medicine and the father of a future British Columbia premier. A Vancouver Sun reporter took note of what was the first example of applied sport and exercise science in British Columbia, describing it as a process “by men in white coats, stethoscopes and mathematical formulae.”

Under Howell’s direction and with Osborne’s full support, the UBC School of Physical Education instituted the first master’s degree program in the British Commonwealth, with Howell himself supervising the first students in the persons of Bob Morford and Richard Alderman, who received their master’s Max Howell training with some of his top UBC players. Left to right: Gerald McGavin, physical education student Ted Hunt, Howell and Neil Henderson.

1963 photo of Father David Bauer and Bob Hindmarch examining the peculiarities of Soviet skate sharpening techniques. Choreographer and dancer Helen Goodwin taught in both the School of Physical Education and the Theatre Department.

Long-time faculty member Anne Tilley was a growth and development specialist who conducted substantive applied work in adaptive skill development. The Anne D. Tilley Scholarship is awarded annually to a Kinesiology student interested in developmental and intellectual disabilities.

certificates in 1959 and 1960, respectively. Morford’s keen interest in science and physical activity prompted him to follow Howell’s lead and enter doctoral studies at Berkeley, where he specialized in motor learning and performance, completing his dissertation under the supervision of Franklin Henry, one of the founders of the academic discipline. Alderman also went to Cal-Berkeley to complete his PhD and later pursued a successful career in sport psychology as a professor at the University of Alberta.

A handful of UBC physical education students influenced either directly or indirectly by Howell’s presence eventually went on to doctoral studies and were appointed to prominent positions in Canadian universities, including a pair of promising undergraduates named Gerry Kenyon, who eventually became director of the School of Physical and Health Education at Waterloo University and later the president of the University of Lethbridge, and Gerry Glassford, who followed Alderman to the University of Alberta where he was eventually appointed dean of physical education. Bryce Taylor similarly pursued doctoral studies after obtaining a master’s degree from UBC in

1962 and went on to become a founding director and professor of physical education at York University.

May Brown became the first woman to receive a master’s degree in physical education at UBC in 1961, ironically under the supervision of one of her former undergraduate students, Bob Hindmarch. After graduating in 1953, Hindmarch went on to complete a master’s degree at the University of Oregon and returned to UBC in 1955 as a physical education instructor and assistant football coach. An influential sport figure in future years both at UBC and the Canadian Olympic Committee, Hindmarch was appointed as an assistant professor in 1961 while completing his doctoral studies. Another of Howell’s former students, a fellow Australian named John Dennison, obtained his master’s degree in 1960 and PhD at the University of Washington before returning to UBC and a long career in the Faculty of Education. One of Howell’s top rugby players, Gary Sinclair, also went on to graduate studies at Oregon. After a short time teaching at McGill, Sinclair also returned to the UBC School of Physical Education as a faculty member in 1966. The 1956 varsity rugby team included two physical education students who went on to become faculty members: Donn Spence (second row, far right) and Gary Sinclair (second row, second from right), as well as Ted Hunt (front row, third from left), a multi-sport athlete who received his MPE and PhD in the School and had a distinguished career as a Vancouver School Board teacher, administrator and author.

One of Howell’s former students, fellow Australian John Dennison, had a long teaching and research career in the Faculty of Education. He was an internationally regarded scholar and consultant of academic issues as well as the longest continuously serving member of the UBC Senate, with more than 35 years as an elected senator. A popular and colorful member of the campus community, he maintained a close relationship with faculty colleagues in the School of Kinesiology and also served for many years as the Mace Bearer at UBC Congregation ceremonies.

In addition to his research work, Howell was also responsible for introducing a testing and measurements class for undergraduate students, taking the first step towards a wider curriculum that still comprised activity classes and a handful of courses in history of sport and sport administration taught by Bob Osborne, along with standard prerequisites from the Faculty of Arts and Science. But in 1961, frustrated by what he claimed was a lack of support for research and a more scienceintensive curriculum, Howell left for the University of Alberta at the invitation of Maury Van Vliet, who entrusted him to develop a graduate program. Though his time at UBC was short,

Dick Ramseyjoined the faculty in 2016 after completing her PhD at UBC and a postdoctoral fellowship in psychosocial health and wellbeing at the Peter Harrison Centre for Disability Sport at England’s Loughborough University. Her research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, uses digital storytelling to explore the impacts of the para-sport programs created as part of the legacy of the London Paralympic Games on the physical activity experiences of young people with disabilities.

Howell’s stamp on the School of Physical Education endured permanently, aided in part by fellow Australian Peter Mullins, who had joined the faculty in 1955 and similarly advocated for a more science-intensive undergraduate curriculum. In 1963, just two years after his departure, the school moved from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to the Faculty of Education. The curriculum promptly underwent significant changes, evolving into two programs: one for students primarily interested in teaching and another for those wishing to study the scientific aspects of physical education in greater depth, a move supported by Howell’s friend and countryman Peter Mullins and by a new faculty addition named Stanley Brown, who completed his doctorate at the University of Illinois in exercise physiology under Thomas Cureton, long regarded as a pioneer and luminary in the field.

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The bifurcation in the curriculum was not, however, the only example of the school’s widening academic spectrum. Its further evolution was rooted in the 1954 election of a Social Credit provincial government that quickly declared the Pro-Rec program an anachronism after the end of the Depression in which it had been conceived. In its place, the Provincial Department of Recreation Branch opted to grant funds to newly established municipal parks and recreation commissions to pursue their own plans. The result was the steady expansion of communitybased recreation programs and facilities in municipalities throughout the province, which in turn triggered the need for specialized expertise that the UBC School of Physical Education was well positioned to fulfill. In response, the school changed its name and mandate to the UBC School of Physical Education and Recreation in 1960, establishing the foundation for a new program that would eventually lead to the degree of Bachelor of Recreation Education, and enlisted a new faculty member, British Columbia native Dick Ramsey, to develop the program. Ramsey had served with the RCAF during the Second World War and then went to George Williams College in Chicago, one of a number of American institutions cast in the YMCA mould. He subsequently served as a director with the YMCA in Toronto and Edmonton before returning home to begin working for the provincial mental health service as a recreation director at Essondale Hospital in Coquitlam. Encouraged by the results of patient treatment using sport and physical activity, he left for New York to complete a master’s degree and doctorate at Columbia University, specializing in therapeutic recreation.

But even before Ramsey arrived on Point Grey, UBC physical education graduates were already at work developing community centres and recreation programs in Vancouver and neighbouring municipalities, representing a minority of graduates who had not pursued teaching careers, but whose knowledge and training had proven valuable to municipalities throughout the province. One such individual was Albert Thiessen, a member of the inaugural graduating class of 1949, who was director of recreation in Ramsey’s home town of New Westminster. Marshall Smith, of the class of 1950, was another pioneer in the field as director of recreation for the City of Vancouver, where he made lasting marks by establish-ing multi-purpose community centres in place of sparsely equipped playgrounds, as did 1951 graduate Gordon Squire, who over-saw the design and construction of a similar community centre in Burnaby.

UBC graduates also became key contributors to the British Columbia Recreation Association that was formed in 1958 thanks largely to the efforts of Marshall Smith and Bob Osborne, who were among the association’s first presidents. In that same year, as part of its celebration of the centennial of the creation of the Crown colony of British Columbia, the provincial government invited municipalities to submit anniversary funding proposals for centennial projects with a promise of 33 cents per capita, with equal matching funds to be provided by municipal councils and the federal government for a total grant of one dollar for every resident within the communities that made formal application. In response, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Maple Ridge were among those to use centennial funds to construct outdoor swimming pools, while other communities used the money to build arenas, playing fields and tennis courts.

The growth in municipal infrastructure presented further opportunities for graduates of the school to influence emergent cultures of physical activity and recreation, including an accomplished gymnast and former Pro-Rec instructor named Don Cunnings. After completing his studies in 1962, Cunnings began a career that would see him become one of the most distinguished figures in the profession, beginning with his first post as director of parks and recreation for the City of Coquitlam, his election for two consecutive terms as president of the BC Recreation Association, and his subsequent election as vice-president of the Canadian Association of Physical Education, Health Education and Recreation.

School of Physical Education faculty members pictured at beginning of 1955-56 academic year. Back row: Peter Mullins, Patricia Montgomery, Bob Hindmarch, Albert Laithwaite, Doug Whittle, Helen Eckert, Max Howell, Jack Pomfret. Seated: Marian Penny, Bob Osborne, Bus Phillips, Alice Trevis.

1964 graduate Clyde Griffith became the first director of recreation for the Lower mainland suburban communities of Delta and Surrey. He later went to work for his friend and former classmate Don Cunnings as director of Parks and Recreation for Port Coquitlam. He later held the role of recreation consultant to the BC provincial government for over 20 years. After completing his studies in 1962, Don Cunnings began a career that would see him become one of the most influential figures in the profession, beginning with his first post as director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Coquitlam, his election for two consecutive terms as president of the BC Recreation Association, and his subsequent election as vice-president of the Canadian Association of Physical Education, Health Education and Recreation.

Ken Winslade, a former Thunderbirds basketball standout and 1996 UBC Sports Hall of Fame inductee, completed his MPE in the school in 1963 and began a long and successful career in municipal administration, beginning with his first position as director of Parks and Recreation for the City of New Westminster.

Another key influencer was Ken Winslade, a former Thunderbirds basketball player who completed his master’s degree in 1963 and similarly had a long and distinguished career in municipal administration, beginning with his first position as director of parks and recreation for the City of New Westminster. Yet another was 1964 graduate Clyde Griffith, who arrived at UBC from his home of Trinidad and Tobago to pursue medical studies, but altered his plans as an undergraduate student and became the first director of recreation for the Lower mainland suburban communities of Delta and Surrey. He later went to work for his friend Don Cunnings as director of parks and recreation for Port Coquitlam, where he prepared design and site location plans for the Port Coquitlam Recreation Centre, the first multi-purpose ice arena and recreation centre in the province.

Ramsey meanwhile continued to work towards the ultimate goal of developing and formalizing a new and specialized degree program, which came to fruition in the fall of 1965 when the first students registered for the degree program of Bachelor of Recreation Education. Four years later, the 1969 UBC Congregation ceremonies included the program’s first graduating class, whose members joined a long line of UBC graduates who were already at work expanding recreation programs in communities across the province.

National Sport System

Progress in the development of the school’s academic programs in the 1960s was matched by the expansion of its varsity athletic program, particularly in the case of men’s teams that received the bulk of funding. In 1961, at the urging of Bob Osborne, a meeting of representatives from the Western Canada Intercollegiate Athletic Association (WCIAA) member institutions was held at UBC and chaired by Professor Whit Matthews, then dean of pharmacy, that resulted in the WCIAA joining two other regional associations consisting of member institutions from Ontario and Quebec to form the Canadian Intercollegiate Athletic Union (CIAU), a national sport governing body under whose auspices the first official men’s national university championships were organized.

By this time the school oversaw a broad-based varsity program comprising both individual and team sports. In addition to the major sports, the program at various times included tennis, badminton, curling, gymnastics, swimming and diving, fencing, wrestling, baseball, figure skating, weightlifting, sailing, archery, judo, golf and skiing. The expansion in scope was largely the result of students having a great deal of formalized influence over the program’s make-up and development. The simple fact that student fees constituted the vast majority of funding for varsity teams provided the rationale for the student-driven administrative model, comprising men’s and women’s athletic committees and directorates. The result was a form of student governance that, among other things, determined the hierarchy of “major” and “minor” sports. As athletic directors, Bus Phillips, Bim Schrodt, and later Marilyn Pomfret, had to be responsive to students’ concerns and skillful in building consensus among their elected representatives, as control of the varsity athletic program ultimately rested in the hands of students.

The formalization of the CIAU in 1961 was greeted enthusiastically by Osborne and Phillips, particularly since it presented an alternative league for the Thunderbirds football team, which continued to struggle in the US Evergreen Conference. The result was that the school officially retrenched from its aspirations to affiliate with a US college system, even though some teams had fared well against American teams. The men’s basketball team, by way of example, had proven

Students and Sport Governance

The function of the Women’s Athletic Directorate was to co-ordinate and to administer to all women’s sports on campus both extra-muraly and intramuraly. The Women’s athletic directorate, consisting of 14 team managers and the executive, is the only such well-organized and influential controlling body for women’s athletics across Canada. It is directly under the jurisdiction of council of which the WAD president, is an automatic member, otherwise this committee is completely on its own in regard to legislative powers.

The Men’s Athletic Association is made up of the managers of all the campus teams, a secretary and the Athletic Director. It’s function is to recommend policy to the Men’s Athletic Committee, a President’s Committee responsible to the Board of Governors for the entire men’s extra-curricular athletic program. The function of the Women’s Athletic Directorate was to co-ordinate and to administer to all women’s sports on campus both extra-muraly and intramuraly. The Women’s athletic directorate, consisting of 14 team managers and the executive, is the only such well-organized and influential controlling body for women’s athletics across Canada. It is directly under the jurisdiction of council of which the WAD president, is an automatic member, otherwise this committee is completely on its own in regard to legislative powers.

The Men’s Athletic Association is made up of the managers of all the campus teams, a secretary and the Athletic Director. It’s function is to recommend policy to the Men’s Athletic Committee, a President’s Committee responsible to the Board of Governors for the entire men’s extra-curricular athletic program. It’s function is to recommend policy to the Men’s Athletic Committee, a President’s Committee responsible to the Board of Governors for the entire men’s extra-curricular athletic program.

Jack Pomfret and assistant coach Reid Mitchell guided UBC’s basketball team to an undefeated season and the Western Canadian University Championship in 1961. Johnny Owen (front row, holding ball) was a skilled and universally admired trainer for varsity teams from 1937 until his sudden passing on New Year’s Day 1965.

Below: Frank Gnup’s 1959 Thunderbirds football team won the Western Canada Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship that year and made its first appearance ever in the national championship that later became the Vanier Cup.

to be worthy competitors against US teams, however head coach Jack Pomfret welcomed the move to the newly formed Canadian league and the opportunity to develop a made-inCanada brand of university sport. Pomfret’s charges lost only one game on their way to winning the first two WCIAA league titles in 1960 and 1961, led by 1961 league MVP Ken Winslade. Future CIAU coaching legend Peter Mullins took over from Pomfret in the 1961-62 season and directed the team to its third straight conference crown. The strength of the basketball team throughout the 1960s was owed in part to the feeder program that existed in the form of a strong junior varsity team under the coaching of Norman Watt, a member of the inaugural physical education graduating class of 1949 and later a professor in the Faculty of Education. Under Watt, the UBC Junior Varsity Braves won back-to-back Canadian junior championships in 1966 and ‘67.

For Frank Gnup’s football team, however, repatriation was a much more gradual process. From 1959 to 1963 the Thunderbirds played single games against Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, yet continued to play exhibition contests against Western Washington, Pacific Lutheran and other American teams from the Pacific Northwest region. It wasn’t until 1970 that UBC exclusively joined Calgary, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in a balanced home-and-away eight-game schedule, followed by playoff games leading to the Canadian College Bowl. The only non-conference game it played was against a new university atop Burnaby Mountain, one that startled universities across Canada by declaring its teams would compete exclusively as members of the US-based National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).

With the arrival of Burnaby’s Simon Fraser University, a fierce cross-town sport rivalry was born. In 1967 the Simon Fraser Clansmen and the UBC Thunderbirds met for the first time in a football game that became an annual classic, appropriately named the Shrum Bowl in honour of UBC’s Gordon Shrum, who had been called upon to oversee the construction of Simon Fraser at the request of then BC Premier W.A.C. Bennett and to serve as its first chancellor. Coached by Lorne Davies, Shortly after Simon Fraser University opened in 1965, UBC and SFU football and basketball teams began to meet annually in fiercely competitive and wellattended non-conference games. The first Shrum Bowl football game was played at Empire Stadium in 1967. Led by physical education student Ron Thorsen (pictured at right), UBC won its first Buchanan Cup in 1970 with a 103-67 victory over Simon Fraser.

a former assistant coach to UBC’s Gnup, SFU won the inaugural contest 32-13 before some 14,000 fans at Vancouver’s Empire Stadium.

The cross-town rivalry extended to basketball in 1968 with the universities’ two respective teams meeting in an annual two-game total-point series for the Buchanan Cup, named after then-UBC Chancellor John Buchanan. UBC’s rugby team was next to establish a tradition with their counterparts from Burnaby Mountain. Coached by physical education graduate Donn Spence and led by Don Crompton and Dave Austin, UBC defeated SFU 18-6 in their inaugural contest in March of 1969. Days later, one of UBC’s finest soccer teams, winners of the 1969 Pacific Coast League

Physical education student Roger Jackson (right) and fellow UBC student George Hungerford are pictured with gold medals after winning the pair event at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Physical education student Ken Broderick enrolled at UBC in 1962 to play for Father David Bauer on the 1962-63 Thunderbirds hockey team and on the 1964 Olympic team that was comprised of UBC students. The 1966 winner of the Bobby Gaul Trophy as UBC’s most outstanding male athlete, Broderick continued to play for Canada’s national team, winning a bronze medal at the 1968 Winter Olympic Games. He then went on to play for seven seasons in the NHL with the Boston Bruins and Minnesota North Stars, followed by three seasons in the WHA with the Edmonton Oilers and Quebec Nordiques before retiring from professional hockey in 1978.

championship, shut out SFU 5-0, led by physical education students John Haar, Ash Valdal, Dick Mosher and the brother combination of Gary and Wayne Thompson.

The number of Olympic athletes from UBC continued to increase as Osborne and Phillips augmented their coaching rosters through partnerships and through the appointment of off-campus coaches, including Vancouver Rowing Club head coach Frank Read, who Osborne convinced to come out of retirement to again coach UBC crews in the months leading up to their triumph in the 1960 Canadian championships and Olympic Games qualification regatta in St. Catharines, Ontario. Just weeks later the UBC crew once again made Canadian sport history by winning Olympic silver medals in Rome following a hair’s-breadth loss to Germany. Four years later at the Tokyo games, physical education student Roger Jackson and arts student George Hungerford won Olympic gold in double sculls, further demonstrating that the VRC/UBC program had a training centre for some of the world’s best. The 1964 Olympic Games also saw UBC students Victor Warren, son of UBC sport pioneer Professor Harry Warren, Lee Wright, Harry Preston, John Young and Peter Buckland represent their country on Canada’s entry in field hockey. Gymnasts and physical education students Sandra Hartley and Bill Mackie qualified for the Olympic Games in 1968 and 1972, respectively.

The arrival of Father David Bauer at UBC in 1962 gave the school yet another opportunity to play a role in the training and development of Olympic athletes. An outstanding junior hockey player in his native Ontario, the Basilian priest coached Toronto’s St. Michael’s College to a Memorial Cup championship in 1961 before being appointed as chaplain of UBC’s St. Mark’s College in 1962. A firm believer in combining sport and education, Bauer convinced the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association to establish a national team consisting of former junior and university players who would all be registered as students at UBC. Bauer took over as coach of the Thunderbirds shortly after his arrival on Point Grey. Together with assistant coach Bob Hindmarch, he guided the team to its first WCIAA Championship and an eventual berth in the 1963 CIAU Championships final and a 3-2 loss to McMaster. A year later, with Hindmarch serving as general manager, Bauer coached the UBC-based national team to a 5-2 record at the 1964 Winter Olympic Games and a fourth-place finish.

UBC’s broad-based varsity program also included, from 1950 to 1966, a baseball team coached in succession by Jelly Anderson, Bill Whyte and Frank Gnup, and a men’s curling team that won the 1965 BC senior championships that year and represented the province in the Brier. The golf team, coached for a time by Canadian touring pro Stan Leonard played intercollegiate tournaments up and down the Washington, Oregon and California coasts. Thunderbird rugby teams were perennial powerhouse squads playing in the Vancouver Rugby Union First

Peter Mullins, wearing hat, and members of the Thunderbirds basketball team are pictured in the spring of 1970 showing off the W.P. McGee Trophy after their first-ever CIAU national championship victory.

Division and the Northwest Intercollegiate Rugby Conference, as well as in the McKechnie Cup series against the Vancouver, Victoria and Northwest rugby unions.

UBC’s first CIAU championship was awarded in 1965 to the men’s swim team, coached by Jack Pomfret. The second was won by the 1966-67 men’s volleyball team, led by physical education student and future UBC coach Dale Ohman. Next in line for a CIAU crown was the 1969-70 men’s basketball team. Coached by Mullins, the Thunderbirds went undefeated all the way to the championship final where they defeated the McMaster Marauders 96-75. Physical education student Ron Thorsen, who set three UBC scoring records that season, was named the CIAU Championship MVP. The team’s overall record of 24-0 that season included UBC’s first Buchanan Cup victory, with Thorsen and fellow physical education students Derek Sankey, Joe Kainer, John Mills and Rod Matheson teaming up to down SFU by a convincing 103-67 margin before 6,892 fans at Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum.

Meanwhile, the competitive landscape of university sport in Western Canada expanded in the latter half of the 1960s as new institutions cropped up, including the universities of Calgary and Lethbridge, along with the inauguration of a varsity program at the University of Victoria. WCIAA conference playoff formulas expanded and national championships increasingly became the ultimate desired outcomes of men’s teams from Victoria to Winnipeg. On an increasingly conspicuous level, however, the same opportunities for women’s teams were not in evidence. While the bulk of UBC’s men’s teams participated in interuniversity competition, women’s teams continued to compete within local senior leagues. But as national and conference championships for men continued to grow, so did discontent among a growing number of female students, some

of whom argued that the School of Physical Education itself treated its female students as an appendage in comparison to their male counterparts, and fostered a learning environment characterized by a non-competitive orientation towards physical education. The disparity was nowhere more evident than by the austere and undersized facility that was home to female physical education students and their teachers. Built in 1929 as Varsity Gymnasium, the building was renamed the Women’s Gymnasium after War Memorial Gym was completed in 1951 and became headquarters for the men’s program. But as the years went by, forces of change were mobilizing.

One of the pioneer proponents of gender equity within both UBC and the CIAU was former physical education student Marilyn Russell. Following her graduation from UBC, Russell taught school in her home town of Winnipeg and later at West Vancouver High School. In 1963 she made her way back to Point Grey to teach in the UBC School of Physical Education, coach the women’s volleyball team and eventually take over from Bim Schrodt as women’s athletic director. For many years, beginning in her undergraduate days as president of the Women’s Athletic Association, she had observed first-hand how UBC’s female athletes possessed an equally competitive spirit as did their male counterparts, in stark contrast to the prevailing perception that women were too delicate for strenuous physical activities.

As women’s athletic director, Russell’s resolve grew steadily stronger to address the issue of the ever-widening chasm between the opportunities afforded male and female students and student-athletes. Above all, she refused to accept that there were no CIAU championships for women, even though the WCIAA now included a women’s regular-season basketball schedule and conference championship. In the same 1969-70 season that Mullins’ men’s squad swept all opponents en route to their widely feted national title, the Thunderettes went 32-6 overall and won the WCIAA Championships as well as the Canadian Senior A Championships, but had no opportunity to compete for a national university championship. Interestingly, Russell had already taken the matter to the CIAU Annual General Meeting just a few months earlier in June of 1969. As the representative of a group of six female university athletic administrators from across Canada, she challenged the maledominated organization to address the gender issue. What happened there and in the weeks and months that followed set the stage for radical change in the structure and delivery of Canadian university sport. Co-coaches Ken Shields and Norm Vickery, both School of Physical Education graduates, directed an outstanding roster that included Physical Education students Brenda McFarlane, Wendy Grant, Terri McGovern, Joanne Sargent and Kathy Shields (nee Williams). Although national university championships for women had not yet been inaugurated, the team won both the Canada West and Canadian Senior A championship. McGovern, Sargent and Shields went on to play for Canada’s national team. Subsequently married, Ken and Kathy Shields rose to prominence in basketball coaching with the University of Victoria and with Canada’s men’s and women’s national teams.

Marilyn Pomfret

As a UBC physical education student, Marilyn Pomfret (nee Russell) was actively involved in student affairs, beginning with her election to the Physical Education Undergraduate Society executive and as a member of the UBC Women's Undergraduate Society. As a third-year student in 1953-54, she was elected president of the Women's Athletic Directorate and was also a member of the Alma Mater Society executive. She graduated in 1954 but returned to UBC in 1963 to teach and coach the varsity women’s volleyball team for 11 seasons, guiding her team to three Western Canada university championships and two CIAU national titles. She later assumed the responsibilities of director of Women's Athletics. Her involvement in national university sport governance under the auspices of the CIAU and her dedication to the principles of equality led to improvements, both at UBC and nationally, in opportunities for female student-athletes. Following her retirement in 1986 she was awarded the CIAU Austin-Matthews Award for outstanding contribution to the development of university sport in Canada and a Vancouver YWCA Woman of Distinction Award.