This celebration focuses on ‘Educating the Body: a History of Physical Education in Canada, ’ by Ann Hall, Bruce Kidd and Patricia Vertinsky (University of Toronto Press 2024), the questions it raises, the problems it reveals, and the future it hopes for. It is the first scholarly history of physical education in Canada since 1971, designed to recapture and analyze the two centuries of formal instruction in physical education and related practices, in light of: changing understandings of the Canadian state, public education, health, physical activity sport and the body ; the profound effects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; the past and present of colonialism and the effects of the residential schools; the marginalization of physical education in many Canadian schools and universities along with the relative decline in historical scholarship about the field and the upsurge and importance of kinesiology in higher education and medicine.
Our discussions will use this newly published book as a taking off point for debate, as it relates to the future of Kinesiology as well as physical education in Canada.
