Situating the Absent Subject: Jean Hales and the 1928 Canadian Olympic Trials

Within scholarship, personal subjective experience is an important source of academic knowledge. Reflecting on studies of sport over the past two decades, Pirrko Markula suggests that many researchers have engaged in feminist work deriving from women's personal sport explaining that studies have examined ... the meanings individual women have placed on physical activity and how these meanings have been shaped by societal power relations. (1) In the words of Judith Butler, this approach suggests commitment to grounding theory in lived experience, and in revealing that way in which the world is produced through the constituting acts of subjective (2) In sport history, the agenda of centralizing women's knowledge(s) and women's subjective experience has been taken up through the increasing incorporation of oral histories and personal reminiscences as a methodological recognition of diversified perspectives on the past. Historically, women's participation in international sport has been tenuous and often contested. In the 20th century, sport, leisure, and physical activity have been significant social venues where men and women have learned to relate to one another, have struggled for authority and power, and celebrated lifestyle and community values. International sport festivals, such as the modern Olympic movement offer many examples of the diverging experiences of men and women in sport, experiences that have been appreciably different, in terms of access to rewards, opportunities to participate, and the cultural norms associated with physical activity. Susan Birrell and Diana Richter argue that theorizing of sport should be grounded in women's unique experiences, suggesting that it is only through women's experience that sport can be transformed from an alienating practice into one that has relevance within their lives.3 As Gerda Lerner asks, What would history be like if it were seen through the eyes of women and seen through the values they define? (4) Each woman's perception of her experience has implications for how we construct women's sport involvement and the meaning of sport in the lives of women. It is this methodological turn-exploring the complexities, challenges, and potential of locating the lived experiences of individual female athletes-that forms the basis of this paper. Using examples from an interview with Jean Hales, a Canadian track and field athlete in the late 1920s, I aim to explore the complexities of locating personal experience within the cultural discourses that construct that experience while simultaneously considering my role as the historian interpreting her experience. In this paper I explore the construction of women's historical memory. As historian Joan Sangster suggests: Asking why and how women explain, rationalize, and make sense of their past offers insight into the social and material framework within which they operated, the perceived choices and cultural patterns they faced, and the complex relationship between individual consciousness and culture. (5) In the words of Dorothy Smith, focusing on the lived experiences and reminiscences of Jean Hales, is method that, at the outset of inquiry, creates the space for an absent subject, and an absent experience that is to be filled with the presence and spoken experience of actual women speaking of and in the actualities of their everyday worlds. (6) This guiding perspective informs both how we 'do' history and how we understand and locate women's lived experiences. The six Canadian women-the Matchless Six-who competed for Canada at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam are a familiar part of Canadian Olympic history. However, these were not the only women who shared the dream of representing Canada. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Jean Hales travelled throughout Ontario in the 1920s representing the Hamilton Athletic Club in the 100-yard dash, high jump, and a variety of other track and field events. …

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