Topic spans: 1968 - 2000
Getting Physical: Canada's Fitness Movement
In the 1970s, Canadians went from couch potatoes to super jocks. Well, not quite. But at least during that decade they did start to get up and get fit. It was thanks to nagging TV ads, the example of an active prime minister and embarrassment compared to some very robust Swedes. But the nagging hasn't been entirely successful. Thirty years later the average Canadian is still overweight and spends more time on the sofa than at the gym.
6 television clips
7 radio clips
Exercise is for kids
Broadcast Date: Feb. 26, 1958
"Exercise is for the young," says radio personality Byng Whitteker. His four-minute walk from car to office this morning is an arduous trek at 290 pounds. In 1958, Whitteker is like most adults who don't understand the health merits of what he calls "huffing and puffing."Vigorous exercise prepares you for an early grave, he explains. Fitness expert Lloyd Percival disagrees and is worried about Whitteker's heart.
"What you don't use, you're going to lose," Percival quips in this CBC Radio debate.
The two discuss "cholesterol," a substance thought to cause heart attacks. Percival is also concerned about the health of schoolchildren. Since evaluating a group of Toronto kids who failed a fitness test, he's coined the term "TV legs" because of their unhealthy obsession with the sedentary pastime.
Exercise is for kids
• Lloyd Percival, a physical fitness proponent ahead of his time, started a CBC Radio fitness show called Sports College.• Skiing pioneer (Jackrabbit) Johanssen was another early promoter of physical fitness in Canada. The Norwegian-born athlete, who died in 1987 at the age of 111, skied Quebec's cross-country trails until he was 107 years old.
• During the 1880s in London, England, lower class men began joining the YMCA. Many were British clerks — men who worked in banks, stores and offices. Exercise offered these clerks society had deemed as "little men" a feeling of masculinity.
• In June 1888, Buckingham Palace said physical fitness was necessary because it offered "young men counter attractions to the many temptations which existed in a great city like London."
Exercise is for kids
Medium: Radio
Program: Assignment
Broadcast Date: Feb. 26, 1958
Guest(s): , Lloyd Percival, Byng Whitteker
Host: Maria Barrett, Bill McNeil
Moderator: Jed Adams
Duration: 11:53
Last updated:
March 6, 2003
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13 clips in this topic . page
Television
7:03
A fitness expert demonstrates some easy exercises to help women stay fit and trim after the holidays.
Topic
From stimulants to steroids, growth hormones and even gene therapy, high-performance athletes routinely risk everything in their quest for gold. Canada has had its share of drug headlines, from disgraced Pan Am...
Exercise is for kids.
The CBC Digital Archives Website.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Last updated: March 6, 2003.
[Page consulted on Feb. 9, 2010.]