The Great Canadian Shape-Up

By Hartley Steward
(January 24, 1977, Macleans)

The fitness craze swept Canada about five years ago much like any other fad. Canadians of every shape and age embraced it just as we had the Frisbee and the low carbohydrate diet. Somehow the word got out that as a nation we were overweight and unfit, ripe for every cardiovascular ailment endemic to mankind. Newspapers and magazines quoted surveys telling us how much television we watched and how little exercise we did. The cocktail party catch phrase became a little federal government hyperbole that went: "A 60 year old Swede is more fit than a 30 year old Canadian." Canadians reacted with the biggest orgy of fitness since the Greeks invented the Olympics. Suddently municipal tennis courts, idle for years, were jammed from dawn to dusk; the YMCA was sent reeling as a flood of fatties stormed their institutions; thousands of young executives began leaving for work an hour early with squash racquets, and middle-aged men and women by the hundreds could be seen painting their way along city street and country lane, jogging their way to fitness and health. You had to line up to buy a pair of sneakers.

The media called the phenomenon the Fitness Boom. But the description no longer applies. A month into 1977, there is every indication that fitness in Canada is not just a passing fancy, destined to go the way of the Hula-Hoop and transcendental meditation. Theboom keeps getting louder as hundreds more Canadians get turned onto the joys of jogging. There are signs that fitness may be assuming a whole new role for Canadians, that it is becoming a routine part of our lives. It may be the birth of a new Canadian ethic.

Today YMCA facilities across the country (there are 74) reverberate to the sounds of pounding sneakers and exercise music as never before, straining present buildings to capacity. Since 1973 visits to Ys have increased by more than four million to about 6,620,000. Last year YMCAs raised a total $16.1 million for new and improved buildings. In 1972 that figure was less than a million. Some Ys, like the one in Saskatoon - Canada's Fitness Capital - have had to freeze memberships. Others, as in Burlington, Ontario, have waiting lists for the first time in history. Even more significant than the numbers is the fact that new Y members are not interested in floor hockey and basketball. They want exercise and fitness classes. Don McGregor, a former YMCA physical fitness director, remembers a decade ago the Toronto Central Y offered 10 fitness classes a week "and then you couldn't get a dozen people out. They'd wait down in the locker room until the class was over and then come up for volleyball." Today that same Y offers 26 fitness classes a week with as many as 120 in a class.

Perhaps the most obvious indication of Canada's newfound fitness is the astonishing and continuing growth in racquet sports such as tennis, squash and racquet ball (a modified version of squash played with a softer slower ball). Five years ago Canada couldn't have offered 300 squash courts. Today there are more than 700 courts and probably 70,000 serious squash players. While British Columbia and Quebec have their enthusiasts - about 25% of the total - the real boom has taken place in Ontario where more than 60% of the country's squash courts are located. Toronto alone offers 350 and will likely see another 70 or 80 built this year, as entrepreneurs cash in on the growth. In Canadian cities, the squash club has become the business-men's new meeting place, as warehouses and office buildings by the dozens are converted into expensive, stylish clubs. Typical is Toronto's Bay Street Racquet Club, which opened a year ago with a capacity of 500 members. Already 400 memberships have been sold at $350 a shot and the club expects to be in the black in two years despite an investment of $370,000.

The shift from such competitive sports as hockey and basketball to fitness or racquet sports has practically revolutionized the sporting goods industry. In1976 Canadians bought an estimated 800,000 tennis racquests and close to five million tennis balls. Three years ago sales were roughly half that. Addidas, the world's largest sporting goods manufacturer, has tripled its sales of track shoes, track suits and racquet sport accessories in the past five years. The hottest item on the market is the stationary bike, the kind once hidden behind the door in doctor's offices. Canadians bought more than 40,000 last year. Some manufacturers credit much of the new sales to the advent of morning television. Housewives can now pedal along to the Today Show and Dinah Shore.

While the women are cycling at home, their husbands are finding fitness at the office. Canadian corporations, although years behind American firms, are beginning to explore the notion that a fit employee may be more productive employee - less likely to get sick and more likely to live longer. Recreation Canada, a branch of the federal health and welfare department, has set up fitness programs for the Post Office and the Department of Public works in Ottawa. John Labatt began a serious fitness program for 73 employees two years ago in its London, Ont. Brewery. Because of its success Labatt's expanded the program to its London head office, its Toronto brewery, and is about to start a similar scheme in Halifax, complete with physical fitness director.

But if fitness is indeed becoming the new Canadian ethic - why? Why is the traditional Canadian antidote to a hard day at the office - peace and quiet and a double scotch - suddenly giving way to four laps around the park? Why is the two-martini lunch being replaced by the sweat and strain of an hour on the squash court?

Part of the answer can be found in the nation's shocking hear disease statistics and part in Ottawa's promotion of Participaction. But the overriding fact is that fitness is its own best advertisement - and almost impossible to resist. People who are fit look better, feel better, do things better and seem to enjoy themselves more than unfit people. With the ability to run a seven-minute mile comes a new confidence, even cockiness. There is hardly a fitness buff in the country who will not tell you about it a the drop of a tennis racket.

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