Female Canuck broke barriers

DAVE GORDON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

Bobbie Rosenfeld: The Olympian Who Could Do Everything
by Anne Dublin
Second Story Press, Toronto, 2004. 148 Pages. $14.95

In an Olympic year, the timing for a book about great Olympic athletes couldn't be better. Back in the days when a list of famous Jewish athletes could barely fit on a Post-It note, Fanny "Bobbie" Rosenfeld made headlines as a sports superstar in the late 1920s and early '30s.

Bobbie Rosenfeld: The Olympian Who Could Do Everything is a biography of a talented sportswoman who is nearly forgotten, yet who helped make inroads for women at a time when so few were allowed to participate in competitive sport. Rosenfeld was a whole team by herself. Before she was 25, she set three Canadian records – in shot put, discus and broad jump. At the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, Rosenfeld won a silver medal in the 100-metre dash and a gold medal in the 400-metre relay race. It was the first year women were permitted to participate in the Olympics. In an era when female athletics were discouraged, Rosenfeld was instrumental in changing Canada's perceptions.

Beset by arthritis before age 30, she turned her talents to coaching and wrote a sports column for the Globe and Mail, which she continued for 20 years. In 1949, sportswriters and broadcasters in Canada voted Rosenfeld the "Canadian Woman Athlete for the Half-Century." She was one of the first athletes to be inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame, in 1955. The Canadian Press continues to award the Bobbie Rosenfeld Trophy annually to Canada's Female Athlete of the Year.

Olympic Gold Medal speed skater Catriona Le May Doan won the award in 2002. And another track athlete who didn't fare as well at the Olympic Games as Rosenfeld, Perdita Felicien, won it in 2003. She was the first track athlete to win the award since pentathlete Diane Jones-Konihowski in 1978. World champion skier Melanie Turgeon was a distant second.

The book is filled with a wealth of archival photos of the era, newspaper clippings covering her successes and anecdotes from people who knew her, such as journalist Robert Fulford (National Post). What it is lacking are more quotes and reminisces from people living today for the reader to get to known Rosenfeld, the person, better. There's a recent photo of a still-living sister gazing at a memorial plaque, but the author doesn't relive any family moments with her.

Perhaps there are female athletes out there today who see Rosenfeld as a hero, who could have been quoted. Sidebars every few pages provide some historical context for the biography, listing notable innovations during Rosenfeld's lifetime. Some neat trivia is there. But the date of the opening of the first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the 1950s should have been replaced with more historically relevant items, such as the discovery of DNA. The author spends too much time setting the nostalgic stage with who was on television instead of what was happening in the world.

Those with a keen interest in sports may enjoy the play-by-play about the races. Non sports fans, however, might think these are tedious, irrelevant details. In one chapter, the author goes on a long, unneeded diversion about Rosenfeld's peers and their accomplishments. The book's title contains Rosenfeld's name after all.

The biography ends with Rosenfeld's most recent accomplishments, her posthumous honors by the city in which she grew up, and the country for which she ran. The Bobbie Rosenfeld Park, which lies between the Skydome and the CN Tower in Toronto, was built in 1991. And in 1996, Rosenfeld was honored with a Canada Post stamp with her photo. How these came about is left a mystery. How does an obscure athlete from the 1920s get a park named after them two decades after their death?

With large pictures and big print, the book is an easy read and might be a good present for a preteen or teen interested in sports. However, it suffers from a disparity of tone. A 10th-grader would have no problem writing a book report on it, providing they made good use of an encyclopedia or the Internet and weren't bored by some 80-year-old historical references that go on far too long. But the material is written too simplistically at times for adult readers, who might also enjoy learning about one of Canada's best female athletes of the early 20th century.

Dave Gordon is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. He has previously written for the Baltimore Sun, Canadian Jewish News and New York Jewish Week.

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