Sports and Leisure

The topic of sports and leisure offers a fascinating window into the social and cultural history of the Turner Valley area. For many people, leisure activities were simply a means to enjoy free time, whether alone or with friends and family. As historian Donald Wetherell has detailed, however, one of the dominant cultural attitudes in early twentieth-century Alberta was that leisure activities should be "useful pleasures" that served a practical purpose in addition to their entertainment value. The case of Turner Valley illustrates this duality well—in addition to providing individual and group relaxation, leisure and organized sports were harnessed by community leaders for specific goals.

Leisure was typically viewed as offering a release from the pressures and rigours of the workplace. Roughnecks and drillers worked long, hard hours under dangerous conditions, and leisure time offered men the opportunity to enjoy personal relaxation or strengthen friendships and social bonds with fellow workers. This view of leisure as escape from work had consequences for women—there were few job opportunities for women in the Turner Valley, and domestic labour was typically not viewed as legitimate work. As a result, women at times had to assert their right to equal leisure time. One anecdote from an oral history in Turner Valley points to a case where a woman challenged her husband’s careless assumption that she did not want personal recreational time. She grew annoyed with the fact that her husband went to the pool hall every night after work, leaving her alone to look after their child. After nearly two weeks of such treatment, she marched to the pool hall, child in hand, and demanded that he return home and give her a chance to enjoy some leisure time of her own. Though only one anecdote, it effectively captures one of the dominant cultural attitudes of the time that women had to

overcome: men needed leisure time to escape the rigours of work, while women did not. In this case, the wife’s protest was effective. He agreed to negotiate a child care schedule that gave her some time for recreation.

There was a wide range of leisure options available for men and women in the Turner Valley area. Many sports were played on an organized or ad hoc basis, including tennis, badminton, soccer, baseball and curling. The lack of infrastructure in these emerging settlements created a need for new recreational facilities, which in turn was often the catalyst for volunteer organization. One long-term resident detailed how workers came together to build an outdoor public rink with the support of Royalite:

During the winter a bunch of us guys all got together…and got Royalite to allow us to tap on to their water line and we built a skating rink, an outdoor skating rink. We bought all the lumber from the sawmill up by Priddis and the lumber was all slab and Royalite made a deal with the people that were running the lumberyard to supply all the lumber.

Similarly, in April 1930, the young men of Black Diamond organized a baseball club and “put in” a diamond on the outskirts of town. In an effort to rally community interest and support, the club hosted creative exhibition games, such as a contest between the town’s married men and single men (the bachelors won, 7-5). The Turner Valley Women’s Institute took the lead in organizing the construction and subsequent maintenance of the public swimming pool, one of the community’s most popular recreational venues. Such examples illustrate how leisure, in addition to providing entertainment, could build community spirit and contribute to social cohesion.

While such examples illustrate how sports and leisure could enhance community spirit, they also had the potential to reveal divisions and inequalities. For example, golf was played widely in Turner Valley, but only a small minority of the population could access the Turner Valley Golf Club. Situated in the elite neighbourhood of "Snob Hill," the club catered to the community’s managerial and professional classes and maintained its exclusivity through a very high membership fee— fifty dollars per year by 1937. Similarly, hunting was a popular pastime in the Turner Valley region, but prominent men and women distinguished themselves by establishing a Polo and Hunt Club. By linking their club’s activities with the upper class sport of polo, and by celebrating their success in the hunt with formal banquets, members were associating their activities with the tradition of hunting as an elite pursuit, for recreation rather than for sustenance.

On a darker note, leisure could also contribute to social disorder and violence. Interviews with former oilfield workers confirm that relaxation away from the workplace often included drinking, gambling, and, in certain establishments, fighting. One long-time resident commented on his impressions of this violence when he first lived in Turner Valley as a child:

As young kids we’d sit outside the Black Diamond Hotel where the oil drillers drank their beer of a Saturday night and it was our form, I guess, of what would be television, watching the fist fights as they came barrelling out the door and the battles raged.

That such violence was common enough to attract spectators is not surprising. Early twentieth century settlements that

grew rapidly out of natural resource industries were widely associated with the "rough culture" of alcohol consumption and violence. It was precisely this sort of reputation, however, that civic boosters wanted to avoid as they tried to attract people to Turner Valley as investors or permanent residents. To that end, the local newspaper worked hard to challenge the widespread perception that life in Turner Valley was defined by violence and disorder. In November 1929, the Observer condemned the “invidious propaganda,” “scurrilous slander” and “mischievous lies” that Turner Valley was populated by “the dregs of humanity.” Warning that “lurid” tales of violence were deterring people from making a permanent home in the region, the newspaper urged citizens to take every opportunity to counter such “misinformation.”

Civic boosters tried to counter this negative reputation by promoting respectable entertainment. For example, in late 1929 Black Diamond established a Musical and Dramatic Society with an explicit mandate to provide “high class” and “clean entertainment” for the community. The local Board of Trade invited representatives from its sister organizations in Calgary, Okotoks and High River to attend performances, thus advertising to outsiders Black Diamond’s appreciation of fine culture. Dances were another common form of respectable entertainment in Turner Valley’s communities. In the words of one long-time resident, “there was always a dance somewhere.” With music provided by the Musical and Dramatic Society or visiting orchestral players from Calgary, dances contributed to the overall image of cultural refinement being promoted by community leaders.

In addition to advertising the region's respectability, civic leaders sought to promote its stability, prosperity and bright future. Organized sports leagues, for example, linked Turner Valley's settlements to towns and villages throughout southern Alberta and provided an ideal means of promoting the region to a wider audience. In the summer of 1930, a local baseball league was organized and included teams from Turner Valley, Black Diamond, Nanton and Hartell. While the league was primarily recreational and local, it still served the larger goal of community promotion. The Turner Valley Observer hoped that a new baseball field in Black Diamond would "catch tourists for Sunday games." Teams from as far away as Great Falls, Montana, were invited to come play in Turner Valley, drawing new visitors to witness the region’s growth and development.

Turner Valley also participated in the Southern Alberta Senior Amateur Hockey League with the Turner Valley-Okotoks

Oilers (1929-30) and the Imperials (1930-31) before the Great Depression forced the team to cease operations. Economic recovery in the oil patch saw the return of organized hockey, and the Turner Valley Oilers played in the Alberta Senior Hockey League from 1938 until the league closed down in 1941. As historian Karen Wall has noted, promotional materials for the Oilers featured imagery advertising the Turner Valley region’s abundant petroleum resources. Hockey was very popular, but as historian David Finch notes, organized leagues offered the people of Turner Valley few opportunities to compete. Highly-skilled players were typically recruited from other parts of Canada and given jobs in the oil patch, so they could play for the team. Winning and promoting the region were more important than encouraging local participation, so those who wanted to play sports had to do so through smaller clubs or on an informal, ad hoc basis.