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To: Richnorth who wrote (89731)	9/18/2002 9:59:51 AM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 116815

We had a large influx of Euclids, Cossackers, Polskis, Yugos, Slavonics, Czechs, Dukes, and Russkis into BC, Sk, Mn, Ab, Ont, Ks, and other areas from 1880 to 1950. Most came in at the turn of the century when you could leave that area. So the gene pool is already well established. Almost insidiously so. In Sk and Mn you see a sea of blond hair in the street. The people are not that tall so I look well down on the vast majority of them at 6'2". They tend to a bony muscular build, with large chest cavities. The third largest language group in Canada behind English and fr. up until 1990 was Ukrainian at 500,000 speakers. (It is now Chinese at 1,000,000) This is about the same as Polish or Russian, The race is not that dissimilar and the language is quite close. Most of whom we got in Canada, were peasant farmers and they have stuck quite close to the land every since. The people tend to be socialistic and unlike their cousins in the former soviet, they are not terribly upwardly mobile or academically oriented. In Stalin's Russian or under the Tsars, they were routinely mistreated and were used to continual small skirmish wars with neighbouring villages or the central army. Consequently they developed very strongly ingrained heritage of militaristic thinking, and distrust of central governments. To this day, some Russians born in Canada have their first language as Russian, speak English with an accent, and have two last names, one longer one for regiment call-up and one shorter one for common use. Some even still wear traditional 19th century costumes in some villages. Ukrainians usually go out of their way to distinguish themselves as Canadian. So it was not too hard to count Ukrainians on the hiway by their bumper stickers which said "A Proud Canadian". I can't think of any other immigrant group that would state that after being here 50 to 100 years. They are also careful not to be confused with Russians, with whom they have a long standing antipathy. EC<:-}

To: Richnorth who wrote (89731)	9/18/2002 10:46:02 AM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 116815

The Bolshoi was a good ballet company in the old days. It has fallen on hard times of late. Sol Hurok used to bring these people into Canada to entertain in the 50's and 60's. I don't believe that they could go to the States at that time. We also used to get the Red Army Chorus, and lots of B Russian Hockey players who played our junior A teams. The Russians would generally outshoot our players, about 3 to 5 to one, and the score usually ended up looking like basketball games, at least on one side and jai-alai scores on the other. I remember noticing that the Russian players were usually taller than our players and obviously in much better shape. In fact they were in frighteningly good shape. I don't recall seeing people as lithe and muscular as these fellows before or since. I inquired about this of some coaches and those in the know told me that the Russians all played another sport at the same level as they played hockey in the off season, and this was usually soccer, but could have been swimming or canoeing. Their players could play all 3 periods on one line without a break, and our players had to have line changes every 3 to 5 minutes to keep up with them. I was in in canoeing since 1952. Since my father was an olympic medallist whose style had influenced the Russian canoeists, who by then were leading the world, I was interested in their attitude and application to the sport. I found studies that they had done in Hungary on 50,000 junior canoeists from one canoe club. A junior may be any age here, and is just a category of races won. The Russian and Hungarian Sports federations had measured oxygen uptake, intramuscular fat, muscle type, limb length, years experience, miles trained, heart wall thickness, and lung capacity of every canoeist throughout their career. They did this in order to categorize the relative amount of endurance, muscle resiliency, and explosive muscle strength that was required to compete in various canoe races of different classes and lengths. This was to guide athletic selection and training methods for the sport. In all of North America in the past 100 years, we don't have 50,000 athletes in all sports at all levels, let alone 50,000 canoeists. We did not possess such detailed data on even one of them, nor did we have one coach who had the faintest idea it might be important to know such things. The true meaning of amateurism could not be more clearly seen from this. We were amateurish in that our attitude was appalingly ignorant and would probably never change. The gap of attitude, dedication, and interest in amateur sport was just too large to overcome in North America. Our idea was to overcoach a few promising athletes selected by scouts from the meagre few, and push them with drugs and government money as showpieces to win at a few international races. If the Soviet Bloc athlete ever lost a race to one of our athletes, it is just as likely any one of 30 others from his own country could have beaten him on that day too. And for the most part, any of 2 to 3 thousand of athletes from his country could beat our whole team in successive heats, in most sports at any distance. I came to the conclusion that the Russians could be beaten, since we had their information for free and only had to train one winner with the right technique, not 50,000. Of course this sort of pipe dream was never going to come true so it got shelved in the natural process of things. The amazing thing is the Soviets gained their superiority, in part by imitating Canadian and US athletes from the 1920's and 1930's. EC<:-}