As James Brady and Absolom Halkett waved goodbye to the twin-engine Beech plane on June 7, 1967, they did not realize they’d been dropped off at the wrong lake. The men would soon have recognized the pilot’s mistake, though, and they would have known to sit tight. But when a third man, Berry Richards, arrived with more supplies on June …
Laura Robinson
Laura Robinson is the author of Black Tights: Women, Sport and Sexuality and Cyclist BikeList: The Book for Every Rider.
Articles by
Laura Robinson
If things had unfolded as the International Olympic Committee ordained, you could be watching the basketball finals at the Tokyo Olympics instead of reading the Literary Review of Canada right now. But even a Swiss-based, self-appointed, ultra-wealthy, mainly male “non-profit” sports club that makes billions couldn’t stop the pandemic from shutting down the Summer…
Absolute Power
Before safety bicycles and dress reform there was a French-Canadian strong woman on wheels September 2018
While attending a town council meeting in the southern Ontario town in which I live, I was chided by a councillor. “Laura, decorum please!” he said. I hadn’t said anything—at least not verbally. But I’d worn black Lycra cycling shorts in Alice Munro country, where women weren’t supposed to show up to a council meeting on a bike wearing nice tight…
Road Worthy (1)
Tramping the gruelling highways from Thunder Bay to Manhattan. January–February 2005Chilling Lessons
A First Nations chief recalls years of suffering at St. Joseph’s Mission school July–August 2013A Real Sports Hero
An Italian cyclist provides an inspiring antidote to the Lance Armstrong revelations November 2012
Every time cycling champion Gino Bartali swung his leg over the saddle of his racing bike from the fall of 1943 to July 1944, he knew the act could be a death sentence. Bartali, who won the Tour de France before and after World War Two as well as the Giro d’Italia and hundreds of one-day bike…
A Shameful Track Record
The Olympic movement plays fast and loose with basic democratic values January–February 2010
Chris Shaw is a bit of a nebbish, a Woody Allen–esque guy who researches Parkinson’s disease for a living. He has two ex-wives and a fuel-efficient car, but in the winter-of-discontent narrative that has enveloped the Vancouver Olympics, he has a different passion. In 2008, Shaw wrote Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic …
What timing. Just as young Canadian female ski jumpers take on the Old Boys Club of the world, namely the International Olympic Committee, over their right to compete at Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics, two of the greatest women skiers in the nation’s history decide to tell their story. From the day in 1933 when they jumped off the senior jump on Côte des Nieges in Montreal at age eleven to the present time that still sees them…