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Birthplace

Overview

King’s "Record"

Overview


Sports

Snowshoe
Club

Cricket

Athletic
Sports

Cogswell
Cricket Prize

Gymnasium

Football
(Rugby)

Season
End

Icy
"Three Elms" Path

Cricket
Pitch/Cattle

Weather and Other

Eulogy
– McCawley

New Acadia


Grounds
and Woods

Windsor
Scenery

Adjoining
Clifton

Ornamental
Trees

Filling
“Bog Pond”

June 1879

We hear much now-a-days of Athletic sports in connection
with popular amusements, and each recurring sporting season finds increased
interest taken in those harmless and healthful exercises, which, if not
necessary to existence, are certainly beneficial to the health and constitution
of everyone…(a brief account of the Greek, Roman and English history
of sport)

…With the decline of the chivalric spirit, English athletic
sports fell into disuse. Their revival, however, originated in some of
the great educational institutions. The initiatory steps were taken by
the Royal Military College; but upwards of twenty years elapsed before
their introduction to the other colleges and to the chief public places
could be reguarded as general. But in time "Athletic Clubs"
were formed, and the spirit of competitive rivalry extended itself; and
now, even in Canada and elsewhere the interest taken in those athletic
enterprises is evinced by the rapid increase of such clubs and associations
, and the alacrity with which schemes relative to a probable competitive
contest are engaged in.

But apart from the time-honoured heirlooms of antiquity,
various modern field sports and athletic exercises have been devised.
These substitutions are more in keeping with the requirements of the age,
and more subservient to the purposes of amusement and relaxation. All
vestiges of a rude and boisterous character are eliminated, and our popular
games are divested of everything tending to weary and disgust, rather
than refresh and exhilarate.. Conscious among such is Cricket, which perhaps
should be reguarded as a purely national sport; it exercises the body
without exciting it, and stimulates the mind to wholesome action, and
in whatever locality it is introduced it almost invariably attains popularity.

And may we not use the plain term "boating," as
designating pleasures, which, though enjoyed by a fascination best understood
by those experienced therein, and the numerous college and other boating
clubs extant abundantly testifying how widely it is appreciated.

It is unnecessary to dwell on the ardour with which the
sport-loving Canadian public regard that charming athletic game, "LaCrosse,"
so conducive to lively action and graceful bearing; not to speak of football,
baseball and numerous others, which indicate a growing fondness for affording
recreation to the body, relaxing the mind and strained faculties, and
passing away dull hours in life in jovial, animating, and exciting amusements.
And, though some grave persons, under the shabby disguise of religious
sanctity, class indiscriminately all amusements as worldly frivolity and
a waste of time, yet seldom has their depreciating of the God-given gifts
of mirth, and a taste for enjoyment, been beneficial to themselves or
instrumental in deterring others from embracing Nature’s true method of
reinvigorating the mind, imparting healthy activity and lively physical
energy to the worn out frame, and eradicating those sour, sullen and morose
feelings so eminently characteristic of this worthy class.

Lowry (hand written in)

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