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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
Electric
Light
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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