Athletic Achievements
By: Serge Dupuis
Serge Dupuis
Contributing Historian
Author of six books, and a wide variety of articles and reports, Serge Dupuis was selected as “inspiring path” by the Journées de la relève en recherche de l’ACFAS (2021). He has also won the following awards:
- Canada Council for the Arts Scholarly Book Award (2024) for Une histoire du Moulin-à-Fleur de Sudbury: quartier ouvrier, territoire canadien-français, published by Ottawa University Press (2025)
- The Richard-Arès Prize for Best Essay published in Quebec (2018) for Le Canada français devant la Francophonie mondiale : l’expérience du mouvement Richelieu dans la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle, published by Éditions du Septentrion (2017)
- Canada Council for the Arts Scholarly Book Award (2016) for Le Canada français devant la Francophonie mondiale (2017)
Serge has taught at universities across Ontario and Quebec from 2011 to 2017, then went on to concentrate entirely on the research, writing, and popularization of history throughout diverse forms of media since 2018.
Born in Sudbury (Ontario), Serge Dupuis is a professional historian working in Quebec; he is an associate member at the Chaire pour le développement de la recherche sur la culture d’expression française en Amérique du Nord (CEFAN) at the University of Laval.
Serge Dupuis has a bachelor’s degree (Laurentienne, 2007), a master’s degree (Ottawa, 2009) and a doctorat (Waterloo, 2013), then completed a postdoctoral fellowship (Laval, 2016); he received grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for his three graduate studies.
Knowing they would soon welcome the first Olympic Games in their history, Quebec and Canada invested to nourish an athletic spirit in young people. Until the 1960s, Canada regularly qualified to compete and win in winter events but rarely won medals at the summer games. Aside from avoiding humiliation at the Montreal Games, authorities in of education and youth portfolios began to represent physical activity and organized sports as matters of public health[i]. The first Jeux du Québec were held in 1971 and the “Mission ’76” initiative sought to increase athletic capacity and offer “the best possible showing” at the Montreal games. Praising the “superb individual performances” of 1975 that were “lead to 1976”, columnist Jacques Drapeau wrote in Le Soleil on December 26, 1975:
Never before in the entire history of Canadian amateur sport had the various sports federations made such efforts, admittedly encouraged as they were by an injection of several million dollars from governments as private enterprise[ii].
The IOC awarded American television rights for broadcasting to the ABC network for $23 million, double the amount paid for the Munich games. Public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada in turn provided images and sound to the world. The Olympic Radio and Television Organization was created, with a staff of 1600 with the goal of helping 3000 journalists from throughout the world[iii]. From January 1975, Richard Garneau and René Lecavalier, the stars of Soirée du hockey, presented a series of 60 TV broadcasts to familiarize audiences with the Olympic spirit and Canadian athletes. Even at private stations such as CKAC in Montreal, teams of young sports commentators, accustomed to discussing hockey and not much more were created to be able to talk about a variety of sports.
The October Crisis of 1970 and the killing of Israeli athletes at the Munich Games in 1972 pushed the organizing committee of the Montreal games to recruit police and military personnel[iv]. To prevent a terrorist attack and ensure the overall security of the games, 17,200 officers were deployed, day and night, at airports, in the streets, at the entrance to the Olympic Village and on the river. This desire for “security” led to some excesses, such as the moments when local police intensified its harassment of gays and lesbians. The Comité homosexual anti-répression protested in several locations against these infringements of the provincial charter of personal rights and freedoms, adopted in 1975. The Olympic Village was open day and night and included a local police station. In order to avoid dampening the atmosphere, the 1200 military personnel and police officers were asked to smile and act relaxed.
At 3 pm, on Saturday, July 17, 1976, the opening ceremonies were attended by more than 73,000 people. In accordance with protocol, Queen Elizabeth II, as head of state, declared open the 21st Olympiad of the modern era[v]. A great procession of the world’s delegations was followed by two 15-year-olds, Sandra Henderson of Toronto and Stéphane Préfontaine of Montreal, bearing the Olympic flame and lighting the cauldron. Henderson and Préfontaine were chosen to represent sporting youth, as well as the English and French as founding peoples of Canada. The 92 delegations filed past at 120 paces per minute to a musical theme, inspired by the work of Quebec composer André Mathieu and adapted by Montreal jazz musician Vic Vogel to evoke the festive spirit and solemnity of the moment. With only two exceptions, Africa boycotted the Games to protest competing New Zealand’s choice to conserve sporting relations with Apartheid South Africa. Of the 6,189 athletes participating in at least one event, 21% were women. This record was achieved in part by introducing basketball, handball and rowing events for women.
Montreal’s Cité Olympique was host to most competitions, but Ontario held soccer matches and sailing events, while other regions of Quebec welcomed equestrian sports, archery and handball. The Montreal games were a success in terms of logistics as well as achievements: buses ran on time, more than 3 million people were able to attend the events, volunteers were friendly, the facilities worked properly and one billion people followed the Games on television or radio[vi]. The athletes felt spoiled, as author Pierre Gince writes:
Montreal’s Olympic Village was a very rich environment, where the Games were first and foremost experienced by the athletes and those accompanying them […]. Since the accommodations were very limited – 980 apartments compared to 5200 in Munich – they were only for sleeping in. Everything had been thought of and arranged to promote dialogue and relaxation outside the rooms. A system of free phones allowed villagers to exchange with someone in their native language. There was even a newspaper […]. Organizers saw to it that everyone “lived” in the common areas of the Village[vii].
Representing 6% of the Games’ athletes, the 398-member Canadian delegation included 130 women. Quebec’s 99 athletes made up a quarter of the Canadian delegation, like the province’s demographic share of the country. Public investment in sports contributed to Canada winning 11 medals, twice as many medals as at the Games in Munich (1972) or Mexico (1968). However, none of the medals were gold.
Some Canadian performances made an impression on audiences. Among the men, Greg Joy, 20, won a silver for a 2.16 m high jump[viii]. The young Canadian beat Dwight Stones the world champion, who called French-Canadians “donkeys” for failing to complete the stadium. Joy beat the “swarming, voluble American”, but above all, “spared Canada the humiliation of not obtaining a single medal in athletics on home ground[ix]” according to Le Soleil. “Canada’s Greg Joy was able to fight tension,” concluded columnist Claude Larochelle, “in contrast to his team-mates Robert Forget and Claude Ferragne, to end up unexpectedly with a silver medal[x]”. As Joy recalls, the Canadian audience, when he stepped onto the podium and upon returning to the Olympic Village, congratulated him as if he had won gold. The performance also introduced Canadians to a sport they were unfamiliar with. Among Quebec’s champions, Michel Vaillancourt, 22, won silver in show jumping, riding Branch County, after years of training in Bromont and Florida. Vaillancourt became the first Canadian to win an individual equestrian medal at the Games. Despite contending with a sodden track, he made the first page of several newspapers[xi]. Vaillancourt jokingly recalls that “Canada had won so few medals that each medal became big news[xii]”.
Performances were equally impressive for women, who won six of the eleven Canadian medals, all in swimming. Among them was Nancy Garapick, 14, who won two bronzes, one in the 100-metre backstroke (1 min 3 s)[xiii] and a second in the 200-metre backstroke, in 2 min 16 s. In both cases, Garapick beat her previous records in the semi-final. As Le Soleil put it:
If [Germany’s Kornelia] Edner proved that the East German system’s very advanced training methods could make her the world’s greatest swimmer, our little Nancy Garapick, who put up an incredible fight, conquered the hearts of thousands of Canadians. She finished the games with two bronzes, assured of an even more promising future. It was her first performance in such a major competition and she promised to do better the next time[xiv].
Becky Smith also won two bronze medals: one individual for the 4 x 100 metre freestyle relay and another for the 400 metres medley with her team[xv]. The next day, the Canadian Press reported:
Miss Smith’s time was 4 hours 50 minutes 48 seconds. Becky is 17 years old and now trains in Thunder Bay, Ont. She is the second in her family to win a medal. Her brother Graham, aged 18, won a silver medal in the 4 x 100 medley relay[xvi].
The most memorable performance of the Games belongs to a 14-year-old Romanian woman, Nadia Comaneci, who obtained seven perfect scores (10/10) and five medals, including three golds[xvii]. As Comaneci recalls:
One day while training for the Olympic Games in Montreal, I tried to do a front salto on the upper bar, which I failed. I hit my heels and caught the lower bar… by accident. My trainer told me: “That’s very interesting. Do you think you could do it from the high bar?” I replied: “No, because I’ll hit my heels”. So we wrapped my heels in foam to avoid that until I perfected the right technique. Which became the “Comaneci salto” – a mount followed by a front straddle with a catch on the asymmetrical bars, born by accident! It’s very difficult to do. And it won me a gold medal[xviii]!
“Nadia” became a fashionable name for girls born in Quebec after 1976. As historians Paul Foisy and Tabitha Marshall write, “Comaneci, the uncontested queen of the Montreal Games, contributed to the popularity of gymnastics among a generation of young girls[xix]”.
In the context of the Cold War, countries instrumentalized athletic achievements as metaphors demonstrating their vitality to the planet. Although Moscow had lost the contest to secure the 1976 summer games, the Soviet Union took 125 medals, a first place, including 49 gold medals[xx]. The United States won 94 medals, 34 of them gold. The USSR would have been beaten by a united Germany. Divided since 1947 into a communist republic (39 medals, including ten golds) and a democratic one (90 medals, 40 of them gold), the sister countries occupied the third and fourth ranks. Forty-five records were set during the Games. Weightlifter Vasily Alekseyev lifted more than 255 kilos in a clean and jerk event, American Bruce (Caitlyn) Jenner smashed the decathlon record and boxer Charles (Sugar Ray) Leonard amazed the public with his strength and theatrics.
Canada ranked 27th in the medal count, just behind Italy (13 medals) and ahead of France (9 medals). Canada beat its own record, with 11 medals, for a summer Olympiad, but became the first host country not to win at least one gold medal on its home turf.
[i] André Thibault, “Les leçons de l’histoire du loisir public québécois “, Bulletin de l’Observatoire québécois du loisir, vol. 19, no. 9 (2022), online.
[ii] Jacques Drapeau, “Les athlètes canadiens y vont à bouchées doubles”, Le Soleil, December 26, 1975, p. B4.
[iii] Pierre Gince, Les Jeux olympiques de Montréal et nous : 50 ans, 50 regards, Montreal, Éditions de l’Homme, 2026, p. 34, 44, 227, 245-246.
[iv] Martin Pâquet and Stéphane Savard, Brève histoire de la Révolution tranquille, Montreal, Les Éditions du Boréal, 2021, p. 186-187 ; Pierre Gince, 2026, op. cit., p. 23-24, 37, 40.
[v] Paul Foisy and Tabitha Marshall, “Montreal Olympics”, The Canadian Encyclopedia, December 4, 2024 (November 27, 2021), online.
[vi] Pierre Gince, Les Jeux olympiques de Montréal et nous : 50 ans, 50 regards, Montreal, Éditions de l’Homme, 2026, p. 13, 17, 40-41.
[vii] Pierre Gince, 2026, op. cit., p. 39.
[viii] Pierre Gince, 2026, op. cit., p. 195-199.
[ix] Michel Alloucherie, “Des images dont on se souviendra fort longtemps”, Le Soleil, August 2, 1976, p. C 4.
[x] Claude Larochelle, “Joy se moque des ‘peurs’ de Dwight Stones”, Le Soleil, August 2, 1976, p. C 6.
[xi] “Une 9e médaille pour le Canada”, Le Soleil, July 28, 1976, p. A 1 ; Pierre Gince, 2026, op. cit., p. 217.
[xii] Michel Vaillancourt, in Pierre Gince, 2026, op. cit., p. 219.
[xiii] Jacques Drapeau, “Un mal ‘mystérieux’ frappe les Allemandes”, Le Soleil, July 22, 1976, p. B2; “Les Canadiens s’améliorent”, Le Soleil, July 22, 1976, p. B4.
[xiv] “Un centième de seconde change tout”, Le Soleil, July 26, 1976, p. B 1.
[xv] Claude Larochelle, “La révolution n’est pas terminée en natation”, Le Soleil, July 26, 1976, p. B2; “Médailles”, Le Soleil, July 26, 1976, p. B 13.
[xvi] “Deux autres médailles au Canada”, Le Nouvelliste, July 25, 1976, p. B5.
[xvii] “Une fiche parfaite pour Nadia”, Le Soleil, July 19, 1976, p. B2.
[xviii] Nadia Comaneci, in Pierre Gince, 2026, op. cit., p. 6.
[xix] Paul Foisy and Tabitha Marshall, December 4, 2024, op. cit.
[xx] International Olympic Committee, “Montreal 1976 Medal Table”, online.