Crow, Norton Hervey

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Bruce Kidd, “CROW, NORTON HERVEY,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/crow_norton_hervey_15E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Civil servant and amateur sports leader; b. 6 July 1878 in Pelham Township, Ont., eldest son of Judson Comfort Crow, a schoolteacher, and Casandria Marie Pettee; m. Ella McKinley Harriman, and they had a daughter; d. 14 Sept. 1929 in Toronto.
    • Of Presbyterian, loyalist background on the Niagara peninsula, Norton Crow went to Toronto about 1898 to become a clerk in the provincial treasurer’s office. After building an outstanding reputation in baseball and speed skating with the Central Young Men’s Christian Association – a bastion of “muscular Christianity” – he was drawn into volunteer sports leadership during the “amateur wars” of 1906–9. Sportsmen were bitterly divided over whether athletes should be paid for their efforts. The idea of non-payment (amateurism), which had emerged from the aristocratic Victorian prejudice against wage labourers, reinforced the ideal of heroic, selfless play that attracted the middle class to sports, and it kept costs down.
    • These differences made the Toronto-based Canadian Amateur Athletic Union, the association of clubs which attempted to regulate the main sports, ungovernable. Norton Crow was an ardent, bedrock amateur. As secretary of the CAAU, he had quickly become a leader of the amateurs’ campaign. Crow was convinced that amateur sport could instil in participants a disciplined sense of citizenship and a love of Canadian institutions. He set out to take this vision into the Maritimes, Ontario’s hinterland, and the western provinces, where the CAAU had had little influence, and bring the most popular sports under the control of the AAUC. In addition to stepping up its efforts to send strong teams to Olympic and other international competitions, he would help it restore sports activity throughout Canada after World War I. When, as a result of a western lobby, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association was formed in 1914 to confront professionalism, Crow, the disciple of amateurism, was chosen as its first secretary.
    • Unfortunately, Norton Crow saw few of these projects come to fruition. In 1925, pressed by his new duties as principal clerk of the treasury, enervated by his father’s sudden death during the inaugural service of the United Church of Canada, and in failing cardiovascular health, he suddenly retired from the AAUC. He died four years later, just 51. In 1932 the AAUC created the Norton Crow Memorial Award for the amateur athlete of the year; it continues to be given, to the outstanding male athlete, at the Canadian Sports Awards. Crow’s initiatives and thinking can be readily recognized in the Commonwealth Games (begun in 1930) and the Canada Games (1967), and in today’s sports sciences and the national coaching certification program.
  • Third Great Grandson of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=1702
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/275284800/norton-hervey-crow