Long before there was a robust Varsity Blues women’s program, when Hart House was an old boys club and women had to travel to Yonge Street to take their phys ed classes, there was Helen Gurney, working tirelessly to make physical education and physical activity more accessible for girls and women. The dear friend of the Faculty and University College alumna passed away at her home on October 28, 2017 at the age of 99 years after a lifetime of advocating, educating and waving the blue and white.
“There was so much to admire about Helen,” Professor Bruce Kidd recalls. “She fought for opportunities for girls and women in physical education and sports throughout her life, during the discouraging days of the conservative 1940s and 1950s and the quite different feminist activism of the 1960s and 1970s, with a fierce determination, shrewd sense of strategy and a gracious public style, always with a smile. I learned a lot from her about how to make change when the odds seemed stacked against you, as they so often were with her.”
During her undergrad years, Gurney competed in interfaculty swimming and basketball. This passion for sport fueled her decades-long career as a physical education teacher, department head and eventually to the role of provincial inspector in Physical and Health Education. It was during those years as an inspector that she met fellow alumna and educator Viuu Kanep. Years later, Kanep befriended Gurney and was often at her side for Blues games and other athletic events. Kanep admired Helen’s career.
Gurney was a strong advocate of getting more women coaching women’s teams at all levels and to serve as referees and officials and as leaders in the sport communities—an ideal that university and other sports organizations are still working towards. “Guys coached everything,” Kanep recalls. “It was a man’s world! When she worked for the ministry, she would always talk about these issues in particular when it came to budgets.”
Gurney chronicled some of her peers and early women pioneers of sport at U of T in her book, “A Century to Remember: The Story of Women’s Sports at University of Toronto.” Its pages are filled with the stories of the earliest struggles for U of T women to participate in sport in any capacity, right up until the late 20th century when women were leading the charge in Varsity sport. Viiu says was her friend was “at the forefront of the conversations, strong in her ideas and logical in her reasoning.”
The world of sport, for women and girls in particular, lost a dear friend and ally in Gurney’s passing. But her legacy will live on, thanks to the trails she blazed for the countless educators, coaches, athletes and friends who have followed in her footsteps.