We are excited to announce the release of Understanding the Active Economy and Emerging Research on the Value of Sports, Recreation, and Wellness, with our publishing partner IGI Global.
Book Summary
The active economy incorporates several disciplines that include sport performance, sport business, recreation, tourism, physical activity, urban planning, leisure, and health and wellness, among others. From an academic and policy perspective, these disciplines are typically viewed as distinct, with only limited spillover, and consequently, limited research explores the interaction between them. However, each individual sector can be studied as interdependent rather than autonomous. By viewing the various sectors as part of a complex active ecosystem, policymakers and practitioners are better positioned to shape broad opportunities while maximizing the community value of sports, recreation, and wellness.
Understanding the Active Economy and Emerging Research on the Value of Sports, Recreation, and Wellness provides a new view on the fields of sport, recreation, and health and wellness by exploring the interaction between these traditional separate disciplines. It includes sub-groups of the active economy such as health and wellness, active apparel and accessories, active equipment and sports betting but also ties in sub-groups from the ancillary sector such as tourism, design and infrastructure, media and content, and professional services. This book is intended for professionals, educators, and researchers working in the fields of sports, recreation, and health and wellness, as well as economists, executives, managers, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in how sports, recreation, and wellness operate in the active economy.
FORWARD by Bret Hart
I have come to realize that there are so many things that shape a man throughout his lifetime. When one deciphers the true meaning of the active economy and all that it entails, I reflect on the many things that set me on my path. My story is not so complicated really, I was built from scratch as an athlete and fully designed to embrace all the things I was steered into. I learned from the young age of five what media was and what it was like to be even somewhat famous on a local level. I learned professionalism from my surroundings. My parents were running their pro wrestling business, and I eventually learned to appreciate the significance of taking a family picture with boxing champion Rocky Marciano.
Over my life I learned of the commitment one needs to strive to the top of any field. The importance of training – getting stronger, fitter, faster, improvising, and improving my skills so that I could climb to the top of the pro wrestling industry. Watching Stampeder games and observing how they marketed and sold their sport instilled in me to train hard, to build myself up, and to be that athlete, that physical machine to reach the top. I learned from TV and newspapers how important it was to have a plan to sell myself if I wanted to be an athlete.
Any illusions I had that my lifetime of amateur wrestling would be similar to pro wrestling was gone by the time I was a teen, but I still benefitted from my lifetime of preparation for the path ahead. Everything is so intricately braided together; the media, the commentator, the cameraman, the writer of the wrestling programs I once sold. The manufacturing or selling of one’s industry, the outfits, designs of masks, capes, robes, even the classy detail of the wrestling belt all established a belief in what worked and what didn’t. Not to mention the action figures, cards, magazines, posters, DVDs, and everything else marketed today. Whether watching my dad’s wrestling or a Calgary Stampeders football game, I had my first initiation into the active economy. I participated all my life competitively reaching for the top. Of what? I wasn’t so sure, but I knew I was on my way.
Bret Hart
World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame, Canada
FORWARD BY Beckie Scott
I was 4 years old when my mom put me on cross-country skis for the first time in my life. As she tells it, I shuffled around the backyard for a minute or two, then, tearfully threw myself to the ground and demanded to know when we were going in for hot chocolate. My dear Mom propped me back up on my feet, dusted off the snow, and told me to “just keep trying.”
Sport was woven into the fabric of our family life and part of my everyday existence. I learned to swim at our local pool and to ski on the local trails with my parents either coaching, volunteering, or cheering from the sidelines. Watching CBC’s Sports Saturday together with my Dad was a never-missed weekend ritual and it was there, watching the incredible displays of human spirit as athletes from around the globe competed against each other in stunning displays of passionate, heroic efforts that a vision of myself as an elite athlete; a competitor; an Olympian, began to crystalize.
Like the vast sweeping skies and rolling prairie landscape surrounding my little Canadian town, sport, to me, represented an opportunity that seemed endlessly full of hope. I reveled in the camaraderie created by the spirit of friendly competition, the community of like-minded individuals I discovered, and the passionate pursuit of excellence. I was driven, determined and full of idealistic aspirations. University, financial security and preparation for life-after-sport were put on pause as I kept my sights trained on a singular goal and channeled all that I had, all that I was, toward it. My dream was to stand on the top step of the Olympic podium with a medal around my neck, and flag around my shoulders. The rigors of ruthless training, the fatigue of endless travel, the obstacles and adversity; all of it manageable and worthwhile, as long as I could somehow, “just keep trying.”
When I was 27 years old, I won a bronze medal at the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. It was the first for Canada in our sport, and a moment of indescribable happiness and pride. Though I was not naive to the risk of doping, I was discomfited to extreme by the sinister possibility lurking in the shadowy corners of my beautiful sport. More than anything I wanted to believe the playing field was level; that the values I had lived, trained and competed with my entire life, were upheld by all.
It was not to be. Days after the race, the gold and silver medalists in my event tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, and I became an unwitting poster child for fairness and clean sport as the courts twisted in the wind for two years before awarding me Olympic gold. Though I was relieved for it to be finally over, the entire experience was a let-down I could not have imagined. Although I had gained a new medal and title, something much deeper and profoundly more meaningful, had been lost.
I write this today because despite that experience, I still believe in sport and the power it holds to bring out the best in humanity. I have seen first-hand how sport can unite and elevate people across the globe in a way unmatched by almost any other human endeavor. In my work now with Indigenous children and youth, I watch as sport transforms individuals, inspires entire communities, teaches – and perhaps most importantly – heals.
At its core, sport is about connection. Connecting us to broader communities, nature, health, the strength of those around us – and the strength that lies within. It is something around which to gather, and yes, in some cases, fight for. If there is one absolute about sport that I know to be true it is this; uniting around the common goal of supporting, sustaining and elevating sport in our communities is perhaps one of the most important missions we can embark on for ourselves; for others, and for future generations to come.
Beckie Scott
Spirit North, Canada & Olympic Gold Medalist, Canada
Chapter Summary
Chapter 1: A New Lens: Envisioning an Active Economy
David J. Finch, Mount Royal University, Canada
David Legg, Mount Royal University, Canada
Norm O’Reilly, University of Guelph, Canada
Jason Ribeiro, Calgary Economic Development, Canada
Trevor Tombe, University of Calgary, Canada
Chapter 2: Mapping the Active Economy to Community Value
David J. Finch, Mount Royal University, Canada
David Legg, Mount Royal University, Canada
Norm O’Reilly, University of Guelph, Canada
Jason Ribeiro, Calgary Economic Development, Canada
Trevor Tombe, University of Calgary, Canada
Chapter 3: Stakeholders in the Active Economy
Mathew Dowling, Anglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom
Becca Leopkey, University of Georgia, United States
Jonathan Robertson, Deakin University, Melbourne
Chapter 4: Organized Sport in an Active Economy
Mary A. Hums, University of Louisville, United States
Chapter 5: Active Recreation in an Active Economy
Brian Torrance, Ever Active Schools, Canada
Chapter 6: Health and Wellness in an Active Economy: An Action Study
Cynthia Watson, VIVO for Healthier Generations, Canada
Tracey Martin, VIVO for Healthier Generations, Canada
Chapter 7: Active Tourism in an Active Economy
Richard Keith Wright, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Geoff Dickson, La Trobe University, Australia
Richard Opara Ajiee, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Chapter 8: Active Technology and Accessories
Jared R. Fletcher, Mount Royal University, Canada
Christy Tomkins-Lane, Mount Royal University, Canada
Chapter 9: Design and Infrastructure in an Active Economy
Chris Dawe, Strategic Healthy Impacts, Canada
Mark Hentze, Retired Architecture Professional, Canada
Chapter 10: The Sport Gaming Nexus: A Paradox in the Active Economy
Mark Dottori, McMaster University, Canada
Alex Sévigny, McMaster University, Canada
Chapter 11: Media and Content in an Active Economy
Cheri L. Bradish, Ryerson University, Canada
Nick Burton, Brock University, Canada