Bruce Kidd, former Olympian, takes the helm of Hart House
Published: April 24, 2012
Bruce Kidd was just a gangly 15-year-old Toronto high school student when he first frequented Hart House in 1958. Back then, he was a high school track star, training with the prestigious University of Toronto track and field team, running laps on the upper-level wooden oval with elite athletes three and four years his senior.
Half a century later, the former Olympian is back in his comfort zone, managing one of U of T’s most storied athletic and cultural haunts. Last week, he was named Warden of Hart House, the 11th person to serve in that capacity in the institution’s 93-year history.
Kidd, who has won international accolades for his dedication to sport as an athlete and administrator and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2004, says his early experiences at Hart House quite literally changed his life.
“It’s not only a home to me – you know, where I spent my formative years – but it’s also a place where I shaped an ambition that became a life’s trajectory,” he says. “Education about the body, about life and the world, through sport, but also the visual and performing arts and social justice – all of these themes, and the integration of these themes, were what I learned first and foremost at Hart House.”
Already the product of globally aware parents who were engaged in education and social justice campaigns, Kidd found himself immersed in a culture that unabashedly celebrated the pursuit of knowledge, ambition and success.
His fellow runners took him under wing, introducing him to intellectual and cultural pastimes at Hart House and even taking him on field trips for their classes to expose him to the academic opportunities at the University. These early experiences would have a lasting impact.
“When I went to Malvern, which was a great high school, people plotted and schemed about beating Parkdale, or Lawrence or North Toronto,” he said. “When I came to UofT, people plotted and schemed about beating the world. That in a nutshell is what I picked up.”
His homecoming to Hart House comes on the heels of a stellar career as an athlete, student, academic and administrator – almost all at the University of Toronto, and despite the best efforts of Harvard University to steal him away for his undergraduate years.
Currently a professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, Kidd is the past dean of the faculty. He has an undergraduate degree in political economy from the University of Toronto, a Masters in education from the University of Chicago and a Masters and PhD in History from York University. He has authored or edited 10 books and hundreds of articles, papers, lectures, plays and scripts on sports and culture.
In his service to Hart House, he has sat on review and advisory committees in the past and been a member of the Hart House Board of Stewards. Most recently, he served as Interim Warden.
As a long-distance competitor in the 1960s, Kidd won virtually every award and recognition available to an elite Canadian athlete. A member of U of T’s track and field team beginning in 1958, he won 18 national senior championships in Canada, the United States and Britain. He was a gold and bronze medallist at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games and was a member of the Canadian Olympic team at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, competing in the 5,000-metre and 10,000-metre races.
In the Canadian and international sports arena, he is a sought-after resource, serving as chair to the Commonwealth Advisory Body on Sport and the Maple Leaf Sport and Entertainment Team Up Foundation. He is also a member of the selection committee for the postgraduate research grant program for the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Studies Centre.
As the new Warden of Hart House, Kidd will spend the next four years charting the future of U of T’s sports and cultural hub to, in his words, “draw upon the great traditions of Hart House and strengthen them.”
He wants to strengthen Hart House’s learning communities by making them more integrated and inclusive, and to develop closer programming linkages to faculties in the areas of music, theatre and athletics. Outreach to new constituencies is a priority, as is promoting Hart House as a social agent connecting U of T to the City.
He hopes to re-energize a student body, promoting fitness amongst a generation of students that for the first time in history is projected to have a shorter life-span than their parents. And, he has an almost 100-year-old building that requires a “major green retrofit” to sustain it for the next 100 years.
All of these priorities afford Kidd the opportunity to strengthen and revitalize an iconic U of T hub of activity that is not only a place of comfort for the former Olympian, but also a place that promotes all of his passions. It couldn’t be a better fit.
“The integration of sport and the visual, literary and performing arts, politics and social justice – this is where I’m most at home.”
Bruce Kidd is the recipient of numerous awards and honours over the course of his athletic and academic career:
• Olympic competitor in 3,000 metres and 5,000 metres in 1964 Tokyo Olympics
• Lou Marsh Trophy in 1961
• Canadian Press, Athlete of the Year, in 1961 and 1962
• Elected twice – as an athlete in 1966 and a builder in 1994 – to the Canadian Olympic Sports Hall of Fame
• Named to Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1968
• Founding chair of the Olympic Academy of Canada (1983-1993)
• Honoured in 1985 by the United Nations Committee Against Apartheid with a special citation for "his valuable contribution as a sports person to the campaign for the elimination of apartheid and the establishment of a non- racial and democratic society in South Africa."
• Selected to the University of Toronto Sports Hall of Fame in 1988.
• Education and Sport Award, the International Olympic Committee, in 2001.
• Officer of the Order of Canada in 2004
• Lecturer at the International Olympic Academy
• Named honorary member of the Canadian Olympic Committee
• Holds an honorary doctor of laws from Dalhousie University
