Promising Physical Activity Inclusion Practices for Chinese Immigrant ...

Quest, 2011, 63, 135-147 © 2011 The National Academy of Kinesiology

Promising Physical Activity Inclusion Practices for Chinese Immigrant Women in Vancouver, Canada Wendy Frisby Even though the number of immigrants coming to Canada continues to rise (Statistics Canada, 2010) and there is some evidence to suggest that participation in community sport and recreation can ease the stress associated with settlement (Stodolska & Alexandris 2004), our previous research has shown there is little or no information sharing about promising inclusion practices between local, provincial, and federal sport and recreation policy makers in Canada (Thibault, Frisby, & Taylor, 2009). To begin to fill this void, interviews were conducted with 50 Chinese immigrant women, who represent the largest immigrant group in British Columbia, 11 staff from the City of Vancouver, and 5 staff from an immigration service agency called S.U.C.C.E.S.S. A Multiculturalism, Sport, and Physical Activity Workshop was subsequently held so study participants could come together to discuss promising physical activity inclusion practices for newcomers. The practices discussed here include: citizen engagement to promote mutual learning and policy/program development; working from a broader social ecological framework; improving the city’s leisure access policy; and enhancing community partnerships to facilitate cross-cultural connections.

When immigrants with different histories, cultures, and needs arrive in global cities, their presence disrupts taken-for-granted categories of social life and urban space, as they struggle to meet the conditions for belonging in their adoptive society. It requires the active construction of new ways of living together, new forms of spatial and social belonging. (Sandercock, 2004, p. 154) This quotation touches on key themes addressed in this paper—the implications of changing demographics in many cities and the need for change in local arrangements, including how physical activity is offered by local government, to accommodate the dramatic population shifts that are occurring. As kinesiology graduates play a major role in the leadership of urban physical activity programs and policy development, this topic is very relevant to students and those responsible for their education. And while research related to multiculturalism or ethnic

Frisby (NAK International Fellow) is with the School of Human Kinetics and the Centre for Sport and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. This is the C. Lynn Vendien International Lecture. 135

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diversity and sport or physical activityi has been done in different countries for decades, it does not appear that this topic is being adequately addressed in either postsecondary education or at various levels of government responsible for sport, health, or immigration. Therefore, there is a need to continually draw attention to the issues involved through research with different cultural groups, along with the public officials and community partners who do or should work with them. I will first briefly discuss how changing demography is tied to federal multiculturalism policy in Canada to provide the context for the study that my colleaguesii and I conducted with recent immigrant Chinese women, an immigrant service agency called S.U.C.C.E.S.S., and recreation staff in the city of Vancouver. I then discuss social inclusion theory as it relates to multiculturalism. Next, the feminist participatory action research (FPAR) approach we undertook is described, followed by a summary of some of the promising practices that study participants agreed would foster newcomer inclusion. I take a sociology of organizations approach where I am interested in how organizational policies, structures, and practices can be changed to alleviate social inequalities. This project builds on previous research we have done with women and youth living in poverty, as recent immigrants were under-represented in those earlier studies (Frisby, Alexander, Taylor, Tirone, Watson, Harvey et al., 2005; Frisby, Reid & Ponic, 2007). For this paper, I focus on adult female Chinese newcomers and service providers for a variety of reasons. First, the majority of sport inclusion efforts have targeted youth and children, which while vitally important, overlook the aging of the Canadian population and the associated rise in health care costs that are due, in part, to sedentary lifestyles (Donnelly & Coakley, 2002; Tremblay, Bryan, Perez, Ardern, & Katzmarzyk, 2006). Second, research from the Canadian Community Health Survey (Ali, McDermott, & Gravel, 2004; Tremblay et al., 2006) and an earlier National Population Health Survey (Chen, Ng, & Wilkins, 1996) has consistently shown a pattern of lower levels of physical activity done in leisure time by immigrants compared with nonimmigrants, and a decline in immigrant health status as they undergo socioeconomic, political, and cultural transitions. In addition, female immigrants in all ethnic groups are less physically active than male immigrants (Lee, 2005), pointing to the importance of taking gender into account. To illustrate, Chinese-born women in Taylor and Toohey’s (1999) study in Australia frequently explained that they had no time to participate due to family commitments and some family members felt that sport was an inappropriate activity for them. Other immigrant women pointed to fears of racism and safety given previous experiences in organized physical activity. It is also important to focus on sport providers because those interviewed in Taylor and Toohey’s (1999) study blamed immigrant women’s cultures for their ‘perceived’ lack of interest and claimed that some minority women simply found sport to be too masculine and therefore unappealing. Not surprisingly then, very few Australian sport organizations had policies and programs in place that catered to females from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and felt this was justified because of ‘a lack of demand.’ In addition, Allison and Hibbler (2004) found that negative attitudes and stereotypes held by some public recreation management and staff created barriers to serving ethnic minority populations in American cities, pointing to the need for changes in ways local governments operate. However, organizational change is unlikely to occur when sport and physical activity program organizers blame immigrant cultures for lower levels of

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participation, thus reinforcing an assimilationist view that if newcomers want to participate, they should seek out opportunities themselves and adopt the activities already offered. This view ignores the realities that immigrants are often unfamiliar with western policies and approaches to physical activity program delivery; they may or may not speak Canada’s official languages of English or French; and they often encounter other significant obstacles to participation that are tied to gender, ethnicity, social class, and a number of other factors. In addition to the well-known benefits of improved health, increased physical activity participation, especially when it is accompanied by a citizen engagement approach (Taylor & Frisby, 2010), could provide opportunities for increased intercultural communication and understanding; reduced instances of racism and other forms of discrimination, exclusion, and resentment; and the diversification and enrichment of Canada’s physical culture (Doherty & Taylor, 2007; Donnelly & Nakamura, 2009). If the appropriate mechanisms are not in place, however, public physical activity spaces can exacerbate exclusion, divisions, racism, and intercultural tensions (Elling & Claringbould, 2005; Muller, van Zoonen, & de Roode, 2008; Tirone, 2000). This was clearly evident in Millington, Vertinsky, Boyle and Wilson’s (2008) paper where they reported that Chinese boys were regularly bullied by white male students during physical education classes in a Vancouver high school, thereby reinforcing longstanding hierarchies based on race and masculinity.

Chinese Immigration and Multiculturalism Policy in Canada Most western nations today are multicultural—none more so than Canada—and this diversity is expected to increase with 60% of Vancouver and Toronto predicted to be what Canada officially calls ‘visible minority’ over the next two decades (Statistics Canada, 2010). The ‘visible minority’ label privileges the whiteness of early English/French settlers and is no longer meaningful in many cases as ‘minorities’ are increasingly becoming ‘majorities’ in Canadian neighborhoods (Graham & Phillips, 2007). Vancouver and Toronto currently have a higher percentage of foreign-born residents than most other immigrant gateway cities in the world, making them hubs of global citizenry (Wong, 2004). According to Wong (2004, pp. 158–159), the multicultural social planner for the City of Vancouver, 46% of the city’s population is immigrant with two-thirds of them originating from Asia. In addition, English is the mother tongue of less than half of Vancouver’s population, and there is an increasing wage gap between immigrants and nonimmigrants, reflecting the racialization of poverty. The largest nonwhite population in Vancouver is Chinese who account for over 60% of all immigrants. Research has shown that noneconomic reasons such as the environment and educational opportunities are the primary motivations for Chinese to move to Canada (Guo & DeVoretz, 2006). Even though this is a well-educated group, the devaluation of their educational qualifications and labor market experience, and language are frequently cited as barriers faced during settlement. A brief historical account of Canada’s policy toward Chinese immigration reveals a troubling past of antiorientalism. The first male Chinese immigrants arrived in Canada in the 1800s in search of gold and employment with the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (Guo & DeVoretz, 2006). Once the railway was

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completed, they were no longer welcomed and a ‘head tax’ of $500 (CAN) was imposed when their nation building efforts were no longer needed—an exceedingly exorbitant sum in 1903. This was followed by the Chinese Immigration Act in 1923, which virtually prohibited Chinese immigration into Canada until its repeal in 1947 (Guo & DeVoretz, 2006). By the mid 1960s skilled labor was required in Canada once more, so a point system was introduced whereby the selection of immigrants was based on their education, skills, and resources rather than on their racial and religious backgrounds. Despite the educational and economic success of contemporary Chinese-Canadians, Li (1998) argues that they are still seen by many as being racially distinct. It is by creating contemporary anxieties over territorial threats by Chinese and other Asian immigrants, that Anglo-European dominance is maintained which challenges symbolic images of Canada as a harmonious multicultural mosaic (Deer, 2006). Unlike the ‘melting pot’ approach in the United States where it is assumed that prolonged contact between subcultural groups will lead to eventual assimilation and the adoption of the dominant culture’s values, norms, and customs (Allison, 1982), multiculturalism rests on the long standing image of Canada as a nation where each ethnic or racial group can preserve its identity with the help of government policy (Ryan, 2010). The Multiculturalism Act that was introduced in 1971 had four main objectives: i) to support all of Canada’s cultures, ii) to assist members of all cultural groups to overcome barriers to full participation in Canadian society, iii) to promote creative encounters and interchanges, and iv) to assist immigrants in acquiring at least one of Canada’s two official languages (Ryan, 2010). In the early 1970s, immigrants of non-European decent made up just 3.2% of Canada’s population. Changing demographics led to the 1988 Multiculturalism Act which sought to address race relations and inequality of opportunity. The multiculturalism policies have been controversial as some perceive them as threatening to the country’s bilingual heritage, drawing attention away from racism and Aboriginal rights, creating divisions by encouraging separate ethnic enclaves, and since 9/11, compromising national security (Bissoondath, 2002; Ryan, 2010). Others see cultural diversity as our most cherished aspect because it is thought to create more interesting and lively communities, to promote equality and a sense of belonging in an increasingly global world, and to preserve freedom of individual choice (Adams, 2003). Even though neither nations nor cultures are monolithic, newcomers from around the world are imagined to contribute to, and take advantage of, a ‘Canadian way of life,’ without having to cast off or hide their own cultures (Anderson, 1991; Ryan, 2010). It is thought that this can best be achieved when mutual learning is fostered whereby new comers learn about Canadian traditions and Canadian-born residents learn about new comer cultures, but this is not being facilitated very well in either direction (Sandercock, 2004). At the same time, Donnelly and Nakamura (2006, p. 8) contend that All sports except indigenous sport are immigrant, so extreme caution ought to be employed with regard to assertions that there is a fixed suite of ‘Canadian sports’ to which immigrants and Canadians should aspire for the purposes of social and cultural integration. In addition, the western values underpinning multicultural policy are not always shared, as individualization for example, a key feature of neoliberalism,


goes against the collective practice of exercise that has historically been done in China to prepare citizens for productive economic labor, a practice that may be making a resurgence (Glionna, 2010). Responsibility for multiculturalism rests with the federal government, but as Sandercock (2004) argues, it is primarily lived and experienced locally because immigrants to Canada, as in other countries, overwhelmingly settle in the largest cities. This creates several challenges and opportunities for local governments as they are not legally responsible for immigrant settlement. In addition, a survey conducted by the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute revealed that only 17% of Canadian local governments agreed that physical activity is a high priority issue (Cameron, Craig, & Paolin, 2004). Recent cuts to local government funding may have reduced their staff’s ability to innovate, but there are compelling reasons for cities to accommodate changes in the make-up of its citizenry, as alluded to earlier (Wallace & Frisken, 2004). This raises questions about a city’s role in providing services for newcomers, including physical activity. What changes in policies and practices are needed to serve an increasingly diverse population? What citizen engagement strategies are needed to promote cross-cultural understandings? Do local public institutions reflect the diversity of the communities they serve? What communication tools are needed for outreach that go beyond conventional methods? What new partnerships are needed to link diverse groups and individuals in new ways? While this paper cannot address all of these questions, sharing data from recent immigrant Chinese women and the local government and immigration agency staff who work with them and their families in one major settlement city, represents a starting point for understanding ‘promising’ inclusion practices from their perspectives.

Social Inclusion of Newcomers For immigrants and refugees, social inclusion would be represented by the realization of full and equal participation in the economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions of life in their new country (Omidvar & Richmond, 2005, p. 155). Upon arrival, many newcomers face considerable stress associated with anxieties over security, housing, employment, and a loss of familiar ways of doing things. When social inclusion theory is considered in relation to multiculturalism policy, it takes on a number of different meanings. For some, it means the assimilation of minority groups into the dominant culture which can result in a process of deculturation (Donnelly & Nakamura, 2009). For others, it means integration or retaining individual freedoms while learning about one’s new home country so one can better function within it. Shallow multiculturalism, is a term Sandercock (2004) has used to describe government spending on cultural festivals, like those sometimes seen at sporting events, where culture is featured as an object for display without addressing the real challenges involved in immigration (Bissoondath, 2002). In contrast, rich multiculturalism requires political and policy support to encourage meaningful adjustment, intercultural exchange, and collaboration (Sandercock, 2004). For DeSensi (1995, p. 36), valuing diversity is another form of inclusion that means going beyond the “ethnocentric stages that include the denial of, defence against, and minimization of difference” to “ethnorelative stages that include the acceptance of, adaptation to, and integration of difference.” The latter stage requires

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an authentic internalization of multicultural frames of reference. It is this ambiguity around the meanings of social inclusion in relation to multiculturalism that creates confusion about how to take action. Not surprisingly then, there is also a gap in research about promising inclusion practices for immigrant populations. In a review of physical activity interventions (Kahn, Ramsey, Brownson, Heath, Howze, & Powell, 2002), programs that effectively dealt with a lack of information, a lack of social support, and enhanced safety and convenience were deemed to be the most effective, but the authors noted they found very few interventions designed specifically with or for ethnic minority groups. In a review of international programs and ‘best practices’ related to multiculturalism and sport across Canada that was commissioned by Canadian Heritage, Donnelly and Nakamura (2006) uncovered a number of problems including assumptions that existing programs and approaches were sufficient, assumptions that opportunities for interaction would automatically lead to social inclusion, and a failure to evaluate whether the sport inclusion programs were accomplishing what they were set out to do. Given the lack of research and because the relationships between social inclusion, sport/physical activity, and multiculturalism remain complex and very unclear, I refer to ‘promising practices’ instead of ‘best practices.’ The international examples Donnelly and Nakamura (2006) located were aimed at youth and included Finland’s “Will You Play with Me?”—a program that introduces Finnish sports to immigrants, introduces immigrant sports to Finns, and encourages youth to participate together. Donnelly and Nakamura (2006) also pointed to a program developed by the City of Toronto Parks and Recreation Department that implemented programs targeting particular ethnic groups, including Portuguese and Muslim women, which also involved training them as coaches and officials so they could assume leadership positions. The City of Vancouver is known as being an innovator for a series of policy responses to its diverse population, including the hiring of multicultural planners and the publication of a Newcomers’ Guide to the City of Vancouver that is available in five languages (Wong, 2004). It funds over 20 community centers and neighborhood houses where a diversity of people come together to participate in everyday activities related to physical activity, culture, and the arts. The Collingwood Neighborhood House, for example, reaches over 60% of residents who are in total only 10% English speaking as their first language, over 40% Chinese, with growing numbers of Filipino, South Asian, and Aboriginal residents (Sandercock, 2004). Its mission is to promote interculturalism which is envisioned as providing space to connect people by engaging in common activities. Some of Collingwood’s promising practices include having culturally diverse staff, a leadership training institute that targets under-represented groups, the regular offering of antiracism workshops, and encouraging residents to be researchers about issues facing their own community (Sandercock, 2004). What is less well understood is how staff and members of the community assess and respond to these various initiatives.

A Note on Methods According to Lee (2005, p. 449), “participatory research may prove to be one of the most significant contributions to our understanding of physical activity in minority populations.” The key assumption underlying this approach is that the mutual


learning that occurs when community members, service providers, and sometimes researchers are brought together results in the coproduction of knowledge that leads to more relevant and appropriate health promotion policies and interventions (Bryant, 2002). As we have previously reported, we have operated from a feminist approach to participatory action research for several years (Frisby, Reid, Millar, & Hoeber, 2005; Frisby, Reid & Ponic, 2007). Feminist means that we focus on gender as it intersects with other axis of oppression (e.g., race, ethnicity, social class) to more fully understand the underlying mechanisms of social inequality because this is sometimes overlooked in other participatory research (Frisby, Maguire, & Reid, 2009; Reid & Frisby, 2008). In our study, the participatory dimension involved bringing the immigrant Chinese women, local government staff, provincial and federal sport policy makers, and community partners together with the researchers for a two-day Multiculturalism, Sport, and Physical Activity Workshop to share and discuss the results from interviews conducted earlier (see Creese, Huang, Frisby, & Ngene-Kamere, in press, for a discussion of the methodological challenges involved). The workshop was an effective way of promoting cross-cultural communication and identifying action strategies, including a discussion of promising inclusion practices that are reported upon in this paper. Before the workshop, 50 recent immigrant Chinese women (< than 10 years in Canada) had previously been interviewed in their choice of Mandarin, Cantonese, or English about the role of public physical activity in their settlement. Half were nonparticipants who were recruited through S.U.C.C.E.S.S., an immigrant services agency, the other half were participants who were recruited from three community centers in Vancouver neighborhoods that varied in socioeconomic status. Thirty eight percent of the women reported annual household incomes of less than $20K (CAN), 46% between $20–50K, and 12% over $50K. For the purposes of this paper, I also drew upon interviews and workshop discussions with 11 staff from the City of Vancouver and 5 staff from S.U.C.C.E.S.S. to gain their perspectives on the challenges and possibilities for newcomer inclusion.iii

Learning From the Local Many suggestions were provided by the newcomer women and staff from S.U.C.C.E.S.S. and the City, but I will only have time to discuss four of the main inclusion strategies here. These include: citizen engagement to promote mutual learning and policy/program development, working from a broader social ecological framework, improving the leisure access policy, and enhancing community partnerships to facilitate cross-cultural connections. 1) Citizen engagement to promote two-way learning and policy/program development. Because recent immigrant Chinese women and local government staff had the opportunity to talk to one another with the help of translators for two days, we saw the Multiculturalism, Sport, and Physical Activity Workshop as an effective strategy for promoting dialogue about meanings of physical activity, sport, and exercise along with gaining a better understanding of the similarities and differences in policies and program delivery in different cultures. To illustrate, this study took place just before the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games and most of the women were unfamiliar with the Euro-

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centric Olympic Winter sports, and as a result, felt excluded from the excitement being generated in the city. They expressed interest in taking facility tours and receiving instruction in Mandarin or Cantonese about some of these winter sports so they would be more knowledgeable about them. The women were unfamiliar with how community physical activity programs were offered in Canada when they first arrived, and were uncomfortable leaving their children so soon after coming to the new country to participate in the programs. Many also initially wanted to undertake activities with their families and other Chinese people to increase comfort levels in their new surroundings. As one woman explained though a translator: “Among what I used to do, there are only one or two kinds of activities I found available here. Other things like ski or skating, I had never done before, so I couldn’t do them, so this reduced my chance to do more activities.” Even though our research team was critical of the Olympics because of costs and elitism, city staff admitted that they could have build upon the interest some immigrant women expressed in the Games as a way of learning from them or introducing them to local government services. According to Parry (2006), the core values of Olympism include mutual understanding, antidiscrimination, education through sport, and multiculturalism, but there are few examples of these values being put into practice in meaningful ways at the local level. Staff from S.U.C.C.E.S.S., the immigrant service agency, expressed surprise in the interest the women showed in being physically active because they thought it was much less of a priority given the pressures immigrants face to find housing and employment. While these remain priorities, this does not mean that public physical activity has no role to play in settlement. Not only did the women see physical activity as contributing to their health, they also highlighted the importance of making social connections in their neighborhoods, as illustrated in the following quotation which was typical of comments made during the interviews and workshop: “I feel that on the one hand, doing sport is good for health and on the other hand, it increases the chance for communication with others to share information to help us adjust.” 2) Working from a broader social ecological framework. A social ecological framework (Lee, 2005) focuses not only on personal factors, but also on intrapersonal relationships, organizational and community arrangements, and the social construction of the broader social-cultural environment to avoid simplistic solutions that miss the mark. While workshop participants did not refer to such a framework directly, the discussions tapped into these different dimensions. For example, a considerable amount of time was spent talking about the stereotypes that are sometimes made, for example, that all Chinese enjoy badminton, table tennis, and Tai Chi, leading to assumptions that if these activities are offered, then their interests are fully addressed. While some of the women were interested in these activities, others were not. Working from a broader framework illustrated how the Chinese women were not a homogeneous group as they differed in terms of homeland geography,


social class, dialect spoken, age, family situation, health status, and so on (Creese et al., in press). It was by learning more about their histories, situations, interests, and the political system in different regions of China that staff began to think beyond simplistic solutions to program design. At the same time, this framework was helpful in confirming that some of the City’s strategies were working and need to be continued. As one local government staff explained: “We have front line staff and instructors who speak and teach in Cantonese and Mandarin. It is really important as is trying to have our staff representative of the various ethnic groups in our neighbourhoods.” 3) Improving the city’s leisure access policy. Most of the immigrant Chinese women were unaware of the City’s Leisure Access Policy that offers subsidies for low income families. Once they learned about it from local government staff at the workshop, it was clear there were several problems with it. First, the policy is available only in English. In addition, it requires a bureaucratic process of ‘proving poverty’ by having a government department verify low income which many would find embarrassing. It is based on household income so if different generations of the same family are living together; their combined income may make them ineligible. The immigrant women explained that a more streamlined process that provided subsidies or free passes made available through immigration services (e.g., S.U.C.C.E.S.S.) and Chinese cultural associations, especially in the first year, would facilitate their participation. Yet, Omidvar and Richmond (2005) add that settlement support is often aimed only at the initial stages of adaption, even though the process of settlement often continues throughout the life of a newcomer, so continued support should be considered. The current policy does take social class into account but is not tied in any way to multiculturalism, which is surprising given the changing demography of Vancouver. Local government staff are currently undertaking a review of the Leisure Access Policy and expressed appreciation in receiving the input from the Chinese women. 4) Enhancing community partnerships to facilitate cross-cultural connections. The Chinese immigrant women reported that immigrant services and Chinese cultural groups are the first organizations they come in contact with upon arrival. While the City has thousands of community partnerships, staff realized that links to recent immigrants could be enhanced by improving collaborative efforts with partners. Staff from S.U.C.C.E.S.S. noted that while they had city program brochures available in the waiting area of their office, the brochures were in English, and a multilingual video providing visual examples of public physical activity could be shown instead. Other ideas for partnering to improve outreach efforts were also discussed. The women perceived the community partners as a form of social support, thereby increasing their trust that taking part in recommended activities would be a valuable and positive experience. When this does occur, it is word of mouth communication that will become an effective marketing strategy.

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Concluding Thoughts As Omidvar and Richmond (2005, p. 155) argue, “the issue of immigrant settlement is evolving as one of the most important questions of public policy in Canada” yet many immigrants express “frustration, even despair, at the barriers they encounter to full participation in all domains of Canadian life.” The Multiculturalism, Sport, and Physical Activity Workshop represented only a small starting point for “the active construction of new ways of living together” (Sandercock, 2004, p. 154), but whether the ideas for social inclusion will filter up and be acted upon by those in positions of power remains to be seen. This represents a danger in the citizen engagement approach because people’s expectations may be raised only to have them dashed if there is no follow through. Tracking local government initiatives that are designed to promote organizational change and intercultural communication will be important in identifying the factors that contribute to or hinder taking action. Yet, it is the process of generating new ideas collectively that can be as important as the final outcomes achieved (Ponic & Frisby, in press). Hearing directly from recent immigrants opens up possibilities for mutual learning, but it must be remembered that the few who become involved in participatory research do not speak for all members of their own diverse cultural group. Expanding opportunities for these types of forums is needed to determine if support for the promising practices reported upon here are more wide spread. Not enough is known about the experiences of inclusion and exclusion through local physical activity for women, men, and children from different cultural backgrounds, so much more research needs to be done. This discussion raises questions for kinesiology programs and how we can expose students to meaningful cross-cultural learning opportunities given the multicultural cities that many of them will go out to work in. As such, students are an important bridge to society. In 1995, DeSensi wrote that “it is imperative to help students understand how knowledge is constructed; how perspectives, biases, and assumptions are formed; and most importantly, how race, ethnicity, social class, gender and physical ability affect the creation of knowledge” (p. 41). This will be a difficult task if kinesiology instructors themselves have had minimal interaction with diverse populations (Burden, Hodge, O’Bryant, & Harrison, 2005). Almost two decades later, we must seriously ask whether DeSensi’s call has been adequately taken up and, if not, how to best go about it. Acknowledgments We gratefully acknowledge the funding received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for this study.

Notes i It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss differences in terms such as multiculturalism, cultural diversity, ethnic diversity, or sport, physical activity, and exercise, especially when these terms may have very different meanings across cultures. I have attempted to use the terms as described by the authors and the study participants cited.


ii I would like to acknowledge the contribution of the 83 study participants and colleagues Kathryn

Cureton, Xin Huang, Hui-Ling Lin, Janna Taylor, Lucie Thibault, Nicolien van Luijk, and Sheena Yang who were involved in the project, but I acknowledge that the interpretation presented here is my own. I appreciate the comments that Lucie Thibault made on earlier drafts of this paper. Ten provincial and seven federal sport policy makers were also interviewed and took part in the workshop but those data are not reported here.

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