Sport Volunteerism in Canada

Abstract

Given the importance of volunteerism to Canadian sport, and the need for research to understand the characteristics of sport volunteerism, a pilot study was carried out to explore the experiences of volunteers in sport. The study focused on two different sport associations (one individual sport and one team sport) in two majority linguistic localities (one predominantly francophone in Québec and one predominantly anglophone in Ontario). Language is a key element of community membership, and this article pays specific attention to the relationship between language and sport volunteerism in Canada. The results indicate that there are some different patterns of sport volunteering between the two different (official) linguistic communities, and suggest that the experiences of Canadian sport volunteers in relation to linguistic community membership have implications for the recruitment, training, and retention of volunteers in sport, and warrant further research.