'Whistler's Father': The Life and Times of Andrew Sidney Dawes in Canadian Post-World War II Olympic Affairs (Biography‪)‬

Since its first appearance in the indifferently organized Olympic Games of 1904 (which followed poorly organized Games in Paris in 1900, an unfortunate combination which led to the hastily but better organized 1906 intercalated Games in Athens), Canada has been a regular participant, showing occasional sparkle in the Summer Games and considerable muscle in the Olympic Winter Games. Until the World War I the organization of sport in Canada evolved from its trappings inherited from the founding British military traditions. Following the War this tradition was slowly eroded, effecting a transition influenced greatly by geographical and cultural proximity to its southern neighbor--the United States. A central figure in this transition was Andrew Sidney Dawes, a decorated World War I officer and corporate leader from Montreal, who was first recruited into sport at the national level by the skiing federation, later by the Canadian Olympic community at large, and finally by the International Olympic Committee, on which he served for more than twenty years. Dawes was born in Lachine, Quebec on December 5, 1888, son of Presbyterians James Powley Dawes and Gertrude J. Brock. The family was financially well-off, thanks to his grandfather, who founded Dawes Brewery, one of the major breweries in the Montreal area. (1) He would have been less than a year old when Pierre de Coubertin toured the Eastern United States, Toronto (University of Toronto) Montreal (McGill University and l'Universite de Montreal) and Quebec (Laval University) in the late summer and fall of 1889 in search of educational and sport models. This was an initiative that would culminate in the 1894 Congress at the Sorbonne in Paris and the establishment of the International Olympic Committee, of which Dawes would become a member in his fifty-ninth year.