Olympic high jumper Eva Dawes traveled at the age of twenty-three to compete in Soviet Russia with a delegation of young Canadian athletes in July 1935. The group was invited and funded by the Workers’ Sport Association of Canada. Subsequently, Dawes was suspended by the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada (AAUC), Ontario branch. She retired from competing, even though she was invited to return to the AAUC to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Instead of doing so, she went with a group of athletes to compete in Barcelona at the “People’s Olympics,” scheduled to be held at the same time of the Berlin Olympics and led by an international coalition of Socialist athletes. She and other team members were suspended from the AAU upon return (Hall, 85).
Hall, Ann M. The Girl and the Game: A History of Women’s Sport in Canada. Toronto: UofT Press, 2002.