Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. Over the summer, mo we're bringing you some of the highlights of our 2025-26 season, which wrapped up in mid-May.
Speaker: We're going to be back with our brand new fall season in September. Our first live radio broadcast will be on September 19th on Vancouver Cooperative Radio CFRO 100.5 FM and streaming live at coopradio.org slash red eye.
Speaker: Podcasts and interviews from that show will be posted the following week. On the podcast today, former Olympian Betty Baxter joins Lorraine Chisholm to talk about her new book, Outspoken, a journey from Olympic athlete to activist. In 2021, Betty Baxter was inducted into the Volleyball BC Hall of Fame.
Speaker: But as a lesbian athlete and coach, the journey to that recognition was far from smooth. Baxter competed 1976 Montreal. helped found Canadian women in sport, became the first woman coach of a national team, and was subsequently fired from that job because of her sexual orientation. She went on to many new roles in advocacy, activism, education, and politics, and was a key force in organizing the 1990 Vancouver Gay Games and cultural celebration.
Speaker: She has now written a memoir, Outspoken, A Journey from Olympic Athlete to Activist, and I'm so pleased to welcome Betty Baxter to Red Eye. Hello, Betty. Hello. Thanks, Lorraine. I really appreciate having a chance to chat.
Speaker: It's a fascinating book, so I really appreciate you joining me. Now, Outspoken recounts your journey as an athlete to the Olympics in Montreal in 1976.
Speaker: Was it hard for you to bring together and interweave all the parts of that Olympic experience in your memoir from the perspective of an elite athlete?
Speaker: Oh, absolutely. In fact, I can start by saying, you know, at one point a family member said, why are you talking about yourself when you were a teenager and in your 20s in the third person?
Speaker: And I said, because I'm not that person, and I had to get some distance so that I could agree to tell the world her story. It's no longer my story. It's not what I live today. But I had to get enough distance that I could introduce the reader So that girl that that was incredibly fanatic about sports and willing to do anything to win. like That's another thing my mother once said when i was a kid and we were watching my brother swim. She says, what is it about my children? They will not stop. They drown rather than not win the swim meet.
Speaker: And so i I think that I had to get some distance on it. But again, you have to pick stories, what goes in, what comes out. And it took me a long time to find the story arc. To be honest, I thought at first I was writing a travel memoir because I'd gone so many places and they were all fascinating and I i loved all that travel.
Speaker: But it just kept coming back that who was I and why was i going there? And the travel was actually secondary. i mean, it was still wonderful, but the travel was secondary because ah the core was, you know, who was this kid that was so desperate to be the best and work the hardest and get to the top?
Speaker: And in Montreal, that experience was complex. You wouldn't exactly consider it the joy of sport or the epitome of the joy of sport. No. And I can tell you that troubled me for a long time because you get these. I mean, I remember when Toronto had, there was a protest around Toronto was applying to to host the Olympic Games and there was lots of poverty and there's protests around bread, not circuses. And, you know, that's true. From my political perspective, the Olympic Games are mostly circus. And i don't want to undermine the incredible integrity and work and struggles that athletes have to overcome to get there.
Speaker: But like the Volleyball Association, the systems and the treatment of those athletes is something that most Canadians should be ashamed of. and And so it's complicated for me to go back.
Speaker: I didn't have any awareness of that when I was an athlete. I just knew, you know, there was hurdles because we didn't have proper medical care. We didn't have proper diets. We didn't have proper training in terms of the science of it. But I wasn't aware of the bigger system. And now I know that that system...
Speaker: actually rewards the hierarchy and the folks that manage it far, like professional sports, far, far greater than the athletes. I mean, the athletes are the widgets.
Speaker: In pro sport, you know, pleasing the fans or growing the base or growing the income is what it's all about and the athletes are simply a product and i have i can tell you i've started my company in 1990 just after 1990 and i remember in the 90s having a huge discussion with people to say that you know so pro sport is not a positive thing everybody loves pro hockey pro basketball pro sports not a positive thing it commodifies the human body
Speaker: And the financial gain that lots of young you know young men in particular who wouldn't have access to the kinds of incomes they have. But I don't think pro sport is a positive thing, and I never have, not for 35 years.
Speaker: Now, I will put a caveat on that, as as I say in the epilogue for the book, that women's pro sports that's just starting now, both with hockey and soccer, I still don't think professional sport is a good thing, but I recognize that they are trying to give opportunities for high-level competition that women don't get anywhere else.
Speaker: They don't get the attention of the college systems the way that the men do. I do have some admiration for them because they're trying to do it differently without the hype around ah you know the most the biggest salary, the greatest point scorer.
Speaker: The sexualization, they're not getting it it there. And the openness of about many of those players that are in same-sex relationships. So, you know, I'm kind of talking out of both sides of my mouth there, but I think given the times, we're not going to be able to stop pro sport.
Speaker: Women entering into the pro sports field is changing what that field looks like. And that's a good thing. Now, a few years after the Olympics, you went on to be hired as the first woman to coach at a national level, which received a lot of media attention when you were hired. What were some of the values you were trying to bring to that role of coach of the Canadian women's volleyball team?
Speaker: That's an easy one for me to answer because I was completely committed to shifting the system to make the athlete the center, to make the athletes have some agency in how their lives would be spent, or what the competitions would would would be that we would be going to and why, that they would have knowledge as to what we were doing and why and what we hope the outcomes were, and that those were all collective decisions. They were not made between me and the technical people in the association. They were made with those athletes as part of it. and And people, the the athletes, loved that approach. They'd never had somebody talk to them, not about their personal lives, not about their families, but about their goals
Speaker: and how they thought they could get there and what they were willing to do to get there and what they thought the team could do to get better. They'd never been part of those conversations. Now, after 18 months in the job, you began to sense that you were being isolated and shunned by the Canadian Volleyball Association administration. You were then fired without cause. Yes. What was the reason?
Speaker: Well, the I mean, the first indication I had, and I think this is chapter 12 in the book, where I had been yeah abroad. I'd been in a trip to Europe, and then I'd been back and was traveling to Mexico to scout junior teams.
Speaker: And a fellow I knew casually, because he'd been a former elite men's player, just basically said, you know, come in the office. I just want to have a word. And he said, there's a lot of talk about you being a lesbian. And i went like, what kind of talk?
Speaker: And he said, and I don't really know, just too much. And I thought you should know. And i didn't I didn't consider this guy a friend. And I actually thought he might have been set up to tell me that because there was nobody else in the office, which I found odd. I came back from Europe and every time i went to the office, it was pretty much empty.
Speaker: So that was the first and indication. And then the one that was far more telling was a fellow I'd worked very close with. He'd a university coach, a different fellow, and he'd coached with the national team. So he'd been one of the assistant coaches on several trips. So I knew him well.
Speaker: And I just literally bumped him into him on the street outside the University of Ottawa. And I just stopped and said, you know, have you ever talked about there being concerned about my sexual orientation?
Speaker: And he got completely uncomfortable. And I described that setting in the in the book quite thoroughly. And he said, yeah, there's been talk. And he says, and they've made some good points. And I said, you know, like what? And he said, well, what what parent's ever going to send their ah young daughter to a coach that's a lesbian? Yeah.
Speaker: And then I kind of blew up at him and said, you know, we both know there's coaches in our program that abuse athletes, and you know that I'm not one of them. And I feel very proud of that because I was so clear about what I was trying to do to empower the athletes.
Speaker: And there were some really these slimy men in the coaching roles at that time. And he I was surprised he was so forthcoming, but it shows what the times were. I mean, in 1979, 80, 81, even though I was out as a lesbian to my friends and had been out for seven, eight years, we never used the word lesbian. Once I was fired, I used the word lesbian in every single public setting I possibly could until until people you know would stop gasping and the room would go dead silent. So it it
Speaker: using the word even was almost like a sin. So, I get the times, but I also get the double standard. Well, you write that, and I'm quoting you here, my hiring had been a big media event, but my firing was invisible. And you had not transgressed any ethical behavior, but you describe the long shadow of that firing. What was the cost to you, both on your own psyche and your relationship to sports and to your reputation?
Speaker: Well, you know, to be honest, I wasn't very concerned about my reputation because I never had been. Like, I wasn't doing it to try to be a big shot. I was concerned that my life would fall apart. I had done nothing but volleyball from the age of about 16, 17, and I was and I literally had not had any jobs since, you know, part-time jobs after high school.
Speaker: And it was my whole world. And i it was more a you know psychological crash. like it that It was like having my legs cut off. And i you know I do appreciate, because I was in the room trying to found write the constitution for what is now Canadian Women in Sport,
Speaker: The women in that road room were very concerned and they wanted to make sure something happened. But I knew from the legal counsel that I'd got advice from, there was no legal recourse. They didn't fire me for that cause. They fired me for no cause because A, they couldn't prove it And B, they knew that I had no ah process with no cause. They have the right to do that.
Speaker: But because of the rumors and because of the concerns, then I knew that basically that was the reason. And also...
Speaker: I guess, Lorraine, you don't realize what shunning can feel like until suddenly the people who have supported you and been your biggest fan club won't look you in the eye or won't say hello when you walk in a room.
Speaker: it's ah It's a huge, ugly feeling. And, you know, it gave me a lot of empathy for people who are shunned or or belittled because of their race or religion or every other marginalization, it's really a horrible feeling to have people who should treat you like a human being act like you're but someone with a disease they don't want to catch. It it was a you know life-changing experience.
Speaker: It was appalling to read a bit. Now, ah you went to San Francisco to the inaugural Gay Games the summer after you lost your coaching job. But as a spectator and a fan, talk about how that experience affected you.
Speaker: Well, you know, I lost my job in January and the head of Sport Canada... gave me a you know, like literally within an hour, gave me a short contract to do some, basically I was writing a paper for the federal cabinet about what the future of sports should look like. And I spent three months doing that, but I got some counseling and I was kind of just in a daze. And then I drove back to Vancouver and came out to all my family. And ah sure enough, at the first, you remember the quadra? Totally. yeah One of the first couple of nights I go to the cro quadra, you know, I meet this woman and drink some scotch and next thing you know, I'm in a relationship, which which was great for me because, you know, she had lots of, you know, feminist connections and it was as far away from sport as could possibly be.
Speaker: And that was great because the games, I didn't know anything about the games, but she was playing on a rec soccer team. And it was, you know, maybe two or three athletes on it and about 15 women on it that had never played anything.
Speaker: And they were just having a ball. So she convinced me to you know, come down to San Francisco with them. And i had never experienced being outside sport as a fan and yet having a ball the way I did in San Francisco. It was it was really ah probably the best thing I could have done is to watch people play sport who were just loving the fact that they were playing.
Speaker: They didn't know how to play very well. They didn't score very much, but they just were having a good time. And I met i met lots of, it it kind of moved me into a new circle away from sport because like I said, I'd been in sport for over a decade and it had been the focus of my whole world.
Speaker: And, you know, when you described also being in the Castro in San Francisco and all the kind of celebratoryness around being gay, I had a similar experience when I went there the first time. It's like, wow, this is what it could be like. is This is possible. We could be out in the streets saying, hello, I love you, you know.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, and compare that to some of the, you know, alleyways in Chinatown that we would knock on a, I think it was at one point, the yellow door and then a red door and then a black door. To get into a club that was in the basement, you know, of some unbeknownst address up top.
Speaker: And so even though as a teenager or 20-something, I wasn't afraid of those clubs in in the downtown east side or in Chinatown. But I knew that they had to be secret.
Speaker: It wasn't safe to go into it a bar that was... open and again, do you remember um there was there was another one that was over closer to Granville Street that the police would raid occasionally and we would all just go tense when the police walked through because, you know, any of us could have lost our jobs.
Speaker: Yep. Back in that day. Yeah. Now you were part of the group that brought the Gay Games to Vancouver in 1990 in an effort to redefine what athletic competitions could mean. How was it different and what were some of the principles that you worked to infuse the games with?
Speaker: Well, I should say the impetus for that came from this group of gay men that had gone in 82 and again in 86. And they were just over the top that, you know, this is like the best celebration, the best social, the best way. And so they actually got ah the Metro Vault in Vancouver Arts and Athletic Association. They started it. They got playing in a number of leagues happening.
Speaker: and put it forward. So I joined their group fairly late in the day, like just before the 86 games, because I was still trying to figure out if I wanted anything to do with any kind of sport.
Speaker: But they convinced me that, you know, come on down, bring a team down, you'll have a blast in 86. And then when we got the games after the 86 experience, then I was fully committed.
Speaker: But some of the challenges, and this is this was more I would give credit to the arts community in Vancouver, because we In San Francisco, they didn't have to worry about you know places to go for dinner or clubs or brunches or any kind of social life because it was there on every street.
Speaker: Whereas in Vancouver, we had, i think there was like one women's club and maybe four or five men's clubs and no kind of gay restaurant. because this is long before Hammer and Mary's or a few of the West End restaurants opened up. so So we were really concerned, like, what are we going to do? And people started to talk to dance community clubs, the theaters, film producers.
Speaker: And it was Vancouver's kind of amorphous cultural community that just said, we can do this. We'll put on a show like you wouldn't believe. and And that wasn't really the board that did it. Like we handed over stuff. And I remember when Max Reimer said he would produce opening and closing ceremonies, we just thought, oh my God, we have a professional. Like like we were so amateur.
Speaker: And that made a big, big difference. And again, you know, there was lots of controversy because I'm even seeing it, to be honest, in some of the responses in my book. Back in those days, the gay games weren't radical enough. We were too tame. It's the only organization I'd ever worked for where you know a company would give us $1,000 and make us promise not to put their name on anything. And then yeah so so in some and then the huge fiasco that we had tons of gay men that were so freaked out by the word queer that they were going to do ah launch a boycott if we used the word queer.
Speaker: So there was differences, but the basic principles that this is about enabling anybody to play. And if you want to play a sport, you name the sports, all we need is to get it organized and we can do it. So literally in San Francisco, there was, I think it was 16 or 17. I don't have the stats in front of me. By the time we opened for Gay Games 3 and Celebration 90, there was 28 sports.
Speaker: there was twenty eight sports which meant that we almost doubled what had happened in the previous games. And we were doing croquet and badminton and darts and ah but ah a race walk, as well as a completely open 5k where people with disabilities in wheelchairs were running with people who had, you know, fitness problems or whatever. It's just, you want to play? You can play. That was the answer.
Speaker: And i think I've never experienced anything quite like it. And to be honest, in interviews that I had even a decade later, i said, as the world has gotten more virulent and violent with the internet, I'm not sure you could do it again because the threats of really going that big that fast, I think the violence would would be fearful.
Speaker: But it was a remarkable experience and it changed literally thousands of people's lives. And I think it changed Vancouver, arguably, as well. I do, too. I mean, and and I will never, ever forget the day that full-page ad from the pastor in the valley that said, keep the homosexuals out of Vancouver, the day it aired and our phones rang off the hook.
Speaker: Everybody wanted to provide a homestay for gay athletes. It was like we got 2,000 volunteers within a week to 10 days. And it was like somebody just hit the right button.
Speaker: And I had friends, i was just starting to get involved in more formal politics. I had friends that had been, you know, on women's rights committees and in straight politics for a long time that, you know, phoned and said, we've got like three couples staying with us for the gay games. You do? you So it it I think that's where it changed the city. And it also changed the newspapers. And I told a little bit about that, but I was part of...
Speaker: the newspapers grilling us to try and make this something less than it was. And they couldn't find the answer. We just said, you know, no everybody gets to play. And somebody came and was a master swimming fellow from California and he broke the world records for men over 55 at the games.
Speaker: And other people were playing for the first time ever or swimming for the first time ever. And to do that all in one organization, it it's really a remarkable thing. I still can't quite believe we pulled it off.
Speaker: You've been an outspoken advocate for change in sport, and you wrote in the book, the unspoken core requirement for success in sport in Canada was deference to the system. And in some athletes' cases, it was complete obedience to the coach, even if the coach's demands were unreasonable, abusive, or even illegal.
Speaker: To what extent do you think things have improved for women and girls in sport?
Speaker: At the core, not very much. And by that, I mean that, yes, some women and girls are more successful and their success, at least they're not just being showed with boob and crotch shots in the newspaper. People recognize that there is skill involved.
Speaker: And I think there's a shift recognized that women can be athletes, but at the core in terms of our young girls and women still vulnerable to coaches who will abuse them, not always sexual abuse, but physical abuse, body shaming, withholding support,
Speaker: ah colluding to keep them away from their parents, that is still rampant in sport. And I'll tell you, one of the reasons I pushed to get this book out now is I listened to that Heritage Committee testimony in 2022. It was February 2022. And I had a draft of the book and I was kind of like, where is this going?
Speaker: And I listened to that testimony and I was bawling my eyes out in front of the computer. And I thought it hasn't changed a bit. And there was women in their thirty s And i'm I'm going to say probably the majority of them straight. There wasn't a you know ah sense of that sexual orientation was an issue. But in fencing, in gymnastics, in bobsled, in water polo, I could name another half dozen. They were talking about how their coaches humiliated them.
Speaker: sexually abused them, put them down, put them on starvation diets, told them they were horribly, that they didn't do enough work, that they were lazy. Their testimony was just gut-wrenching.
Speaker: And I thought, if my book can make even ah move the dial a speck, into understanding that athletes need more respect and that coaches need way more oversight.
Speaker: There are good coaches in sport, but there is no consistent way to target the bad guys and get them out. And I thought if my book can make even the tiniest bit of difference, I'm going to get this book out as fast as I can.
Speaker: Well, Betty, I think one of the things that came across beautifully in your book was how people work for change in so many different ways. And you are very out there and very courageous and visible, but you also talk about many people working quietly to bring about change. And I think at at this time when we're facing so much pushback against our rights,
Speaker: point to a bill that wanted to retract the Human Rights Code in BC. At this time when we're facing so much pushback, what are your thoughts for people who want to keep fighting for positive change?
Speaker: That's a really good question. You know, I live in a tiny little community. I'm on Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast where, you know, there's no streetlights at night. There's 2,500 people and lots lots of ex-hippies and lots of ex-draft dodgers really created this community.
Speaker: And every day I see how we need to push for people whose experience is outside the mainstream to step up and be visible and vocal in their communities because we're getting to this time where it's like the straight white male gets a pass again and again. And it that's been kind of a bit of a bugbear for me the last couple of years.
Speaker: In fact, i have to say some media outlets have asked me, well, what am I doing for activism now? Last Saturday, i decided, well, I'm not going to complain about so many straight white men who don't know what they're doing stepping into public office. I'm going to hold a workshop for women to learn the ropes and decide if they're going to run municipally next fall.
Speaker: And we couldn't find anybody's sponsor. I contacted a couple locally elected women here at the regional district and and on councils. And said, we we don't have a sponsor. And I was the only one of the two or three of us talking that didn't have an elected title. So I said, well, I'm just going to put my email out there and see if people want to come. And I'm going to book a little haul.
Speaker: We had 38 women come. We had 10 currently elected women and two past elected mayors and and myself as a former school board of trustee. It was probably the best Saturday workshop, 10 to 3, that I have ever attended or partially facilitated.
Speaker: The buzz in the room, people were so grateful to be able to talk to each other. And the newspaper was interested because we called it for women and gender diverse folks. And the newspaper called it, why have you changed a women's workshop to women and gender diverse? said, well, you know, we'd like young people to think about local elected positions. And they don't always want to comply with the gender binary. So I just think we should let them know they're welcome.
Speaker: And then nobody had any issues. So yeah that was one of the most rewarding things I could have done. Rather than sitting here mad, we opened the door. 38 women came.
Speaker: we we Everybody threw 20 bucks in the pot to pay expenses. We made enough money. We had $600 to donate to the foundry. They're just starting Sunshine Coast Foundry for young families who are struggling with mental health issues.
Speaker: And everybody walked away thinking, I've got 30 or 40 support people here. It was cool. It's like the old feminist days where we just got together and did it. Fantastic. Well, I really enjoyed the book and I really enjoyed talking with you right now.
Speaker: it's My pleasure. I've been speaking with Betty Baxter. The book we've been talking about is Outspoken, a Journey from Olympic Athlete to Activist. The book launched this month and should be on the shelves at a bookstore near you.
Speaker: You've been listening to the Red Eye Podcast, produced by an independent media collective based in Vancouver. If you enjoyed this episode, it would be great if you left a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps other people to find us.
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Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. Thanks for listening.
