Random Access

It’s time to start pumping our legs again to see if we can catch up to that legendary 60-year-old Swede, who is in so much better shape than we are.
Yes, friends and couch potatoes of all shapes and sizes, ParticipACTION is back.
Yesterday, federal Health Minister (and former Brampton West-Mississauga MPP) Tony Clement was in Toronto to announce that the program that put the healthy living philosophy, and helped launch the whole concept of “social marketing” in this country, is back on the boards.
The feds are ponying up $5 million over the next two years to revive ParticipACTION, which went into hibernation in 2001 after the then-Liberal government choked off its funds.
If you are of a certain age, you well remember the controversial ads that so shamed Canadians. A voice-over informed us, as we watched an older and a younger man jogging, that the average 60-year-old Swede was in better shape than the average 30-year-old Canadian.
There were numerous outraged newspaper articles written in 1973 debating the veracity of the claims. In the end, the exact facts proved irrelevant. The important part was that Canadians starting thinking about moving their bodies around again. A lot of them did more than think about it, they did it.
It is impossible to think of ParticipACTION without thinking about the 60-year-old Swede, the Body Break TV spots with Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod and Mississauga’s own Russ and Merle Kisby, who were the heart and soul of the movement for so very long.
Russ was the president of ParticipACTION from its inception in 1972 until it stopped functioning. Merle was his wife and able assistant.
Kisby was a disciple for the cause wherever he went and helped get the international movement going. Some two-dozen similar programs were established around the world based on the Canadian model.
The international respect in which he is held is reflected in recognition such as the World Sport For All Award he won in Vienna in 2000 and the Sport For All Pioneer Award he brought home from South Africa in 2001.
Most people still don’t realize that all of the valuable air time for promoting the good cause of exercise was donated free by the media, at an estimated value of a staggering $280 million over the course of the program’s existence.
Kisby lobbied hard against the short-sightedness that ended ParticipACTION, of course, and helped to get its archives housed at his alma mater, the University of Saskatchewan where you can get a retrospective of the entire program, including the ads at http://www.usask.ca/archives/participaction/english/home.html.
Last summer, the university named an active living lab after Russ.
The lesson of ParticipACTION, of course, is that exercise is for life. In every health article you read these days, exercise is cited as one of the best forms of prevention of any disease or condition.
In June 2002, Kisby was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given only a year to live. Because he was in such good shape, he was deemed a perfect candidate for an experimental form of treatment that involved aggressive surgery, and extensive chemotherapy and radiation.
Kisby beat the odds of coming back, just as his favourite cause has now done. Unfortunately, his health is failing again. It’s too bad he could not have savoured the pleasure of yesterday’s resurrection of ParticipACTION in person.
In a reflective article as the program was shut down, Kisby wrote that, “Perhaps the most important learning from ParticipACTION’s first three decades, particularly for wellness leaders, is the power of one.
When confronted with a big problem people often think: “Something should be done . . . . but what difference can I make?” And another well-intentioned effort ends before it begins. The hidden, pessimistic assumption is that big problems will only succumb to big money, big organizations and big government.
In our ParticipACTION experience, it’s not necessarily so.
From the start our task was to help change the health attitudes and habits of a whole country. At first, it seemed a lot like trying to move a mountain with a wheelbarrow. Remarkably, the mountain has been moving.
We found that the resources necessary for action and change are usually already in place. Therefore we concluded that the best way to move mountains is to mobilize those resources, to work as a catalyst, to bring the movers and shakers together under the umbrella of a good idea.”
Sometimes good ideas, like good people, make a big comeback.