British Empire Games

The Commonwealth Games were inaugurated as the British Empire Games in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1930 as a sports competition for athletes from Great Britain. The policy statement of the first British Empire Games “The Commonwealth Games will be designed on the Olympic model, both in general construction and its stern definition of the amateur. But the game will be very different – free from both the excessive stimulus and the babel of the international stadium. They should be merrier and less stern and will substitute the stimulus of novel adventure for the pressure of international rivalry”. Reverend Astley may be relatively undistinguished when compared to Barron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) who visualized the Olympics, but it was the British paster who game shape to the Empire Games, 39 years after it was mooted in 1891. His pipe dream accomplished in 1930 at Hamilton, Ontario. At the first British Empire Games, the facilities were somewhat Spartan. The 400-odd competitors were put up in the Prince of Wales school just over the road from the main stadium, with up to 24 athletes sharing each classroom. The only depressed moment about the Games was that the man whose idea began the whole movement was not there to see the culmination of his initiative. Norton Hervey Crow died on Sept. 14, 1929, precisely eleven months before the Games kick off.