Blacklock's Reporter

Everything was political in the 1930s. It was a haunted decade that “almost made me a Communist,” as one Alberta premier put it.

Strong, Beautiful and Modern captures the oddest political expression of all, the campaign for physical culture. Archival images of mass synchronized exercises of the Pro-Rec league in the parks of Vancouver bear an unnerving resemblance to parades of bronzed youth so popular in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia.