(Re)Producing military mythology at the Canada Army Run

This thesis offers a novel exploration of militarism in amateur sport. I analyze the 2019 Canada Army Run - an annual road race organized and hosted by the Canadian Armed Forces - to explore how embodied interaction with the event's pro-military messaging affects participants' political orientation to the Canadian military. I draw on ethnographic data gathered while running in the 5k race as well as 40 semi-structured qualitative interviews with race participants and three interviews with event organizers. Theoretically, I utilize Barthes' (1972) work on mythology to conceptualize the ideological significance and political affects of military myth and explore the ways myth is circulated and produced at the Army Run. The most predominant Canadian Armed Forces myths described by participants are: having a standing, armed military is necessary and inevitable; the military only uses force when necessary and primarily engages in aid work and is thus moral; and the military is misunderstood by most civilians and as a result is under appreciated. These myths circulate at the Army Run in myriad ways. The opportunity to build civilian-military connections via interpersonal interaction was the event's most effective tactic in generating civilian support, encouraging participants to see the military not as a faceless institution, but rather as the sum of its parts: individual servicepeople. Ultimately, I argue that the Canada Army Run (re)produces myths of military necessity, morality, and under appreciation via participants' embodied engagement in military themed spaces and with military members. Through physical engagement in the Army Run's military-saturated event space and interaction with military servicepeople, participants come to feel connected to the military, and it is through this felt connection that increased support is generated and attention is shifted away from military politics and practices and toward the interpersonal. The Army Run's presentation of a depoliticized, individualized Canadian Armed Forces allows for increased public support that remains constant as it is not grounded in the reality of military action, thus enabling the proliferation of military power and investment.