Catherwood, Ethel (1908-87)

Ethel Catherwood is the only Canadian female athlete to have won an individual gold medal in Olympic Track and Field. Born in North Dakota on April 28, 1908, Catherwood and her family settled in Scott, Saskatchewan and moved to Saskatoon in 1925. Within a two-week period in 1926 she equaled the Canadian women's high-jumping record, then broke the world record. At the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam she won the Gold medal in the women's high jump. Known as the “Saskatoon Lily,” Catherwood gave up competitive jumping and moved to the United States in 1929. She is a member of the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame (1949) and the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame (1955). Catherwood was one of the original inductees to the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame in 1966. She died at Grass Valley, California in 1987.

Daria Coneghan, Holden Stoffel

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Further Reading

Ransom, D. 1988. “‘The Saskatoon Lily': A Biography of Ethel Catherwood,” Saskatchewan History 41 (3): 81-98.