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This study examines the history of the physical education of Montreal’s young French Canadian girls from 1860 to 1920; from the first manifestations of corporal education in the private education network to the so-called « golden age » of women’s sports in Canada. Firstly, the discourses of French Canadian scientists are analyzed in such a way as to capture their theoretical reflections on the female body in movement and the prescriptions they formulated. Subsequently, this study presents the evolution of sport and gymnastic practices in the Catholic female boarding schools of Montreal held by the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame and the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. Proponents of women’s physical education faced certain challenges: how to promote exercise for young women without exposing them to the public space? How to reconcile physical training with the aesthetic ideal of femininity? Finally, how to promote more movement for the juvenile female body without risking its reproductive capacity? Doctors and educators, faced with this dilemma, defined the contours of an acceptable female physical and sports education. However, although the norms disseminated by the predominantly male prescriptive literature were restrictive, innovative practices that met specific objectives started to appear in Montreal’s boarding schools in the 1860s. These practices diversified in the first decades of the twentieth century under the impetus of historical actresses – teaching sisters, gymnastic professors and students.