The nucleophile initiated thiol-Michael reaction of a wide range of mono and multifunctional thiols with a novel acrylic exo-7-oxanorbornene is described. We highlight how this process affords ready access to a large library of thioether-based substrates in a quick and convenient fashion. New substrates containing, for example, ester, fluoro, and siloxy functionality polymerized in a controlled fashion with Grubbs' first generation (G1) catalyst, RuCl 2 (PCy 3 ) 2 CHPh, yielding homopolymers with controlled, predetermined molecular weights and polydispersity indices in the range 1.10-1.31. Other examples containing -OH (alcohol, diols, sugars) and certain heterocyclic functionality could only be polymerized to high conversion in a controlled manner with the Grubbs' third generation catalyst, RuCl 2 (3-BrPy) 2 (ImMesH 2 )CHPh. Examples of copolymers with statistical and block architectures were also prepared yielding well-defined materials with controlled molecular weights and narrow, unimodal molecular weight distributions. Efficient, sequential post-polymerization modification of an AB diblock copolymer bearing protected alkyne and protected sugar functionality afforded access to additional new block copolymers including amphiphilic species as well as a common material susceptible to Cu(I)-catalyzed alkyne-azide coupling. Finally, we show that the common, and key, acrylic functional exo-7-oxanorbornene substrate can, if desired, be directly (co)polymerized with the Grubbs' G1 catalyst yielding (co)polymers containing electron-deficient ene functional groups that can be modified post-polymerization.