Overlooked Canadian Champions Of The Fabulous Fifties

More people than ever flocked to Canadian ice rinks in the 1950s, many of them inspired to take up figure skating after Barbara Ann Scott's historic Olympic gold medal win in 1948. 

Canada had many memorable champions during the decade, including World Champions Frances Dafoe and Norris Bowden, Barbara Wagner and Bob Paul and Donald Jackson. 

Today, we'll be learning a little more about a handful of Canadian Champions from the decade who are less remembered. Put on your poodle skirt or letter jacket, crank up the Dean Martin and join me for a trip down memory lane as we meet some very talented skaters that have been sadly overlooked.

FRANCES ABBOTT GUNN AND DAVID ROSS

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

The list of Canada's earliest ice dance champions reads as expected: Toronto Skating Club, Minto Skating Club... but a very small club of dancers from the Winnipeg Winter Club managed to weave their way into the record books. In 1938, Janet and Fraser Sweatman won the Canadian Waltz title. Four years later, Evelyn Rogers and George McCullough won the Tenstep. In 1951, Mary Rose Trimble and David Ross were the Tenstep winners. However, it wasn't until 1953, when David won with Frances (Abbott) Gunn, that a team from west of Ontario won the Canadian senior dance title. They retired in 1954 after winning the Silver Dance and Waltz events at the Western Canadian Championships.

Frances Abbott

Frances and David were exceptionally talented skaters, but their dancing took second priority to their off-ice goals. After graduating from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Science in degree in home economics, Frances worked as a diabetic intern at the University of Minnesota hospital in Minneapolis and as a dietician at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital in Bermuda and the Winnipeg General Hospital. David worked as a zone manager at International Harvester, then taught skating at the Connaught Skating Club and Kerrisdale Arena in British Columbia. Frances remained involved in the sport as a high-level judge, presiding over the dance events at the 1967, 1968 and 1973 World Championships. She passed away on February 3, 2014.

MARLENE SMITH

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

The daughter of Almeda (Haile) and Ernest Smith, Marlene Elizabeth Smith was born August 3, 1931, in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Her father, who was born in England, was the treasurer of the Smith Brothers Construction Company. Her mother, who was born in the United States, was a dancing instructor. Her parents married in Welland, Ontario, where her mother was raised.

Marlene first took to the ice at the age of seven, but didn't start pursuing figure skating seriously until she was twelve. She got her start at the Niagara Falls Skating Club but later trained in St. Catharines, Kitchener, Hamilton, Lake Placid and Toronto. Her primary coach for much of her career was Otto Gold, but she also worked with Gustave Lussi and Sheldon Galbraith. Off the ice, she studied at the Loretto Academy and Dominion Business College. Her hobbies were collecting spoons and Dalton figurines, and she always wore yellow socks when she skated.

Marlene won the Canadian junior title in 1948, the year Barbara Ann Scott won Olympic gold. The same year, she took the bronze in the senior class. At a ceremony celebrating her success, a local alderman remarked, "Ottawa can boast of her Barbara Ann Scott and now Niagara Falls can boast of her Marlene Smith."

In 1949, Marlene dropped to fourth in the senior women's event at Canadians but struck gold in the pairs with her partner Donald Gilchrist. She went on to win a pair of silver medals in both singles and pairs at that year's North American Championships. Upon returning home to Niagara Falls, she was greeted at the train station by a huge crowd of well-wishers and a pipe band, presented with a bouquet of roses and driven to city hall, where she received the key to the city.  

Marlene Smith and Donald Gilchrist. Photos courtesy "Skating" magazine (left) and "Skating World" magazine (right).

Marlene's successes continued in 1950, when she and Donald Gilchrist defended their Canadian pairs title, and she took the silver in singles. She represented Canada at that year's Worlds in London, where she placed ninth in the women's event and seventh in pairs. Swiss writer Nigel Brown described her in "Skating World" magazine as "a very speedy solo skater... [with] a very interesting programme which finished on a fast cross-foot spin following three double Salchows."

Marlene and Donald's partnership ended the following year. She returned stronger than ever in 1952, placing in the top ten in the women's event at both the Winter Olympic Games and World Championships and finally winning the Canadian women's title in Suzanne Morrow's absence.

Marlene turned professional after winning the Canadian title and taught at the Buffalo Skating Club in New York and the rink at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. On October 16, 1954, she married Lieutenant James Rollins Eddy, whom she met while water skiing in Florida. She lived, for a time, in Tokyo, Japan, when her husband was stationed at the Johnson Air Force Base. The couple later divorced, and Marlene went on to teach skating at the Washington Figure Skating Club, Ice Club of Baltimore and at a studio rink in Coral Gables, Florida. She passed away on March 1, 2009 at the age of seventy-seven.

ELAINE PROTHEROE AND WILLIAM TRIMBLE

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

Elaine 'Lanie' Fern Protheroe and William Gordon 'Bill' Trimble of the Winnipeg Winter Club were familiar names in skating circles in the latter half of the fifties. In 1956, they won the Canadian title in the Waltz, defeating the following year's World Silver Medallists Geraldine Fenton and Bill McLachlan. The next year, in their final appearance at the Canadians, they won the junior dance event and finished third in the dance, Waltz and Tenstep. A likely exhausted Elaine competed in the junior women's event as well. No slouch as a singles skater, Elaine won the 1957 Western Canadian senior women's title. At the time, she was studying commerce at the University of Manitoba. Bill was a grade twelve student at United College. They trained in the summers in Lake Placid with Jean Westwood. Musically minded skaters, Lanie played the piano, and Bill collected records.

Photo courtesy University of Manitoba Archives

After retiring from competitive skating, Elaine married William Hume and became a skating coach. She later taught at the Royal Glenora Club in Edmonton, the Cleveland Skating Club and the Forest Hill Figure Skating Club in West Toronto. Bill later studied interior decorating at the University of Manitoba, worked at a department store and then taught at Edwina and Cliff Thaell's skating studio in Paoli, Pennsylvania and the Winnipeg Winter Club. Bill passed away on New Year's Eve in 1978 at the age of forty-four.

LINDIS AND JEFFERY JOHNSTON

Lindis and Jeffery Johnston. Photo courtesy Guelph Museums.

In 1955, Lindis and Jeffery Johnston of London, Ontario made history as the first sibling pair to win the Canadian ice dance title, just weeks after winning the first competition they ever entered - the Niagara International Competition in Buffalo, New York. They were students at the Central High School, where Jeff excelled at track and field, football and golf.

Left: Claudette Lacaille and Jeffery Johnston. Right: Lindis and Jeffery Johnston. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

The teenagers trained in Buffalo during the winter and in Stratford, Ontario in the summers. She was only fourteen; he was seventeen - making them the youngest Canadian Champions in dance at the time. They also won the Tenstep and finished third in the Waltz that year. They also made history that year as the first Canadian ice dancers to compete at the World Championships, finishing eleventh. Jeffery had previously medalled in the dance events at the Canadian Championships in 1953 and 1954 with Montreal's Claudette Lacaille.

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

Lindis and Jeffery defended their Canadian title in 1956, narrowly defeating Geraldine Fenton and Bill McLachlan on the strength of their free dance - a new addition to the ice dance event in Canada. They again made history that year by placing ninth out of seventeen couples at Worlds, making them the first Canadian dance team to crack the top ten at Worlds.

In 1957, Lindis and Jeffery placed only fourth at the North American Championships, three places behind Geraldine Fenton and Bill McLachlan. They were so frustrated by their result that they withdrew from that year's Canadian Championships in protest. Lindis went on to skate with the Ice Capades. Jeffery and his wife Mimi Pong taught skating in Woodstock and Simcoe, Ontario and Cleveland, Ohio.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Bluesky, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering one of eight fascinating books highlighting the history of figure skating: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

Cold As Ice: What Sonja Henie’s Rivals Whispered Behind Closed Doors

Sonja Henie. Photo courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France.

"I am ten times World's Champion and three times Olympic Champion. I have never been beaten. Please come and see me skate." - Sonja Henie, "The Montreal Gazette", April 8, 1936

Sonja Henie dazzled the world with her Hollywood smile and sensational skating, winning three Olympic gold medals and ten gold medals at the World Figure Skating Championships. 

In Sonja Henie's day, a cadre of equally gifted women fought a very different battle on the ice: one for recognition. 

History remembers Henie as the unstoppable queen of figure skating, but behind every one of her titles stood a line of ambitious, resilient, and often overlooked competitors. Sonja Henie lived rent-free in many of their minds.

Herma Szabo. Photo courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France.

In 1926, Sonja Henie faced off against the reigning Olympic gold medalist and World Champion Herma Szabo at the World Championships in Stockholm, Sweden. Reflecting on that event in the documentary ISU: 100 Years of Skating 1892–1992, Szabo recalled, "Sonja Henie made my life very difficult and her father even more. In Stockholm at the Worlds, we were invited to the Austrian Consulate in the evening and I left my skates in the lounge. The next day was the competition and on my first step on to the ice, the sole with the skates came off my shoe. It had been cut off with a razor blade. That was not nice."

Decades later, in 1994, Fritzi Burger-Russell claimed that Szabo had confided in her about a suspicious encounter. According to Burger-Russell, Szabo said that she "thought she saw a member of the Norwegian delegation in the corridor as she returned to her hotel room the night before the competition – but nothing was ever proved."

Herma Szabo defeated Sonja Henie at the 1926 World Championships, but the following year, the tables turned. At the 1927 World Championships in Oslo - Henie’s home turf  - she claimed the title, with three of the five judges hailing from Norway. All three Norwegian judges voted for Henie, while the remaining two, an Austrian and a German, scored Szabo higher. The controversial result sparked a public outcry and ultimately led to a new rule limiting international judging panels to one judge per country.

Disheartened by the outcome, Szabo retired from the sport shortly afterward. In the charming 1998 documentary Reflections On Ice: A Diary Of Ladies Figure Skating, Fritzi Burger-Russell recalled, "Herma came to my house in Vienna and brought me some tights and a skirt and said, 'now try to beat her!' Didn't help any."

In an interview with Maribel Vinson Owen, following the 1936 Winter Olympics, Sonja Henie expressed utter frustration over the whole scandal. She remarked, "It made me so mad to have people say my winning was unfair... I immediately offered to skate the competition over two weeks later on the indoor ice rink in London - after all, what could I do more than that? - but [Herma Szabo] would not do it and just retired instead."

Fritzi Burger-Russell and Sonja Henie. Photo courtesy "Skating World" magazine.

Fritzi Burger-Russell passed away on February 17, 1999, while vacationing in Austria. After winning the 1930 European title and silver medals at the Winter Olympics and World Championships, her engagement to a German bobsledder was called off because she was Jewish... in a very dangerous time and part of the world. She married Shinkiki Nishikawa, the grandson of Japanese Pearl Tycoon Kokichi Mikimoto in Vienna in 1935 and had a son named Yoshikazu. After spending World War II in Japan, she remarried banker Bob Russell in 1968 and moved to the United States. In the decades after she retired from skating, Sonja Henie was always on Fritzi Burger-Russell's mind. Quoted in a 1994 interview in "The New York Times", she said, "In Budapest, at the 1929 World Championships, I thought I should have won. Sonja didn't skate well; she nearly fell doing a sit spin. But her father began clapping his walking stick so that people would start clapping for her."

Cecilia Colledge performing a layback spin. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

Maribel Vinson Owen recalled a dramatic incident that occurred during the women's school figures at the 1936 Winter Olympic Games, held in Nazi Germany. During the right back bracket change bracket, Vinson Owen remembered, "[Sonja] had almost no speed for the second half of the figure, she came up to the second bracket right on the flat of her skate instead of on an edge, a major fault, and after the turn she had to wiggle and hitch her skating foot to keep going, and then she pushed off for the next circle a good four feet before she reached her center, another very major fault... and when she had turned her twelfth and last bracket, she was at a dead standstill. So, making no pretense of trying to finish out her circle, she just put both feet down, smiled a gay camouflage smile, and walked off the ice. We gasped to see the world champion do such a thing. The figure as it stood, deserved no more than Vivi[-Anne Hultén]'s 3.8 average, if as high as that, and yet when the judges put down their cards, not one, not even Mr. [Charlie] Rotch, who indeed does know correct figures, had given her less than 5! We competitors and those on the sidelines who knew laughed in derision with a 'what can you expect'  tone - I looked at Mr. Rotch with the question 'How could you do such a thing?' in my eyes, and he just shrugged." Despite this display, Sonja defeated Cecilia Colledge by 3.6 points... a margin too close for her comfort. Steven J. Overman and Kelly Boyer Sagert's book "Icons Of Women's Sport, Volume 1" claimed, "This unnerved Henie, who had beaten Colledge in the previous World Championships on the strength of her compulsory figures; upset because of the closeness of the competition, Henie yanked down Colledge's score from the board and tore it to pieces." Fritzi Burger-Russell claimed that Sonja Henie lashed out at her in the elevator at the hotel, accusing her of spreading "advertisements" about Cecilia Colledge's superiority in the school figures. "We almost got into a fight. Well, not really. It was just a little argument. I told her I could say whatever I liked," Burger-Russell later recalled.

Cecilia Colledge, Sonja Henie and Vivi-Anne Hultén on the podium at the 1936 Winter Olympic Games. Photo courtesy National Archives of Poland.

British skating stars Cecilia Colledge and Megan Taylor had no love lost for Sonja Henie either. Phil Taylor wagered a thousand-dollar bet that his daughter and pupil Megan could defeat Sonja in any fair "challenge test". Cecilia Colledge recalled how Henie would isolate herself from her competitors. "She never talked to us," Colledge remarked. "To her, there were no other skaters. Even on the podium after the Olympics, there were no kisses, no handshakes, not even a word. She never would have considered saying something nice."

Lucienne Bonne at the Palais de Glace in Paris in 1932. Photo courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Then there was the alleged run-in between Sonja and French skater Lucienne Bonne. Canadian journalist Dick Beddoes recalled, "One likes to think of the night in Paris in 1932, in Jeff Dickson's Palais des Sports, when Sonja Henie, the Olympic Champion from Norway, was skating 'The Dying Swan', to the music of Saint-Saëns. Suddenly, from the balcony, came a serenade on tin whistles. Henie burst into tears - though not until after counting the house - and management announced that the tin whistle claque had been paid for by a rival skater, Lucienne Bonne. Mlle. Bonne denied everything. 'But what of it?' she added. 'This Norwegian nuisance stole my Swan!'"

Cecil Smith. Photo courtesy City of Toronto Archives.

Canada's Cecil Smith, who finished second to Sonja Henie at the 1930 World Championships, claimed that Sonja stole her idea of wearing white boots. In David Young's 1984 book "The Golden Age Of Canadian Figure Skating", Smith recalled, "First came Sonja, swathed in furs. Then came Mother, swathed in furs. Then Papa Henie, with a fur coat and cigar. Then the brother, with long blond hair, carrying Sonja's skates, and behind him, one of the international judges. Sonja walked over to my patch to see what my figures were like, but I said nothing - just smiled... At that time, only professionals wore white skating boots, while the rest of us wore black or tan. I decided I was going to wear white boots in the World Championships. Well, my mother was horrified. She thought it was brash, and the effect on the judges would be too startling, but I did it anyway. Three months later, Sonja was wearing white boots too." Henie later told the press that she wore white boots because they "reminded her of the beautiful snow in Norway".

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

Who could forget Olympic Bronze Medallist Vivi-Anne Hultén, whose candid remarks about Sonja Henie around the time of the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer ruffled some feathers. In an interview with "Sports Illustrated" magazine in the 1990s, Hultén recalled, "Look, I have a great admiration for what Henie did... On the ice, she was terrific, a wonderful acrobat, just like a circus princess, a big smile, dressed perfectly. But she was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a very nasty person off the ice.... I'm just telling it like it is." 

A 2003 article from "The Los Angeles Times" relayed several tales of the rivalry between the two famous 1930s skaters with the last name H: "The rift began at the 1933 World Championships, when Hultén finished only two-tenths of a point behind Henie. 'You are not nearly good enough to get second next to me,' Henie screamed afterward, pointing a finger at Hulténs nose. 'I'm so much better than you are. You deserved to be fourth.'" At the 1934 World Championships], that's exactly where Hultén finished.

Vivi-Anne Hultén and Sonja Henie. Photo courtesy Sveriges Centralförening för Idrottens Främjande.

"'Her father arranged it. She was afraid of me," Vivi-Anne Hultén told a reporter from the "Minneapolis Star Tribune". Hultén claimed that Sonja Henie's father made deals with judges at world championships to ensure his daughter's victories. "Papa Henie would go to these places and tell the organizers, 'You can have my daughter (for an exhibition); come up to my hotel room and I'll tell you how we can arrange it. He played poker with them. If he won, he got an appearance fee for Sonja to skate and he got an agreement that the judges would place me no higher than third. I didn't have a chance. I know this is true because one of my best friends was the President of our club in Stockholm, and he told me about it. Back then, the judges were always with the clubs,'" Hultén claimed. 

On a trip to St. Moritz in late 1935 to train for the 1936 Winter Olympic Games, Hultén was detained at the German border for seven hours and searched from head to toe by a guard named Ulrich Schmidt. After she was released, Hultén filed a complaint with Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda. Goebbels summoned Schmidt and made him get down on one knee and apologize to Hultén. Schmidt admitted to Goebbels, "A young lady came through before her whose name was Sonja Henie. She told me this girl here would be smuggling jewelry, so we stopped her.'"

Belita Jepson-Turner

In the heyday of Sonja Henie's success as a professional, she was a Hollywood star with her name in lights and a lucrative contract with Twentieth Century-Fox. Belita Jepson-Turner, a multi-talented skater/actress/dancer from the UK, had a contract with Monogram Pictures at the same time. When interviewed by David Jacobs in the 1970s and asked directly about her relationship with Sonja Henie, Belita responded with a coy, knowing smile and a carefully measured reply: “That’s a difficult question. I don’t know that I was a successor. We were quite different in style! She was signed up to Twentieth Century-Fox. They actually offered me a contract for life, for as much money as I wanted, if I never touched skates again." When pressed about whether the two were rivals, she added coolly, "Uh, that’s her opinion, not mine."

Though many of Sonja Henie's rivals had no love lost for her, many of her competitors had positive and nuanced views on her. Melitta Brunner, who finished third behind Henie at the 1929 World Championships, forged a friendship with Henie when she was in Vienna. Sonja also took lessons briefly from Pepi Weiß-Pfändler, Melitta Brunner's coach - and incidentally the former coach of Henie's first casualty, Herma Szabo. Sonja Henie also forged a friendship with young Austrian skater Hilde Holovsky and mourned her tragic death at the age of sixteen in 1933. 

Sonja Henie and Hilde Holovsky

Despite their rivalry, Fritzi Burger-Russell, Cecilia Colledge and Maribel Vinson Owen, among others, were able to find charitable things to say about Henie at times. They recognized her undeniable talent and the role that the powerful machine behind her success, her determined Papa, played in the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing of those days.

While skating lore will likely always be laced with larger-than-life tales of Sonja Henie and her ever-watchful father, it's hard to dismiss the chorus of voices from those who shared the ice with her. Surely not every grievance was sour grapes, and not every victory squeaky clean. But what’s equally true is this: love her or loathe her, Sonja Henie reshaped figure skating forever. Without the rivals who pushed her — and sometimes pushed back — the story wouldn’t be nearly as compelling.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Bluesky, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering one of eight fascinating books highlighting the history of figure skating: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

The Polar Palace

Skaters at The Polar Palace in 1943. Photo courtesy University of Southern California Libraries.

Los Angeles, California's fascination with figure skating began during The Great War, when the Café Bristol installed a 26 X 60 foot ice tank for its patrons. In 1923, an ice rink was constructed on the United Studios lot for the Allen Hobular silent film "The White Frontier", starring Dorothy Phillips and Lewis Dayton. The film was about "social life in interior Canada" and had a lengthy skating scene, featuring one hundred would-be skaters recruited by Hollywood casting directors. Two years later, the Palais de Glace on Melrose and Vermont opened its doors. The city's first 'true' skating rink had an ice surface that measured 70 X 170 feet and seating for four thousand, five hundred spectators. Howard Nicholson performed at the Palais' grand opening in November of 1925. Ellen Rowena Eliot, the society matron and ex-wife of millionaire John V. Eliot, had a heart attack and died in the arms of one of the rink's instructors. Silent film star Pauline Garon entered a 'flapper race' on ice and a host of 'bright young things' competed in a Charleston contest at the rink, set to music by Bert Crossland's Palais de Glace Orchestra. The popularity and novelty of the rink, coupled with a growing interest in ice hockey, led proprietor C.E. Hopkins to open a second rink, the Glacier Palace, in 1926.

In comparison to the Palais de Glace, the Glacier Palace - renamed the Winter Garden - was a much grander affair. Located on North Van Ness Avenue between Melrose and Clinton, the rink had an ice surface that measured 231 X 90 feet and seating for six thousand, five hundred spectators. The year-round rink struggled in its early years when The Great Depression hit. Things got so bad financially that the owners had to sell one of the compressors out of the engine room. Then, on March 31, 1934, a smouldering cigarette burned the Palais de Glace to the ground. With the 'original' skating rink transformed into ashes and rubble, the Winter Garden took on a new importance. Film studio owner and producer and railroad mogul Billy Clune stepped in with the funds to give the run-down Winter Garden a much-needed makeover.

Sonja Henie at The Polar Palace in 1936. Photo courtesy Los Angeles Public Library.

The Winter Garden re-opened on September 23, 1934, as The Polar Palace and Bert Clark, a comedy and trick skater who later acted as Sonja Henie's stunt double in films, was hired to head up the figure skating program. A full staff of instructors was on hand right from the get-go, and the skating classes had a novel addition - slow motion pictures being projected onto a screen. Yet, in its early years, the rink's bread and butter were hockey games and marathon-style dance contests on ice. Noble 'Kid' Chissell, who went on to become a middleweight champion in boxing, won one of these contests. He recalled, "All the big stars came to watch us. Helen Twelvetrees, Toby Wing, Jack Oakie, Ben Turpin. They all had their favourite dancers, and Ruby Keeler was a big fan of mine. She used to come almost every night with her family." Despite the popularity of these events, the Polar Palace was barely kept afloat in its first two years. Mildred Martin recalled, "Clune was on the verge of transforming his white elephant into a ping pong gallery or a super-market. Then Sonja [Henie] descended on the town. Week after week, her show packed the Polar Palace. Clune's cash register soon sounded like a Swiss bell-ringer act."

The year after Sonja Henie made her professional debut at the Polar Palace, the Ice Follies came to town, packing the rink night after night with its dazzling show. Hollywood fell in love with layback spins and loops, and the Polar Palace soon became a something of institution in California's fast-developing skating scene. It played host to three of California's leading clubs - the Los Angeles, All-Year and Hollywood Figure Skating Clubs.

Photo courtesy University of Southern California Libraries

Verne Carlson, who managed the rink from 1939 until its demise, recalled in 1963, "Our local club produced some of the finest skaters in the world - Gene Turner won the national title, and later appeared in a film as Sonja Henie's partner - Donna Atwood, also a club member here, had fame as star of the Ice Capades, a then new ice show. Then we had a mite of a boy, Richard Dwyer, who went on to star in the Follies, followed later by [Catherine] Machado, who became a star in the Capades. We had a delightful girl from England called Belita, who came and made her home with us - in fact she made a motion picture on our ice. As for TV, we were the first in this country to have a live hour on television, when 'Frosty Frolics' ran for four months. The national championships were held at Polar Palace in 1954, and many lesser events were staged during the past twenty years. We have been proud of our standing in the neighbourhood - race, creed or colour meant nothing to us. In 1958, we decided to close temporarily for a face-lift, and we re-opened with a new floor, new equipment, new lighting - we looked just fine."

Photo courtesy Los Angeles Public Library

It all came crashing down - literally - on May 16, 1963. Around three in the morning, the Polar Palace was engulfed in flames. 

Flames shot as high as sixty feet into the air, and sparks flew onto nearby apartment buildings. A sound stage at the adjacent General Service Studios was a secondary victim of the blaze. Sixteen fire departments battled the inferno to no avail. Within an hour, the iconic rink burned to the ground. Old wiring in the rink's coffee shop was blamed for the fire. The rink was never rebuilt, but lives on in the collective memory of Californians to this very day.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

The 1994 Canadian Figure Skating Championships

After the record-breaking success of the 1993 Royal Bank Canadian Figure Skating Championships at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario, in January of 1993, the announcement was made that the following year the competition would head west to Edmonton, Alberta, for the first time since 1970. The event, hosted by the Royal Glenora Figure Skating Club, served as a test event for the 1996 World Figure Skating Championships. The bulk of the competition was held at the seventeen thousand plus seat Northlands Coliseum, with the senior compulsory dances and many of the junior events held at the Northlands AgriCom. The arena at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology was used as a tertiary venue for practice sessions.

Barbara Ann Scott in Edmonton

1948 Olympic Gold Medallist Barbara Ann Scott acted as the event's honorary chairperson and 1988 Olympic Medallists Brian Orser, Liz Manley and Tracy Wilson were all in attendance as part of a week-long salute to 1988 Olympians.

Part of the strategy for selling tickets for the competition was a promotion with Canada Post, where eight hundred thousand media booklets were distributed free of charge via mail. The CFSA's marketing campaign paid off, with the previous year's record for the highest ticket sales at the Canadian Championships blown out of the water. More than one hundred and twenty-six thousand spectators watched the event despite the absolutely miserable arctic weather outside. There were six hundred volunteers and one hundred and ten accredited media members, among them Debbi Wilkes, who, while covering the event with Brian Orser and Lynn Nightingale for CTV, relived her skating days by navigating an icy parking lot in a pair of pumps. Concerned about skater safety after the attack on Nancy Kerrigan less than a week prior to the competition, organizers beefed up security, enlisting the help of fifteen former RCMP officers. For the first time at the Canadian Championships, passes with photo identification were used, and members of the media weren't allowed to approach skaters without interviews being pre-arranged by the CFSA. On the CTV National News, reporter Bob Makichuk announced, "Don Sprague is beefing up police presence and separating performers from the public. The ice level of Northlands Coliseum will be sealed off to spectators. Autograph hounds will be kept away from skaters. Plain clothes police officers will be hidden in the stands. Just getting to ice level means passing through a virtual air lock of electrically controlled doors. One advantage the Edmonton organizers have is they were originally planning to hold the World Championships here, and security requirements for the Worlds are much stricter than for the Canadian nationals. It's those higher standards that will be in place next week." Halfway through the competition, the news broke that Tonya Harding's camp had a connection to the attack on Kerrigan. Skaters and organizers collectively felt sympathy for Kerrigan and disgust at the situation, but breathed a sigh of relief that the attacker wasn't some deranged fan, as was the case in the attack on Monica Seles less than a year prior. 

Let's hop in the time machine and take a look at the skaters and stories that made this particular competition so memorable!

THE NOVICE AND JUNIOR COMPETITIONS

Amanda Cotroneo and Mark Bradshaw. Photo courtesy Toronto Public Library, from Toronto Star Photographic Archive. Reproduced for educational purposes under license permission.

Leading the pack from start to finish, Isabelle Lefebvre and Ken Mueller of Saint-Blaise-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, decisively won the gold medal in the novice pairs event ahead. Two other Quebec teams, Jennifer and Pregnolato and Sébastien Morin and Genevieve Coulombe and Sacha Blanchet, were tied for third after the short program, but both teams moved ahead of Woodbridge, Ontario's Courteney Robbins and Lenny Faustino to take the silver and bronze, respectively.

Jayson Dénommée of Sherbrooke won both the short and long programs in the novice men's competition to earn Quebec yet another gold. The novice ice dance event was won by Amanda Cotroneo and Mark Bradshaw, the son of British Champions and European Medallists Sue and Roy Bradshaw. Quebec pair Isabelle Bourgault and Jean-Nicolas Chagnon finished second, followed by Teri Ninacs and Kevin Cheshire of Ontario.

To the delight of the Edmonton crowd, twelve-year-old Sarah Schmidek of the Royal Glenora Club moved up from second after the short program to claim the gold in the novice women's event, despite falling on a triple toe-loop attempt. At twelve years old, she was the youngest of the seventeen competitors.

Expanding upon their lead after the short program, Isabelle Coulombe and Bruno Marcotte decisively won the junior pairs event with first and second place ordinals from every judge. After losing in the compulsory dances to Josée Piché and Pascal Denis, Chantal Lefebvre and Michel Brunet surged ahead in the original dance and held on to win the junior ice dance event. A young Megan Wing and Aaron Lowe claimed the bronze.

Tammy Smigelski, Jennifer Robinson and Jamie Salé. Photo courtesy Skate Canada Alberta-NWT/Nunavut.

The Albertan crowd was hopeful when sixteen-year-old Jamie Salé won the junior women's short program, but seventeen-year-old Jennifer Robinson of Windsor, Ontario, only eleventh in her trip to Canadians a year prior, won the free skate and gold medal. Tammy Smigelski, Jamie Salé and Sheila Gangopadhyay made it two-three-four for the Royal Glenora Club. Twenty-one-year-old Matthew Smith of the Mariposa Winter Club landed three triples and two double Axels on his way to a come-from-behind victory in the junior men's event. Yvan Desjardins took the silver; David Pelletier the bronze.

THE PAIRS AND FOURS COMPETITIONS

Lloyd Eisler, Josée Chouinard, Kris Wirtz and Isabelle Brasseur. Photo courtesy Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

Twelve senior pairs teams vied for three pairs of tickets to the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway. During practice, Tina Muur and Cory Watson were practicing a hydrant lift when she landed face first on ice, suffering a black eye, a loose tooth and bruised cheek and lip. Both were sent to the hospital for tests and observation... but they still competed! Nineteen-year-old Kristy Sargeant and twenty-four-year-old Kris Wirtz also took a nasty fall in the warm-up prior to their short program, but went out and skated a clean program. Twenty-three-year-old Isabelle Brasseur and thirty-year-old Lloyd Eisler, who had changed their short program after receiving negative feedback at the Pirouetten pre-Olympic test event the previous autumn, received an ovation during the warm-up. They skated clean as well, landing side-by-side double Axels, earning a string of 5.8's and 5.9's and unanimous first place ordinals from all nine judges. Brasseur had injured her neck weeks before the competition, and her and Eisler hadn't been able to practice any of their twists. The pair had spoken to the judges prior to the competition and advised them of Brasseur's injury, deciding that if she felt a burning sensation in her neck after the twist, they would stop their program until she recovered. A botched lift kept Jamie Salé and Jason Turner in fifth after the short program, behind Brasseur and Eisler, Sargeant and Wirtz, Marie-Claude Savard-Gagnon and Luc Bradet and Michelle Menzies and Jean-Michel Bombardier.

Brasseur and Eisler skated flawlessly in their long program, earning a standing ovation and easily winning their fifth national title. Four of the nine judges gave them 6.0s for artistic impression... their first perfect marks ever at the Canadian Championships and a record in pairs at the Canadian Championships. Their win placed them in the record books alongside Barbara Underhill and Paul Martini and Sandra and Val Bezic, who also had won five National titles. With the skate of their lives to that point, Sargeant and Wirtz easily won silver. Salé and Turner fell on a throw early in their program, but rebounded with an outstanding performance to move up and snatch the third spot on the Olympic team and a standing ovation. The successes of the silver and bronze medallists were major news stories due to the pairs' Alberta ties.

In the book "To Catch A Dream", Lloyd Eisler recalled his seventeenth and final trip to the Nationals thusly: "From our standpoint, we had ended on the highest possible note, and when we received our medals, I was a little teary-eyed, knowing that this was it. Our Nationals was over. We would never be back again. I think I was feeling it more than Isabelle because I had been around so long. In all those years through the novice, junior and senior levels, I had always made it to the podium and I was really going to miss it because I love competing."

Kristy Sargeant and Kris Wirtz, Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler and Jamie Salé and Jason Turner. Photo courtesy Skate Canada Alberta-NWT/Nunavut.

Fittingly, four fours were entered in the fours competition, held on the fourth day of the competition. The winners, hailing from four different figure skating clubs, were Jodeyne Higgins, Alison Purkiss, Sean Rice and Scott MacDonald.

THE ICE DANCE COMPETITION

Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz

With only one Olympic spot available, the fifteen senior ice dance teams in Hamilton had no room for error. Defending champions Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz had only been skating together for three seasons, but were perceived as the clear favourites as 1992 Champions Jacqueline Petr and Mark Janoschak had retired after dropping to third the year prior in Hamilton. Juan-Carlos Noria, who stood on the podium the previous three years with Penny Mann, had teamed up with sixteen-year-old Sophie Dore and was considered an outside threat to Bourne and Kraatz.

At the very end of the very first compulsory dance, the Paso Doble, Kraatz took a tumble, bringing Bourne down with him. Martine Patenaude and Eric Massé, junior bronze medallists in 1991, took a surprise lead in the first dance and surprised many by tying with Bourne and Kraatz after the compulsories. As expected, Bourne and Kraatz made up ground with their Rhumba OSP, earning marks ranging from 5.5 to 5.7 for composition and 5.6 to 5.8 for presentation.

Though Bourne and Kraatz delivered an outstanding free dance to defend their title and nab the only Olympic berth, the stars of the evening were Jennifer Boyce and Michel Brunet, who knocked Patenaude and Massé down to third and earned a standing ovation with a delightful Celtic free dance set to a medley of music by The Chieftans. Rounding out the top six were Montreal's Marie-France Dubreuil and Tomas Morbacher, Janet Emerson of Amherstview, Ontario and Steve Kavanagh of Barrie and Martine McShaud and Pierre Hughes Chouinard of Montreal. Sophie Dore and Juan-Carlos Noria finished eighth.

THE WOMEN'S COMPETITION 

Josée Chouinard. Photo courtesy Toronto Public Library, from Toronto Star Photographic Archive. Reproduced for educational purposes under license permission.

Either before or after the competition in 1994, six of the senior women's competitors in Edmonton won the Canadian senior women's title. With two spots on the Olympic team up for grabs, the clear favourites were Karen Preston and Josée Chouinard. Both had won the Canadian senior women's title twice and placed in the top ten at the Albertville Olympics only two years prior. In front of a sold-out crowd, Chouinard, Preston and Tanya Bingert each skated flawless short programs. Chouinard received a perfect 6.0 for artistic impression by judge Pierre Limoges on her way to a first-place finish ahead of Bingert and Preston, making what was supposed to be a two-way race a three-way one. Eighteen-year-old Susan Humphreys upset the apple cart in the free skate by landing six triples and earning the first standing ovation of her career. While Bingert imploded after nailing her opening triple Lutz, Preston rebounded after an early fall to deliver a gutsy six-triple performance of her own, certainly worthy of a spot on the Olympic team.

Chouinard missed both of her triple Lutz attempts but skated an otherwise strong and well-rounded performance to take the win, ahead of Humphreys, Preston, Bingert, Angela Derochie, Lisa Sargeant-Driscoll, Netty Kim, Julie Hughes and six others. Sargeant-Driscoll, the 1990 Canadian Champion, had struggled with injury the previous two seasons and had opted to stay in to compete at the Canadians one final time in her hometown. In the January 9, 1994 issue of the "Edmonton Journal", she said, "I'll have a life after skating... I've had successses. I can say 'well, I've gone to the Worlds, and not a lot of people have.'... It's only a segment of your life. It's not forever." If Sargeant-Driscoll was at peace with her loss, Preston was crushed.

Susan Humphreys, Josée Chouinard and Karen Preston. Photo courtesy Skate Canada Alberta-NWT/Nunavut.

At a teary press conference, Preston told reporters, "I landed six triple jumps at the '92 Olympic Games and I was eighth. I thought it was enough. I guess they deducted a lot for the fall... My goal was to be on the Olympic team again, but I never walked in saying it's mine and I don't even have to work for it. I came in hoping that my best would be good enough. It wasn't. My best wishes go with the team, and I hope that my training mates can get a [World Championships] spot for three ladies, so we can really show what we've got, and nobody has to be left behind." Preston went on to earn a standing ovation for what would prove to be her swan song to the amateur ranks in the Parade of Champions, skating to Judy Garland's "Over The Rainbow".

THE MEN'S COMPETITION

Kurt Browning. Photo courtesy Toronto Public Library, from Toronto Star Photographic Archive. Reproduced for educational purposes under license permission.

With absolutely no question, the two skaters that everyone came to see in Edmonton were twenty- seven-year-old Kurt Browning and twenty-one-year-old Elvis Stojko. Even in the days before high-speed internet and social media, you didn't even have to be a figure skating fan to know their names. Their names were in newspapers, magazines, on television commercials, talk shows and the evening news... and the question of whether Elvis would be finally able to defeat his long-time friendly rival Kurt in Edmonton was a dream for sportswriters covering the event. The short program was full of surprises.

Interestingly, both Kurt Browning and Elvis Stojko drew to skate in the first flight of the men's short program. Browning, first out of the gate in his hometown in front of over sixteen thousand people, skated to trumpeter Doc Severinsen's "St. Louis Blues". He stepped out of the triple Axel in his combination and then slipped on the edge on his double Axel, taking a nasty fall. The audience was in shock and the judges were too, awarding the World Champion marks that ranged from 4.9 to 5.3 for technical merit and a string of 5.9's for artistic impression. Laughing off reporters catastrophizing his errors, he said, "This isn't adversity. No one died out there. I just slipped off the edge of a double Axel. It just made my work a little harder for tomorrow. That's going to happen every once in a while... Brian Boitano isn't national champion. Viktor Petrenko wasn't national champion when he won the Olympics. We really are here to qualify. If I'm in fourth place now... then obviously my priority has shifted from winning to make sure I'm on the team. It sucks."

Elvis Stojko landed his triple Axel/double toe combination, double Axel and triple Lutz with ease in his showy, modern "Frogs In Space" program but had a freak fall of his own going into his final spin. Twenty-three-year-old Marcus Christensen, who'd placed tenth at the 1993 World Championships, then changed coaches from Christy Ness to Jan Ullmark, skated clean and earned a standing ovation. Another twenty-three-year-old, Sébastien Britten of Quebec, also turned in an outstanding performance.

Elvis Stojko. Photo courtesy Barb McCutcheon.

After the dust settled, Stojko was first after the short program, followed by Britten, Christensen and Browning. Though he turned in an outstanding comeback performance in the free skate to "Casablanca" and brought down the house, Browning wasn't perfect. He popped the second jump in his triple Salchow combination and stepped out on his triple flip. Britten and Christensen both landed seven triples in their free skates, but Stojko's six-triple free skate to "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story" was enough to win.

Though he stepped out of a triple Salchow and fell on his quadruple toe-loop - the only quad attempt of the event - Stojko landed two triple Axels, one in combination with a triple toe-loop. His marks, which ranged from 5.7 to 5.9, were enough for gold.

Kurt Browning, Elvis Stojko and Sébastien Britten on the podium. Photo courtesy Barb McCutcheon.

Kurt Browning moved up to take the silver and earned the second place on the Olympic team, and Sébastien Britten narrowly outranked Marcus Christensen for the third spot. Rounding out the top ten were Jean-François Hébert, Matthew Hall, Matthew Powers, Jeffrey Langdon, Brent Frank and Jeremy Kish. After winning, Elvis Stojko told reporters, "I think it will take a little while to sink in. I was so into the program and what I was doing. Then it was like okay, I've won now - what's next? I think I'm going to let it sink in and enjoy it. It's been a long wait."

Although he finished twelfth out of fifteen skaters in the short program and dead last overall, one of the most interesting stories of the competition was that of Brampton's Vern Taylor. After making history by landing the first triple Axel at the World Championships back in 1978, Taylor had turned professional and enjoyed success as a coach. Reinstating to the amateur ranks along with so many others in 1993, thirty-five-year-old Vern qualified to compete in Edmonton by placing fourth at the Divisional Championships behind Stojko, Matthew Hall and Christopher Bourne. He told a reporter from the "Vancouver Sun" on January 14, 1994, "It's not that I'm trying to prove I can still do it. If I hadn't made this decision, I would have been sitting at home now watching the Canadians and wondering 'What if?'" One of Taylor's students, David D'Cruz, competed in the junior men's event. He told reporter Joanne Ireland, "He doesn't really look like an old guy. I think he doesn't look so old because he's so short. That, and he dyes his hair."

When we reflect on the 1994 Canadian Figure Skating Championships in Edmonton, we're swept back to a golden era - when figure skating wasn't just a sport, it was a national obsession. It was the age of Kurt and Elvis, legends so iconic they needed no last names, gliding into living rooms and hearts across the country. That moment in time wasn’t just special, it was electric. Today, in a world that’s always urging us to "move on" and "look ahead," there’s something deeply valuable about skating backwards for a while. Nostalgia isn't just sentimentality - it's a compass pointing us to what once made this sport soar: cheap tickets, unforgettable performances and extensive media coverage that highlighted the compelling stories of Canada's greatest skaters - both on and off the ice. And not a t-shirt cannon in sight!

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Bluesky, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering one of eight fascinating books highlighting the history of figure skating: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

From Rollers To Rulebooks: The Len Seagrave Story

R.S. Bailey, Tony Abbs, G. Brind, Len Seagrave and Jessie Seagrave. Photo courtesy John C. Fry.

The son of Mary and James Seagrave, Leonard 'Len' Charles Seagrave was born May 9, 1907, in London, England. He grew up on Frobisher Road in Hornsey, the second oldest of three brothers. His father worked as a stationery printer. 

Len got his start in the skating world as a speedster at the age of nineteen, finishing second in the British Half-Mile Championship on rollers in 1926. The following year, he competed in the national outdoor ice speed skating contest for the King Edward VII Cup on the frozen Lingay Fen. When the National Skating Association celebrated its Golden Jubilee with a half-mile roller race at Alexandra Palace in 1929, twenty-two-year-old Len took top honours. As a member of the Aldwych Speed Club, he also won the inter-club relay championship for the Burgoyne Shield. In the late twenties, he began figure skating on both rollers and ice. In 1931, he won a 'boot and golosh' race at the Golders Green Ice Rink.

As a representative of the Alexandra Palace Roller Skating Club, Len was British Roller Figure Champion in 1932 and twice a winner of the Devonshire Park Bowl - in 1932 and 1936. Perhaps most impressively, he was one of precious few skaters to pass the National Skating Association's tests in numerous disciplines, both on rollers and ice. He was a Gold Medallist in roller speed, a Silver Medallist in roller figures, roller dance and ice dance and Bronze Medallist in English Style figures (both on ice and rollers) and International Style Figures (ice). His versatility and talent knew no bounds.

During World War II, Len was a Flight Lieutenant with the Royal Air Force's Balloon Branch. He was demobilized as a squadron leader, and upon returning home to his wife Jessie in England, returned to the skating world as an administrator. His service to the National Skating Association spanned four decades. He served on every single one of the Association's Committees and was a long-term member of the Ice Dance Committee. He was elected Treasurer in 1951 and Vice-Chairman in 1966. He served as the Association's representative to the British Olympic Association for many years and was involved in the Central Council of Physical Recreation and the Sports Council. He was also a respected figure skating and ice dancing judge, serving at numerous British Championships. In 1951 and 1960, he judged the ice dance event at the World Championships, where Jean Westwood and Lawrence Demmy and Doreen Denny and Courtney Jones took top honours. At the 1951 competition in Milan, he was the only judge on the panel to place the top seven couples in the order they ultimately finished. In the sixties, he served as a Substitute Council Member with the ISU, as well as a Substitute to the Ice Dance Technical Committee and donated cups for two very different skating events - one a women's free skating competition; the other a roller speed championship. 

In 1973, Len was honoured for his 'Services To Skating' with an induction as an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE). Three years later, in 1976, the National Skating Association honoured him with an Honorary Life Membership for Distinguished Services. He was elected as President of the Association that same year, and presided over British figure skating during a golden era, when Robin Cousins succeeded John Curry as Olympic Gold Medallist. At the Association's Centenary Gala in 1979, he played host to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh.

Len sadly passed away during his term as the National Skating Association's President on January 26, 1984, in Harrow, Middlesex, at the age of seventy-six, just nineteen days before Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean made history with their stunning "Bolero" as Great Britain's first Olympic Gold Medallists in ice dancing. You may not have heard his name before, but his tireless work behind the scenes in the British skating world deserves both recognition and thanks.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.