Photo courtesy Will Grendahl
"Figure skating is more than a sport-hobby. It is a way of life!" - Michael Kirby
Born on February 20, 1925, in the picturesque town of Sydney, Nova Scotia, Michael John Ronald Kirby was the son of Frederick Luke Kirby, a department store manager from Toronto who had served as an airman during The Great War. His mother, Ann (McIsaac) Kirby, hailed from Glace Bay and was the daughter of the general traffic manager for the Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation. Both parents were raised in devout Roman Catholic households. When Michael turned four, the family left their home on George Street in Sydney and journeyed west to Winnipeg, where his father took on the role of manager at the local Woolworth's store.
Not long after they arrived in the Prairies, Michael fell extremely ill with a heart deformity caused by rheumatic fever and was bedridden for approximately a year. A visiting heart specialist recommended skating as a healthful activity that might put a little pep in the sickly boy's step. Fred Kirby, an ex-hockey player, held the strong belief that a parent should be a child's primary educator. To fulfill this role, he purchased a pair of figure skates and dedicated himself to mastering them, all to teach his young son, Michael. As Michael's health began to get better, he started picking up skating skills from his dad on a pond in a vacant lot that had been transformed into an ice rink by the local fire department.
When Michael began taking formal skating lessons and entering competitions, his health improved dramatically. At six foot three and one hundred and seventy-three pounds in his teens, he towered over his competitors. In 1938, he headed to Montreal for his first Canadian Championships, where he placed last among the five skaters vying for the junior men's title. The following year, the Kirby's packed up again and headed east to Toronto when his father was transferred to the Woolworth's store there. Michael joined the Toronto Skating Club and returned to the Canadian Championships in 1940, where he finished second in the junior men's event to Denis Ross and won the junior pairs title with Shirley Ann Halsted. The following year, he won the junior men's title and the fours title with Tasie (Theresa) McCarthy, Donald Gilchrist and Virginia Wilson. His success as a fours skater earned him a trip to the 1941 North American Championships in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, where the Toronto Four he was part of won the silver medal.
In 1942, Michael teamed up with Donald Gilchrist, Virginia Wilson and Eleanor O'Meara to win a second Canadian fours title and won the senior men's title on his first and only try. The July 18, 1953 issue of "The Montreal Ensign" recalled that in winning the Canadian men's title, "He was no sickly invalid doing the glide and waltz type of skating but a robust, square-shouldered young man who dazzled his audiences with his violent twists, leaps and spins."
Several factors contributed to Michael's decision not to remain in the amateur ranks. During World War II, pretty much every Canadian men's skater was involved in the War effort in one way or another. Michael had no one to compete against and the cancellation of international skating events during wartime meant he had little to strive towards. He had also graduated from a five-year high school course at St. Michael's College in January 1942. An offer from Shipstad and Johnson's Ice Follies tour was just too attractive to pass up for a seventeen-year-old.
Several factors contributed to Michael's decision not to remain in the amateur ranks. During World War II, pretty much every Canadian men's skater was involved in the War effort in one way or another. Michael had no one to compete against and the cancellation of international skating events during wartime meant he had little to strive towards. He had also graduated from a five-year high school course at St. Michael's College in January 1942. An offer from Shipstad and Johnson's Ice Follies tour was just too attractive to pass up for a seventeen-year-old.
Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine
While on tour, love blossomed between Michael and a familiar face, Canadian women's and pairs champion Norah McCarthy. However, the tall, dark and handsome young Caper was on the verge of being lured away from the tour by what appeared at first to be a more attractive contract offer from MGM. He turned to Norah for advice. In the July 18, 1953 issue of "The Manitoba Ensign", Michael explained, "I have always had a great respect for a woman's intuition so before I signed on the dotted line with MGM, I wanted a woman's viewpoint first. I had known Norah since I was twelve, had been in competitions in Canada with her and we were at that time partners in the Ice Follies. She had good common sense as well as intuition so I took her along to the studio with me. That day I discovered that I needed Norah not only as a pass to get me past MGM but I needed her life partnership as a pass to get me past St. Peter." The young lovebirds married at the ages of nineteen and twenty-one at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, California. Their attendants were Mr. and Mrs. Eddie Shipstad.
Sonja Henie and Michael Kirby
Sonja Henie and Michael Kirby
Sonja Henie and Michael Kirby
Michael Kirby and Sonja Henie
Initially, the decision to sign with MGM seemed to have been an unwise move. Given bit part after bit part, Michael appeared to be on the fast track to nowhere. All of that changed in 1948 when his contract ended and he was cast as the leading man in the Universal film "The Countess Of Monte Cristo" alongside Sonja Henie.
Michael was given generally favourable reviews for his role as Lieutenant Paul von Cram in the film "The Countess Of Monte Cristo". The December 8, 1948 issue of "The Post-Standard" described him as an "adequate" actor and "excellent skater" who was "dashing and handsome enough to flutter feminine hearts." A provision in his contract for the film required him to appear as Sonja's leading man in Arthur M. Wirtz' Holiday Ice Revue.
In 1950, Michael headed overseas to Great Britain, where he starred alongside a second Olympic Gold Medallist, Barbara Ann Scott in "Rose Marie On Ice" for eight weeks. In 1951, when Wirtz replaced Henie with Scott in Hollywood Ice Revue, Michael returned to take on the principal male role in the tour. Though Michael and Barbara Ann developed a lifelong friendship, he described Sonja Henie as "the best partner I've ever had."
Michael Kirby and Barbara Ann Scott
Michael Kirby and Barbara Ann Scott. Photo courtesy Will Grendahl.
By the mid-fifties, Michael and Norah yearned to settle down. Together, they had already welcomed four of their eight - yes, eight - children. They settled in River Forest, Illinois, where Michael opened the first of his Michael Kirby Skating Schools in December 1953. In the school's first month, Michael and Norah were already teaching classes to five hundred young students on a 30 X 40 studio ice rink. In an interview in the February 25, 1954 issue of the "Long Island Star-Journal", he explained, "It's something I've always looked forward to. I guess I'm a fanatic on the subject but I'm convinced that skating is as fine as an all-around conditioner as swimming and it's equally good for all age groups. We were a little doubtful of the school's success at first. It seemed like a risky business and we sunk everything we had in it but it's worked out even better than we expected."
By the sixties, the school had proved so successful that Michael Kirby Ice Skating Schools were opened in downtown Chicago, Carpentersville, Dolton and Westmont. These small studio rinks offered an almost classroom-like environment to would-be skaters, with windowed seating areas for parents to watch their little Barbara Ann Scott's and Sonja Henie's of tomorrow as they learned the fundamentals of the sport.
Michael's goal with these schools was to take the elitism out of skating and make skating instruction available to everyone, regardless of their race, religion or how much money Mommy and Daddy had in the bank. He even marketed his own brand of skates to his students. During this period, he also proved instrumental in the creation of the ISI system and served as the organization's first President from 1961 to 1963. In 1968, he was inducted into the ISI's Hall Of Fame. He took on a second term as President from 1971 to 1973.
Michael's coaching career wasn't without controversy. Twice, his schools and students faced suspensions from the USFSA due to violations of the stringent amateur sanction rules. Back in those days, even a minor oversight, like failing to properly adhere to the correct procedures for requesting a sanction for a club carnival, was considered an infraction of the rules in the eyes of the U.S. Figure Skating Association.
Photos courtesy "Skating" magazine (left) and "Ice Skate" magazine (right)
Michael's coaching career wasn't without controversy. Twice, his schools and students faced suspensions from the USFSA due to violations of the stringent amateur sanction rules. Back in those days, even a minor oversight, like failing to properly adhere to the correct procedures for requesting a sanction for a club carnival, was considered an infraction of the rules in the eyes of the U.S. Figure Skating Association.
Michael Kirby skating with Chatter The Chimpanzee and Sister Sean Edell
After almost two decades of running his schools, Michael left Chicago in 1973 and helped the powers that be behind the Ice Capades build rinks all around the world. He also penned three books: "Skating For Beginners" (1959, with Barbara Ann Scott), "The Young Sportsman's Guide To Ice Skating" (1962) and "Figure Skating To Fancy Skating: Memoirs Of The Life Of Sonja Henie" (2000). Among his students during this period were a young David and Jimmie Santee.
Michael spent his latter years sailing and travelling with Norah and passed away on May 25, 2002, at the age of seventy-seven. In 2011, his son David Kirby - an accomplished coach and ISU Technical Specialist - recalled his father in an interview on The Manleywoman SkateCast thusly: "I think my Dad was really a pioneer in many fields. I know people think of him as just a skater, but he worked with Eunice Kennedy Shriver, for example, very closely on the Special Olympics. And I remember he had a connection with the Kennedy family because he got to know a lot of the Kennedys during the late 1950s and early 1960s. I think that he did know a lot of celebrities through that, but I was probably too young. I remember teaching Cary Grant's grandchildren how to skate, and he came to the rink and somehow he knew my Dad... I never really appreciated the type of people my father associated with because I didn’t really understand who they were at the time, because I was just young. But I do know that he did have several connections with Hollywood and the business community, he knew Ronald Reagan, and it was all through skating. And he told me that one of the things he loved about skating was the great amount of interesting people he met all around the world. And that was the reason he always used for me to continue skating. He said, 'You’ll meet the greatest people in your life.' And he's been right."
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