Members of the Canadian World team enroute to the 1961 World Championships in Prague
South of the border, John F. Kennedy had just been sworn in as the thirty-fifth President of the United States. Canada's Prime Minister was John Diefenbaker. Canadians who could afford the hefty price tag of a new RCA colour television set cackled at the antics of Fred Flinstone and those who couldn't hummed along to the Connie Francis' hit "Where The Boys Are" on their record players. The year was 1961.
With the loss of the entire U.S. figure skating team along with coaches, judges and family members in Sabena Flight 548 on February 15, 1961, the year 1961 is rightfully remembered as the darkest one figure skating has ever seen. However, less than a month before the tragedy, the future couldn't have seemed brighter for the seventy-four competitors at the 1961 Canadian Figure Skating Championships. Yet, the three-day event, held from January 25 to 27, 1961 at the Lachine Arena and Montreal Forum, was linked to a disaster of its own.
Exactly one month after Canada's best figure skaters catapulted themselves over the ice in the Québec city of Montreal, the ice fell from the sky in what was dubbed the Ice Storm Of '61. Power and telephone lines were down for almost a week and many homes went without heat, lights, water and cooking facilities for nearly a week in the dead of winter.
Only a month before the ice storm struck residents of Lachine and Montreal were sitting in the freezing cold by choice, entranced by the phenomenal figure skating being performed in their very own backyard. Let's take a trip back in time to 1961 and see what all of the talk was about!
THE JUNIOR EVENTS
To the disappointment of the sparse crowd hoping for a Québec win (only four hundred of the two thousand seats were filled for the earliest events) all four of the junior titles went to skaters from Ontario. The event with the fewest competitors was the junior men's event, won by Donald Knight of the Dundas Figure Skating Club. The shortest of the three contestants at 4'9", Knight was described in the January 27, 1961 issue of "The Ottawa Citizen" as "a freckle-faced 13-year old who likes to read detective stories". He outskated Bill Neale of the Stamford Skating Club and Nelson Belmore of the Burlington Figure Skating Club for the title. Four teams competed in the junior pairs event. Seventeen-year-old Elinor Flack and sixteen-year-old Philip McCordic of Toronto emerged the victors, defeating Wendy Warne and Jim Watters, Susan Herriott and Michael Hart and Linda Ann Ward and Neil Carpenter. Ten teams started the junior dance event; four skated in the final round. The winners hailed from the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club, seventeen-year-old Paulette Doan and eighteen-year-old Ken Ormsby. They soundly defeated fifteen-year-old Marilyn Crawford and sixteen-year-old Blair Armitage of the Minto Skating Club, as well as Carole Holliday and Brian Baillie and Linda Pallett and Gregory Folk with polished compulsory dances, a credit to their coach Geraldine Fenton. In contrast to the low numbers in the junior men's and pairs events, over a dozen young Canadians vied for the junior women's title. Fifteen-year-old Norma Sedlar of Vancouver won the school figures, but in the free skate, a young upstart from Toronto you may have heard of named Petra Burka turned the tide and earned the gold medal with her athletic performance. Sedlar settled for silver ahead of Winnipeg's Darlene Turk and Fort William's Jennifer Jean Wilkin.
THE ICE DANCE COMPETITION
Already the defending Canadian Champions and World Silver Medallists at fifteen and twenty-two, Virginia Thompson and Bill McLachlan were considered shoe-ins to defend their national title in 1961. However, a sibling team from the Connaught Skating Club, Donna Lee and John (J.D.) Mitchell was nipping at their heels.
The Mitchells were coached by four-time World Champion Jean Westwood, who had previously coached Thompson and his former partner Geraldine Fenton, who was coaching Paulette Doan and Ken Ormsby, junior champions 'skating up' in the senior ranks. Confused yet? Drink your juice, Shelby. In the compulsories, to no one's surprise Thompson and McLachlan took a healthy lead. However, when Doan and Ormsby managed to outskate the Mitchells it became clear that the silver medal was going to be a two-team race. In front of a packed crowd at the Forum, Thompson and McLachlan defended their national title with an effortless, rhythmic free dance and the Mitchells rebounded to claim the silver medal over Doan and Ormsby in an extremely close contest, with more ordinals but fewer points.
THE WOMEN'S COMPETITION
At sixteen, Wendy Griner was already the defending Canadian Champion, an Olympian and ranked seventh in the world. Both Toronto's Sonia Snelling and Vancouver's Shirra Kenworthy had gained valuable experience from competing in the 1960 World Championships in Vancouver, but it was clear to many that barring a meltdown, Griner was quite likely to defend her title... and that's exactly what she did!
First, on every judge's scorecard, Griner won both the school figures and free skating, ending up with the gold medal and a total of 942.42 points. She actually had over thirty-five points more than Kenworthy and Snelling, who found themselves in an identical situation to the Mitchells and Doan and Ormsby in the ice dance event. The judging system that was in place at the time gave second place to Kenworthy with a score of 873.57 and the bronze to Snelling with a score of 875.16, the result determined by the ordinals and not only the points the skaters received. Otto Gold's daughter Frances placed fourth ahead of Winnipeg's Jocelyn Davidson, Lachine's Joy Ann Moyer, Vancouver's Maralee Rutley, Owen Sound's Rose Bilyk and Ottawa's Lorinda Farrell.
THE MEN'S COMPETITION
Like Thompson and McLachlan and Griner, twenty-year-old Donald Jackson was really in a class by himself at the 1961 Canadian Championships. He was already an Olympic Bronze Medallist, two-time World Champion, North American Champion and two-time Canadian Champion, and competing at the event was in many ways a mere formality before heading to Prague to compete in the 1961 World Championships. Ever humble, Jackson was quoted in "The Montreal Gazette" on January 25, 1961 thusly: "No matter what happens I still have to get by the Canadian Championships here and this fellow Don McPherson from Stratford could give me a tough time." Perhaps in the free skate, but certainly not in the school figures. Jackson won the initial phase of the event by over thirty points points and only expanded his lead in the free skate. He earned the first 6.0 of his career with his dazzling performance, executing the first crossover Axel ever attempted at the Canadian Championships and attempting the first split double Lutz, though faltering slightly on the landing. Donald McPherson finished almost seventy-five points back in second and Bradley Black of the Winter Club of St. Catharine's earned the bronze with a score that was one hundred points less than McPherson's.
THE PAIRS AND FOURS COMPETITION
With the retirement of Olympic Gold Medallists and four-time World Champions Barbara Wagner and Bob Paul, 1961 was supposed to be Maria and Otto Jelinek's year. The siblings, mired in red tape, had been promised exit Visas from Prague, but they still hadn't received a reply to their request for release from Czechoslovakian citizenship less than two weeks before leaving for the 1961 Canadian Championships. George Hasler had said that if the Reds didn't acquiesce the International Skating Union would "contact all members of the ISU and decide on a new site for the 1961 World Championship." The ISU even had sites in mind: Dortmund and Cortina d'Ampezzo. When the Jelineks arrived in Montreal, they met with the consul who provided them with documents releasing them from citizenship, signed by the Czechoslovakian Minister Of The Interior himself. Unfortunately, the Jelineks fell early in their performance in Montreal when Otto got his skate caught in the cuff of his pants. However, the rest of their performance went very well and they managed to win their first Canadian title with a score of 57.6. Gertrude Desjardins and Maurice LaFrance placed second with 51.8; Debbi Wilkes and Guy Revell third with 50.1. In her book "Ice Time", Debbi Wilkes recalled, "We went to Lachine for the Canadians, expecting to stay one lock behind the Jelineks as they moved up the ranks to become champions. But a pair from the Toronto Cricket Club, Gertie Desjardins and Maurice LaFrance, beat us to come in second. This was a little shock to the system. We suspected that some muscle-flexing by the Cricket Club was involved, seeing as how we were sure our performance was better, but we soon off to the North American Championships and we didn't think the reach of the Cricket Club could extend to Philadelphia." A fours competition was scheduled to be held, but when only one entry - Susan Herriott, Nancy Brooks, Michael Hart and Bradley Black - showed up from the Winter Club of St. Catharine's, the discipline was not officially contested.
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, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the 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 JUNIOR EVENTS
Photos courtesy "Skating" magazine
To the disappointment of the sparse crowd hoping for a Québec win (only four hundred of the two thousand seats were filled for the earliest events) all four of the junior titles went to skaters from Ontario. The event with the fewest competitors was the junior men's event, won by Donald Knight of the Dundas Figure Skating Club. The shortest of the three contestants at 4'9", Knight was described in the January 27, 1961 issue of "The Ottawa Citizen" as "a freckle-faced 13-year old who likes to read detective stories". He outskated Bill Neale of the Stamford Skating Club and Nelson Belmore of the Burlington Figure Skating Club for the title. Four teams competed in the junior pairs event. Seventeen-year-old Elinor Flack and sixteen-year-old Philip McCordic of Toronto emerged the victors, defeating Wendy Warne and Jim Watters, Susan Herriott and Michael Hart and Linda Ann Ward and Neil Carpenter. Ten teams started the junior dance event; four skated in the final round. The winners hailed from the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club, seventeen-year-old Paulette Doan and eighteen-year-old Ken Ormsby. They soundly defeated fifteen-year-old Marilyn Crawford and sixteen-year-old Blair Armitage of the Minto Skating Club, as well as Carole Holliday and Brian Baillie and Linda Pallett and Gregory Folk with polished compulsory dances, a credit to their coach Geraldine Fenton. In contrast to the low numbers in the junior men's and pairs events, over a dozen young Canadians vied for the junior women's title. Fifteen-year-old Norma Sedlar of Vancouver won the school figures, but in the free skate, a young upstart from Toronto you may have heard of named Petra Burka turned the tide and earned the gold medal with her athletic performance. Sedlar settled for silver ahead of Winnipeg's Darlene Turk and Fort William's Jennifer Jean Wilkin.
THE ICE DANCE COMPETITION
Virginia Thompson and Bill McLachlan
Already the defending Canadian Champions and World Silver Medallists at fifteen and twenty-two, Virginia Thompson and Bill McLachlan were considered shoe-ins to defend their national title in 1961. However, a sibling team from the Connaught Skating Club, Donna Lee and John (J.D.) Mitchell was nipping at their heels.
Donna Lee and J.D. Mitchell. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.
The Mitchells were coached by four-time World Champion Jean Westwood, who had previously coached Thompson and his former partner Geraldine Fenton, who was coaching Paulette Doan and Ken Ormsby, junior champions 'skating up' in the senior ranks. Confused yet? Drink your juice, Shelby. In the compulsories, to no one's surprise Thompson and McLachlan took a healthy lead. However, when Doan and Ormsby managed to outskate the Mitchells it became clear that the silver medal was going to be a two-team race. In front of a packed crowd at the Forum, Thompson and McLachlan defended their national title with an effortless, rhythmic free dance and the Mitchells rebounded to claim the silver medal over Doan and Ormsby in an extremely close contest, with more ordinals but fewer points.
THE WOMEN'S COMPETITION
Wendy Griner
At sixteen, Wendy Griner was already the defending Canadian Champion, an Olympian and ranked seventh in the world. Both Toronto's Sonia Snelling and Vancouver's Shirra Kenworthy had gained valuable experience from competing in the 1960 World Championships in Vancouver, but it was clear to many that barring a meltdown, Griner was quite likely to defend her title... and that's exactly what she did!
Shirra Kenworthy. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.
First, on every judge's scorecard, Griner won both the school figures and free skating, ending up with the gold medal and a total of 942.42 points. She actually had over thirty-five points more than Kenworthy and Snelling, who found themselves in an identical situation to the Mitchells and Doan and Ormsby in the ice dance event. The judging system that was in place at the time gave second place to Kenworthy with a score of 873.57 and the bronze to Snelling with a score of 875.16, the result determined by the ordinals and not only the points the skaters received. Otto Gold's daughter Frances placed fourth ahead of Winnipeg's Jocelyn Davidson, Lachine's Joy Ann Moyer, Vancouver's Maralee Rutley, Owen Sound's Rose Bilyk and Ottawa's Lorinda Farrell.
THE MEN'S COMPETITION
Like Thompson and McLachlan and Griner, twenty-year-old Donald Jackson was really in a class by himself at the 1961 Canadian Championships. He was already an Olympic Bronze Medallist, two-time World Champion, North American Champion and two-time Canadian Champion, and competing at the event was in many ways a mere formality before heading to Prague to compete in the 1961 World Championships. Ever humble, Jackson was quoted in "The Montreal Gazette" on January 25, 1961 thusly: "No matter what happens I still have to get by the Canadian Championships here and this fellow Don McPherson from Stratford could give me a tough time." Perhaps in the free skate, but certainly not in the school figures. Jackson won the initial phase of the event by over thirty points points and only expanded his lead in the free skate. He earned the first 6.0 of his career with his dazzling performance, executing the first crossover Axel ever attempted at the Canadian Championships and attempting the first split double Lutz, though faltering slightly on the landing. Donald McPherson finished almost seventy-five points back in second and Bradley Black of the Winter Club of St. Catharine's earned the bronze with a score that was one hundred points less than McPherson's.
THE PAIRS AND FOURS COMPETITION
Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine
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, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the 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.