From Cotton Club To Camel Spins: The Edward Henderson Story

"Music and medicine are both divine disciplines. You're dealing with the human body, which is a divine creation, on one hand. And then you're dealing with the divine creation of music. The universe is made of music. Everybody's billions of cells in their bodies - those are vibrations, the vibrations of the solar system, the movement; everything's in a constant flux. And I'm dealing with both of them. They're just very different mediums through which you can see yourself." - Edward Henderson, "Jazz Times", 2001

Born October 26, 1940 in New York City, Edward Henderson (Jackson) was surrounded by music from the day he was born. His mother Vivian was one of The Brown Twins, famous dancers in the original Cotton Club who rubbed shoulders with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Billie Holliday. His father Eddie was a tenor singer with The Cherioteers, a gospel/pop group who rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance, signed with Columbia Records and appeared in "Hellzapoppin'" on Broadway.

Young Edward received his first trumpet lessons at the age of nine from Louis Armstrong himself and also received instruction from the legendary Miles Davis. After his father passed away, his mother remarried to Dr. Herbert Henderson, a wealthy San Francisco physician in June 1955. The family relocated to San Francisco when he was fourteen. While studying at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as a teenager, he watched a professional ice show and became absolutely taken with figure skating. "I had some athletic ability so I decided to take lessons," he explained in a January 1960 interview with The Associated Press. In a 2001 interview with Bill Milkowski he added, "During the summer I was on the ice at least 10 hours a day, from 5:30 in the morning until the evening. And at the same time I was going to the [San Francisco Conservatory of Music], going to high school, playing basketball, too."

The talented teenager competed in both the Pacific Coast and Midwestern Championships in the late fifties and early sixties, undaunted by the very real colour barrier that existed in the skating world at the time. Enlisting in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War period, he relocated to Colorado and was permitted entrance in the Denver Figure Skating Club, which he represented at the 1960 Midwestern Figure Skating Championships in Minneapolis. He placed sixth out of seven competitors in the school figures at that event, but made a considerable impression with his fine free skating and moved up to win the bronze.

In 1960, Edward expressed, "Amateur figure skating isn't a sport you can go into without money. Negroes as a group are not very wealthy, and I doubt whether many Negro athletes have had the opportunity that I've had in this sport, that is both the interest in it and the means... I never felt any special nervousness as the first of my race performing in this sport. I am grateful I've got the chance to lead the way. That's one of the reasons I'd like to stay in it for a while." After his stint as an airman ended in 1961 - the same year as the fateful Sabena Crash that took the lives of the entire U.S. figure skating team - Edward ultimately opted to leave the ice behind five years before the USFSA changed its by-laws to take a stand on racial prejudice within skating clubs to pursue joint careers in music and medicine. He passed the barrier breaking torch on to incredibly talented skaters of colour like Atoy Wilson, Joan Campbell, Reggie Stanley, Michelle McCladdie and Richard Ewell III, Bobby Beauchamp, Rory Flack Burghart and Debi Thomas.

Edward studied zoology and medicine at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 and got his M.D. at Howard University in 1968, but didn't start practicing medicine until the early seventies, instead choosing to devote much of his time energy to music. He performed with Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi band, Pharoah Sanders, McCoy Tyner, Slide Hampton and Elvin Jones. He also endorsed Selmer trumpets and toured Great Britain. In the years since he hung up his skates, he's produced albums under Capricorn Records, Columbia, Blue Note, Steeplechase Records and Smoke Records and served as a faculty member at the Juilliard School of Music and Oberlin University.

Whether on or off the ice, figure skaters are without a doubt some of the most driven, talented people in this world and Edward Henderson's story has to be one of the most fascinating and inspiring success stories out there.

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 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.

Skating Puts It Skate In Its Mouth: Blackface Minstrel Shows On Ice

I was really hesitant as to how I was going to approach the subject matter of today's blog. It's definitely a touchy subject and quite honestly, one that offends me personally. However, it is still a footnote from figure skating's history that I think absolutely merits being brought up.

Postcard by William Henry Ellam depicting a highly cariacturized skater of colour

In the nineteenth century, minstrel shows were a significant and unfortunately popular part of culture. The very act of donning blackface is one that screams exploitation, expropriation and blatant racism to us today, but the fact of the matter is that 'back then' it was something that was extremely commonplace as a form of Vaudeville-style entertainment. One doesn't have to go any further than the film "Gone With The Wind" and Hattie McDaniel's Academy Award winning role of Mammy to see how characters often perpetuated tired and offensive stereotypes, but the act of blackface was a whole different and much more abhorrent caricature. I'd love to be able to tell you that blackface minstrel acts didn't make their way into the figure skating world but I'm writing a blog about the subject, aren't I?

S.H. Hook and Jocelyn Clarke as King Tut and Queen Seti in the Toronto Skating Club's 1923 Carnival

On February 18, 1946, three New England Skating Clubs (Bridgeport's Holland's Skateland, Worcester's Dance And Figure Skating Club and the Rot-Land Figure Club in Norwood, Massachusetts) got together to present a skating show for the soldiers of Fort Devens right after World War II. The star of the show was Danny Ryan, who would sadly die in the 1961 Sabena Plane Crash that killed the entire U.S. figure skating team. Ryan, a future U.S. and North American Champion with partner Carol Ann Peters, would have nothing to do with the offending act in question. An article from the March 9, 1946 issue of Billboard Magazine proclaimed that "blackface reigns" in the show's act 'Minstrel Daze', "devised by Herbert L. Wilson... featured were Vernie Bauer, George Kuzina, Jerry Nista, Carrol Bodden, Paul Bauman and Bob Norton..." The worst part? The soldiers loved it.

Canadian Figure Skating Association President H.E. McLean and six time Canadian Champion Melville Rogers in "Plantation Party"

The next month, the Minto Skating Club in Ottawa presented their annual ice show Minto Follies. One of the acts in that year's show was called 'Plantation Party' and the majority of the skaters in the act dressed as wealthy, white plantation owners. The stars in this minstrel show on ice were two men who painted themselves in blackface, one dressed as a man and the other as a woman. They weren't just any old men either. One was a highly esteemed Canadian men's, pairs and fours skater: Olympian, six time Canadian Champion and six time North American Champion in Melville Rogers. The other? Wait for it... the President of The Canadian Figure Skating Association H.E. McLean. It certainly puts Mabel Fairbanks' story into perspective considering she would have been down in California trying to establish her coaching career at the exact same time all of this insanity was going on. Simply put, minstrel acts were not uncommon in many hotel and touring skating productions during that era. At least the grand finale of the Ice Cycles Of 1953, also called 'Minstrel Daze', had the decency to skip the blackface.

When World Champions Oksana Dominina and Maxim Shabalin showed up for the 2010 Olympic season with a tone-deaf original dance where they were dressed as "Australian aboriginals" wearing "war paint", the figure skating world weren't the only ones taken aback and offended. Australian aboriginal leaders were too. Sol Bellear, a member of the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation News, "We see it as stealing Aboriginal culture and it is yet another example of the Aboriginal people of Australia being exploited." Writer Patty Inglish noted, "The first 20 seconds of the routine are straight out of the 1920s and 1930s club performances of Blacks before white audiences. It smacks of the old minstrel show and discrimination new and old... The routine seems to resemble a parody or cartoon." The Russians later 'toned down' the offending performance but it is still widely regarded as one of ice dancing's biggest face palm/'Did that really just happen?' moments. Sadly, it did.

In James Baldwin's book "The Cross Of Redemption: Uncollected Writings", he offered a wonderful quote: "America sometimes resembles, at least from the point of view of a black man, an exceedingly monotonous minstrel show; the same dances, same music, same jokes. One has done (or been) the show so long that one can do it in one’s own sleep." I often think figure skating is in a way much in the same. A healthy dose of caution and creativity in exploring a whole new world of carving out stories on the ice could lead to so many wonderful adventures in expression on the ice. All it takes are more skaters and choreographers willing to take intelligent risks. The difference between risks in choreography and costuming and downright offensiveness is something that the skating world - as evidenced in this blog - hasn't always quite grasped.

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 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.

Racism At The Rink

"Puck" magazine political cartoon depicting a person of colour on a skating chair at the Union Skating Pond

One year after civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I Have A Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March On Washington, a riot broke out at a Medford, Massachusetts skating rink when a young black man asked to cut in on a young couple ice dancing together. According to the July 30, 1964 issue of "The Age", "before the brief fracas ended, at least 10 people suffered minor injuries, and the stone-throwing, club-wielding crowd damaged a bus and turned over a police car... Fifty club-swinging police from five nearby communities broke up the disturbance. Several police were pushed and punched by rioters. Others said they were hit by rocks... To prevent further fighting, the police escorted groups of youths out of Sullivan Square and made sure the crowds dispersed quickly. Police from Malden, Somerville, Boston and Cambridge and the metropolitan district commission assisted in breaking up the riot."

Flashback to almost twenty years earlier, north of the border. In 1945, a fifteen year old Toronto student named Harry Gairey Jr. made his first trip to the Icelandia indoor arena on Yonge Street with his friend Donny Jubas. Jubas was Caucasian; Gairey a person of colour. Gairey started skating at the age of eight and regularly frequented the Varsity Arena and Ryerson Park rink but when he and Jubas arrived to skate at this new rink on Yonge Street one day that winter, everything changed. "I go up to buy tickets and the guy says to me, 'We can't sell your friend a ticket,' I turn around and look behind me, then I turn back and say, 'Are you talking to me?' And he says, 'Yeah, I'm talking to you. We don't sell tickets to Negroes. We don't let them in here. So do you want only one ticket?' And I turn and say, 'Let's get out of here,'" Jubas recalled in a February 16, 2009 article in the "Toronto Star".

Like a broken record of Mabel Fairbanks' experiences in New York City, rink racism was still very much alive and well in many North American cities during that era... and like Fairbanks, Gairey didn't turn the other cheek. His father, a Pullman porter, had studied race relations and arranged a meeting with Alderman Norman Creed which alerted Mayor Robert Hood Saunders to the situation. Twenty five University Of Toronto students picketed the Icelandia rink with signs saying  "Color Prejudice Must Go" and "Racial Discrimination Should Not Be Tolerated". Two years later, as a direct result of the rink's refusal to admit Gairey, Toronto's city council passed an ordinance against discrimination based on race, colour, creed or religion. Gairey's father became a prominent activist for civil rights and the rink where Gairey, Jr. and Jubas skated as children was renamed the Harry Ralph Gairey Ice Rink. At the naming ceremony, Gairey and Jubas rekindled their childhood friendship.

In terms of breaking down colour barriers, skating has come a long, long way since the earlier decades of the twentieth century. There have been Olympic and World medallists of colour like Debi Thomas, Robin Szolkowy and Surya Bonaly. Just this past week, Vanessa James became the first woman of colour to win a medal at the European Championships in pairs skating.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks in conjunction with Black History Month, we'll be exploring the historical impact of persons of colour in the skating world on Skate Guard and I sincerely hope that these stories - some heartwarming, some heartbreaking - serve as a reminder of how far the skating world has come but how far it still has to go.

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 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.

Back In The USSR, Part Three: Ice Dancing's Humble Beginnings In The Soviet Union

"Perhaps the USSR will soon occupy all three rungs of the stand of honor." - Tamara (Bratus) Moskvina, "Skating" magazine, April 1970

Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko, Natalia Bestemianova and Andrei Bukin, Maya Usova and Alexander Zhulin... It would really be quite easy to assume from thinking back on these legendary names that ice dancers from The Soviet Union were always dominant. However, like everything else in figure skating history, everything begins somewhere.

In 1958, Svetlana Smirnova and Leonid Gordon made history at the European Championships in Bratislava as the first Soviet ice dance team to compete in a major ISU international competition. They finished dead last. Prior to taking up ice dancing, Smirnova had been a pairs skater with partner Yuri Nevsky. Nevsky had previously skated pairs with Ludmila Belousova before she teamed up with Oleg Protopopov and when he retired from competitive skating in 1957, he took on a major role in popularizing ice dance in the Soviet Union.

In the September 1962 issue of "Skating World" magazine, Nevsky wrote, "Ice dancing had been practiced in the Soviet Union at public rinks long before the USSR Federation became affiliated with the ISU. But it was merely a pastime for those who attended the rinks after their daily work and found pleasure in skating to music. The number of ice dances in those early days did not exceed a dozen, and the patterns were rather primitive, being based on simple edges. These were mainly polka, tango and foxtrot movements, waltzes (to both slow and fast tempo) and some dances converted to the ice from the ballroom, of the Pas de Grace and Pas d'Espagne type." Aside from recreational performance, the most audience that these dances really received was at carnivals.

Lynn Copley-Graves' wonderful 1992 book "Figure Skating History: The Evolution Of Dance On Ice" noted that "while reading the USFSA magazine 'Skating' in 1955, Yuri happened upon some ISU dances. He showed them to others and sparked interest in competitions using ISU regulations. Within a year, skaters at the public rinks embraced the new dances, calling them 'sporting dances'. Poor technical ability hampered progress because knowledge of edges, cross rolls, mohawks, etc. was scanty. As the Soviet skaters fumbled through the European Waltz, Foxtrot and Fourteenstep patterns, interest waned. The highly qualified skaters - those who could handle the intricacies of these dances - snubbed them, unconsciously associating them with the old dances. To them, the dances were 'a new toy for beginners or for those who attended the rinks for fun.' Only a few of the leading figure skaters recognized the worth of the new dancing. Among them were Yuri's pair partner Svetlana Smirnova and Leonid Gordon."

Coached by Larisa Novozhilova, Smirnova and Gordon learned fourteen ISU compulsory dances in a year and gave exhibitions in St. Petersburg but perhaps discouraged by their loss in Bratislava, turned professional and joined an ice ballet. However, their brief but pioneering step to putting ice dance on the map as a bona fide sporting discipline added credibility to these new dances, and it wasn't long before the Soviet federation adapted these 'new ISU dances' into their competitive structure and developed a three-tiered testing system with four levels in each tier. Within ten years, ice dancing had became so popular in the Soviet Union that qualifying competitions were instituted to whittle down the number of senior ice dance teams at the National Championships to fifteen.

Lyudmila Pakhomova and Alexander Gorshkov

By 1969, Lyudmila Pakhomova and Alexander Gorshkov were on the European and World podium. Their secret? Choreography from The Bolshoi Ballet. As compared to the severely contrasting style of the dominant British teams of that era, it would be the Soviet ice dancer's infusion of classical dance into their ice dancing that would give them that edge for years to come. Talk about a contrast from initial resistance to innovation!

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 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.

Back In The USSR, Part Two: Training Behind The Iron Curtain

"We can only guess at what age human 'motor bricks' are formed. But considering hundreds of years of ballet experience in Russia and the fact that the Moscow Ballet School students start at age seven, we have to presume that at age twelve, 'motor bricks' are already rather 'firm' and it is hard, if not impossible, to get rid of incorrect 'pronunciation' in body motion. - Dr. Sergei Aleshinsky

It wasn't until the sixties that the Soviet Sports Program started taking figure skating seriously. Prior to that, as Henry W. Morton noted in his 1963 book "Soviet Sport: Mirror Of The Soviet Society" sports with low military potential like figure skating and tennis just weren't paid much credence. Initially, unless officials believed that a skater could contend for a medal they simply weren't 'good enough' to be sent to international events.

Galina Beskina of Moscow, who took from Boris Podkopaev

However, with the success of many Soviet skaters abroad as the sixties wore on, the Soviet Sports Program began to recognize the potential of competitive figure skating. They took concerted steps to get people on the ice. Morton explained that "in winter, which is usually severe and lasts from six to eight months, skating surfaces in cities are flooded to provide frozen pathways in parks and near large stadia." The whole point of this would have been to not only promote physical education, but to get people in skates and moving. It was all about hand picked talent identification sweetie. Among those who first learned to skate on a flooded sports field? None other than the legendary Tamara Moskvina herself.

A great example of the push to get more and more skaters on the ice during this period comes from Miriam Morton's 1974 book  "The Making Of Champions: Soviet Sports For Children And Teenagers". Morton writes that "there is also a countrywide movement to teach figure skating to masses of children. The 'Pionerskaya Pravda' and the figure skating schools are encouraging this. In Moscow, for instance, there are posters at every skating rink inviting children and teenagers to enroll for free instruction and practice. To give balance to the program, these figure skating centers offer calisthetics, elements of music appreciation, and ballet dancing... Marina Sanaya began her training in one of these centers. When she was thirteen, she participated in the world championship competition in Calgary, Canada. 'So far,' reported a Soviet sports journalist with a touch of humor, 'her biggest reward has been a kiss and a big hug from her parents, but she skated with champions Karen Magnussen and Janet Lynn.'"

Lynn Copley-Graves, in her wonderful book "Figure Skating History: The Evolution Of Dance On The Ice" noted that in the late sixties and early seventies "Soviet skating developed rapidly as skaters and coaches took back training techniques and ideas for competitive tiers from their interactions abroad. By 1969, Soviet competitors could work up through club, city, provincial and national meets... Ice time was no problem, because competitors could attend school in the morning or afternoon or fit training time around their work schedule. Everyone either worked or went to school. Dressmakers were paid to design costumes for the competitors to fit the music or theme, and competitors had access to the Union House of Music or Conservatory to pick out music... Most World Class skaters trained in Moscow or Leningrad, drilling the same whether for pairs or dance... At Moscow's Crystal Palace, Nancy D'Wolf watched six skaters go through drills that seemed like 100 of everything for two hours: Axels, Argentine twizzles, waltz jump split lifts, Kilian patterns. The warmup readied them for program run-throughs... There were no tests at the lower levels. Either trainers passed their students on to the next level of proficiency, or the students achieved the next level by winning a certain event. Soviet skaters were called 'sportsmen,' not athletes; those considered 'pros' skated in shows. When the sportsmen practiced, no one else could used the ice. In August, the Moscow rink closed to all other skating to let the sportsmen train for the upcoming season. As skaters progressed to higher competitive levels, they received more ice time."

Promising young skaters received free skating attire and competed against the students of other coaches. Each city's training bases held regular competitions, closed to the public. The objectives of these city competitions weren't just to offer skaters competitive opportunities but also to identify potential international competitors, the national competition in the Soviet Union not being the sole basis on which international assignments were selected. By the seventies, the Soviet Union had over fifty artificial rinks and four thousand competitive figure skaters.

Copley-Graves further explained, "Lower-level skaters trained three hours a day and world class [ones] put in four hours a day on the ice. Exercise programs - running and floor exercises imitating figure skating technique - supplemented on-ice practice in a deliberately prolonged training cycle to make skaters peak later in life. To develop instructional techniques, Soviet trainers analyzed videotapes of top World competitors... One aspect of Soviet training is to develop skaters equally in both directions, instead of just counterclockwise... While Western skating associations struggled with methods for guaranteeing accreditation of coaches, the Soviet system set up Institutes of Physical Culture. Even the best skaters had to graduate from an institute to coach. Medical doctors and scientists - many among them former competitors - researched the mechanics, physics and biology of figure skating. Skating coaches were, thus, specialists and commanded high social status; they worked independently with the less advanced skaters. Ballet choreographers helped coaches arrange [programs] and exhibition numbers for the elite competitors...  Many retired sportsmen went on to coach the youngsters. The Soviet government considered a full-time job as working 16 hours a week, and they spread the word to keep everyone employed. Thus, the many instructors worked on a rotation basis."

Irina Rodnina and Alexander Zaitsev

The Soviet Union's identification of the relationship between physics and figure skating technique understandably gave Soviet skaters an edge and interestingly, an American coach of renown who I spoke with explained that a Soviet skating manual discussing physics was indeed smuggled into the U.S. by a Russian coach and this information has indeed been disseminated and passed on through oral tradition to several American coaches over the years.

Another obvious advantage that Soviet skaters had was dance training. Elena Tchaikovskaya was one of the eminent coaches who stressed the importance of ballet training to coaches and Sergei Alechinsky, in the September-October 1988 edition of "Professional Skaters Magazine" noted that "the students of the Soviet specialized figure skating schools begin to attend ballet classes at about the same time they are selected for the school (about six years old)."

Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov at the 1986 World Championships in Geneva

Although the concept of the Soviet Union's training system may seem completely foreign to those of us living in other countries, there's no denying that many aspects of their system, in particular the study of physics and implementation of ballet training, were really ahead of their time. Like it or not, the system certainly produced more champions that you can shake a skate guard at.

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 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.

Back In The USSR, Part One: Propaganda And The Soviet Sports Program

"Take our warning:
If you want to keep your health,
Don't you ever,
Wait for doctors, act yourself.
Bathe in cold water every morning
If you want to keep your health."

- Soviet health and sport propaganda blasted over loudspeakers at the Central Stadium, Spartakiad, 1956

Back in April of last year, we took a look at the first skating club in Russia and some of Russia's first skaters of note. In today's blog, I want to return to the region and explore just how figure skating began its sickeningly slow rise to prominence under the Soviet state. Let's start by taking a look at some of the problems facing figure skating in the period leading up to the December 29, 1922 formation of The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Prior to the formation of the Soviet Union, many athletes competing winter sports received little to no funding, which greatly impacted their ability to travel to international competitions. In fact, seeing as Nikolay Panin-Kolomenkin competed at the 1903 World Championships and Lidia Popova and A.L. Fischer at the 1908 World Championships in their home country, the only Russian skaters between 1900 and 1922 who competed abroad at a World Championships were Fedor Datlin, Ivan Malinin, Sergei Wanderfliet and Xenia Caesar. In fact, winter sports funding on the whole during this period was so bad that in 1912, European and World speed skating champion Nikolai Strunnikov left the sport when he was refused financial support for his trips to compete abroad.

Ivan Malinin

Russian Studies lecturer James Riordan explained in his 1977 book "Sport In Soviet Society: Development Of Sport And Physical Education In Russia And The USSR" that this period of scant international representation in Russia was moreso "a busy time for the organized sports movement, with tentative government backing and overall control. More and more clubs were formed, schools and courses of physical training were established in the larger cities." We also learn from Riordan that from 1917 to 1920, skating became a sport which gained more focus. "The existing Vsevobuch training programme was extended from 96 hours to 576 hours in urban areas and to 436 hours in rural localities, spread over two years... The new programme also made provision for lectures in hygiene, anatomy and physiology." As you can tell by the years, this increased focus on developing skating as a sport predated the official start of the Soviet Union. Although during the period of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet Sports Program was already rearing up.

Soviet figurine of female figure skater, twentieth century

The first official championships of the Soviet Union may have been held in Moscow in 1923 and won by Yuriy Zel'dovich but why did it take so long for the Soviet Union to start pumping out champion after champion? Yuri Brokhin's book "The Big Red Machine The Rise And Fall Of Soviet Olympic Champions" may provide an important clue that held true for several decades in the Soviet Union: "To be admitted to a skating school is more difficult than to pass the entrance exams at Moscow University. First, there are few such schools. Most of these, located in Moscow and Leningrad, enjoy a cachet comparable to that of the most exclusive of Connecticut's country clubs. Even the bureaucrats admit that the mass approach seen in other Soviet sports is absent in figure skating, if only because of the limited availability of artificial ice. More important, countless hours of work with a large group of specialists are demanded for every pair of world-class youngsters."

Lynn Copley-Graves' book "Figure Skating History: The Evolution Of Dance On The Ice" noted that during the mid fifties, "Walter Powell asked the Soviet delegates why a country so interested in the arts did not send skaters to Worlds. [Nikolai] Panin, still alive in Leningrad, had been the last prominent Soviet skater half a century earlier. Walter asked to visit Moscow during the World Speed Skating Championships in February. The USSR Sports Section issued Walter, ISU President James Koch, and Secretary Georg Hasler an official invitation. Inside Russia, the three visitors witnessed a 'renaissance of figure skating'. Panin had written the Russian rulebook on skating, about 200 pages long, illustrated with photos of skaters doing some of the 41 official figures recognized by the ISU and its member associations. Three new artificial rinks were planned in Moscow, and the USSR was about to hold its first exclusive national figure skating championships. Previously the country had hosted international meets, but none just for Soviet skaters. The three visitors left with the sense that they would welcome Soviet skaters into the world figure skating community at large."

Now that we've touched somewhat on the development of figure skating as a bona fide sport under the Soviet Sports Program, I want to go back to the quote from the very beginning of today's blog and explore the role propaganda played in luring in youth athletes. The 1951 poster heading today's blog translates to "if you want to be like me - just train!" The "Pionerskaya Pravda" and "Izvestiia" newspapers were widely considered to be under the government's thumb and the Soviet Sports Program's own newspaper, "Sovetskii Sport", periodically ran pieces on its top figure skaters. "Les Nouvelles de Moscou" (The Moscow News) sponsored the annual skating competition of the same name and the propaganda machine was in full swing there too. Barukh Hazan's 1982 book "Soviet Impregnational Propaganda" noted that skaters from the Soviet Union were "asked to make public semi-political statements which are consequently amplified by Moscow's other instruments of propaganda."

Stay tuned! Part two of this three part series on Soviet skating history will venture a bit forth in time and explore what can be discerned of training conditions behind the Iron Curtain. You don't want to miss it!

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 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.

Bridging Borders: The Stories Of The First Two Canadian Men's Champions

In the early days of competitive 'fancy' skating in Canada, skaters from the Minto Skating Club in Ottawa were a dominant force. Today on the blog, we'll meet two fascinating pioneering men from the most wonderful country in the world's capital who paved the way for the skaters of the future. Canada's first two champions in men's figure skating, Ormonde B. Haycock and Douglas H. Nelles, may have just been names on a paper to you before but after learning their stories I think you will be as fascinated by these two 'gentlemen skaters' as I was.  

ORMONDE B. HAYCOCK

Ormonde Haycock coaching at the Olympia Skating Club in Detroit. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

Born in Ottawa on September 4, 1880, Ormonde 'Ormie' Butler Haycock was the son of of Richard Henry Haycock and Mary LaFontaine. He had one brother and four sisters, one of which grew up to be a senator's wife. Although educated in public schools and at the Lisgar Collegiate School before his father got him a job as the assistant manager of the Canada Life Assurance Company, Ormonde grew up in a skating family and throughout his colourful life, skating is always what this man seemed to turn to.

Ormonde was one of the founders of the Minto Skating Club and a long time executive member. He was also instrumental in the initial organization of the skating club's junior program. His obituary from "The Ottawa Citizen" suggested "he was eight times champion of Canada", but this is incorrect. Although Ormonde 'only' won four Canadian men's titles (in 1905, 1906, 1908 and 1911), he won five Canadian pairs titles, making that nine. One of those pairs titles was won with his sister Aimée, who also won two Canadian women's titles. Ormonde and his other sister Katherine won two pairs titles together and not to be outdone, a third sister named Oswald - who went on to marry Colonel Ivan McSloy - finished second in the now long defunct Waltz event at the Canadian Championships in 1910.

Ormonde Haycock, Lady Evelyn Grey, Eleanor Kingsford and Philip Chrysler. Photo courtesy National Archives of Canada.

Ormonde's other two national pairs titles were won with Lady Evelyn Grey, the youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Grey. Ormonde was also a member of the Connaught Four which won the North American championship in 1910. In 1911, Ormonde won the Earl Grey Cup for skating teamwork along with Lady Evelyn Grey (the second youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Grey), Eleanor Kingsford (later Mrs. John Law) and Philip Chrysler. As many Canadian skating records were lost in the 1949 Minto Skating Club Fire, it's certainly possible that records of more of Ormonde's earlier championship wins went up in flames as well. We do know he travelled to Great Britain with a group of Canadian skaters in his heyday and competed internationally against Irving Brokaw in a men's event in New York in 1905. Ormonde and Irving were good friends who both worked tirelessly to help 'establish' the International Style of skating in North America.

What many don't know about this Canadian skating pioneer is that in addition to his proficiency on the ice, he was equally as comfortable on water that wasn't frozen. As well as being a sailing enthusiast, Ormonde was an accomplished sculler. An early member of the Ottawa Rowing Club, he won rowing championships in Ottawa, St. Catharines and Washington from 1904 to 1906 and in 1906 was part of a four man crew that won an international rowing event in Detroit, Michigan. Ormonde was also musically talented and deeply fond of music. He played several instruments and even composed for piano.

On March 8, 1916 (a year after the Great War  started) Ormonde enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and went overseas to serve in anti-aircraft batteries. Unlike many, he lived to tell about the war and went back into the insurance business. That didn't last long... and the lure of his lifelong passion for skating returned. After getting married to his wife Florence, Ormonde's increasing interest in teaching skating led him to leave Ottawa to coach skating in Toronto and Lake Placid. Christie Sausa's book "Lake Placid: A Skating History" noted that Ormonde was "fabulously popular" and "performed in the three winter ice carnival skating exhibitions held each winter, in addition to his coaching duties." He later coached in Detroit and Cleveland for a time before making the trek to New York. In the early thirties, Ormonde also worked with skaters in Buffalo and Niagara Falls. He choreographed, directed and performed in the Buffalo Skating Club's 1932 club carnival which was attended by an audience of three thousand, five hundred people.

Ormonde passed away at the age of fifty eight on August 18, 1938 in Canandaigua, New York at his summer home after several months of illness. Although his name or story isn't as remembered as many Canadian skating greats who followed, his legacy is one of a lifelong dedication to the sport we all know and love. Ormonde didn't just help to build skating in one country but did it in two at a time when the competition between Canadian and American skaters was every bit as fierce as it is today. I think we all owe this long lost pioneer a tip of the hat and a big thank you!

DOUGLAS H. NELLES

Photo courtesy Library and Archives Canada

Born March 26, 1881 in Grimsby, Ontario, Douglas Henry Nelles was the son of Beverly and Louisa (Buckwell) Nelles. His father was a fruit grower and packer and it's no surprise that young Douglas spent much of his youth outdoors helping with the family business. He even did some skating on Grimsby's hockey rink. By his early twenties, Douglas had studied civil engineering and gained employment with the Dominion Land Survey. Travelling with a party of men into the harsh wilderness of Hugh Miller Inlet, Glacier Bay and Skagway and living in tents on the borders of Canada and Alaska, his job was at times quite dangerous.

Douglas H. Nelles and an orderly setting up camp in the wilderness. Photo courtesy Library and Archives Canada

Late in the first decade of the twentieth century, Douglas moved to Ottawa, studied at McGill University and found work as a civil engineer for the Geodetic Survey. It was during this period that he first truly embraced the great art of figure skating. Not long after joining the Minto Skating Club, he claimed the 1910 and 1912 Canadian senior men's titles and the 1912 national pairs title with Eleanor Kingsford.

In 1911, Douglas travelled to Europe and returned bearing news of the International Skating Union's system of compulsory figures. Working with Colonel E.T.B. Gillmore, he helped make these figures the standard at the Canadian Championships. He also had them printed in the "Minto Club Hand Book", a text that was kindly distributed to all of the other skating clubs in Canada. After taking lessons from visiting European coach Arthur Held, he passionately extolled the virtues of graceful free skating to anyone who would listen.

After marrying Marjorie Katura Stowe Wainwright in January 1914, he took a hiatus from skating and served overseas with the Canadian Forestry Corps during World War I, reaching the rank of Major. He was demobilized in 1919 and returned to Canada via Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia aboard the HMT Minnekahda.

Less than a year after he returned to Canada, Douglas was back on the ice. In 1920, he teamed up with Alden Goldwin to claim his second Canadian pairs title and capped off his competitive career with a bronze at the 1922 Canadian Championships with D.F. Secord. While working as a manufacturer, he toiled away behind the scenes as a judge and builder with the Amateur Skating Association of Canada and the Minto Skating Club. One of his great accomplishments was his work with Major Clarence E. Steeves and Melville Rogers in organizing the highly successful 1931 North American Championships in Ottawa.

Although Douglas and his wife suffered a devastating loss when a son died in childbirth in 1933, they took great pride in their daughter Muriel and son Arthur. The latter turned out to be every ounce the great skater his father was. After showing promise as a young skater at the Minto Skating Club, Arthur Douglas Nelles turned professional and appeared in the Arthur M. Wirtz show "It Happens On Ice" at the Center Theatre with Hedy Stenuf, the Ice Cycles and several small-scale international tours, Skippy Baxter and The Caley Sisters. Muriel (Nelles) Whyte was a successful skating coach who helped found the Barrie Figure Skating Club. Sadly, Douglas H. Nelles, one of Canada's first great skating champions, passed away December 7, 1960 at the age of seventy nine.

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 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.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Skating Hair Through The Years

Keep it under your hat... but we're going to talk about a little hair history today! Until the twentieth century, how a skater's hair looked made little difference. Whether under a top hat or a smart feathered bonnet, the length of a skater's locks was quite irrelevant until the introduction of the Continental and International Styles of skating made jumps and spins de rigueur and the sport gained more of a following as early hotel shows and ice pantomimes became popular in the first few decades of the twentieth century.

It really wasn't until the Sonja Henie era when women's figure skating became more much more glamourized that many skaters really started paying attention to creating a 'packaged look' and it was Henie herself who led the charge.

When she was in her early fifties, Sonja Henie had her hair done by a young hairdresser named Jon Peters, who went on to become a Hollywood producer. They became fast friends and she actually lent him one hundred thousand dollars towards his first salon. 

Left: Sonja Henie. Right: Advertisement for Glover's hair products featuring Věra Hrubá Ralston.

By the fifties, tiaras weren't uncommon sights in the hair of competitive skaters and especially in the popular British ice pantomimes, both men and women often wore wigs.

Photo courtesy "The National Ice Skating Guide"

Producers of touring productions led the war on errant hair-pins, which posed particular dangers to skaters performing under dim spotlights. In her 1952 book "Skate With Me", even Barbara Ann Scott warned of their dangers: "Don't use ordinary hairpins. They are too apt to fly out. Be sure that you have your hair tethered down securely, for there is nothing very appealing about a girl skating with her hair flopping all over her face. I used to wear a little bonnet which served the double purpose of keeping my hair back and my ears warm." Scott's reference to bonnets was in line to the trend to cover hair to keep it out of a skater's face when they performed jumps and spins, doubling as added warmth in the subzero temperatures during outdoor competitions. In her husband Tyke's 1959 book "Girls' Book Of Skating", Mildred Richardson noted, "Caps are never worn, as they tend to come off, but in windy or snowy weather hair is covered by a becoming pull-on hood or scarf."

Excerpt from Jacqueline du Bief's book "Thin Ice"

By the sixties, Carol Heiss had dyed her hair black for her role in "Snow White And The Three Stooges" and Sjoukje Dijkstra was jacking it up to Jesus with a beehive that contained more final net than the entire dressing room of the movie "Hairspray". In her interview with Allison Manley for "The Manleywoman SkateCast" in April 2014, she laughed, "You don’t know how much hairspray there was in there... It stayed, you see, it would be stuck. If it would be loose, I couldn’t stand it, if my hair came into my eyes or anything. But it had so much spray in it that it just stayed there. So it was good. I don’t understand now, when I see the skaters with the ponytails slinging around - that must be awful. Mine didn't move, it stayed. It took a lot of hairspray. I’m amazed that I still have hair on my head." Though Dijkstra managed to keep her hair, not everyone was so lucky. In one show, American Olympian Roy Wagelein's toupee got caught in his partner's costume during a lift and came right off his head. 

Without a doubt, the most famous skating hairdo in history was the Dorothy Hamill wedge. Achieved by lifting the hair and cutting at an inward angle, going from the longest lengths at top to the shortest at the bottom, the cut was copied by millions of women around the world after Hamill's win at the 1976 Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck. After turning professional, Hamill signed a three hundred thousand dollar contract with Clairol and did commercials for their Short & Sassy Shampoo and Conditioner. In turn, the company donated twenty five cents from every bottle to the USFSA's Memorial Fund. 

By the nineties, short hair was on its way out and ponytails and buns dominated. Josée Chouinard did commercials for Pert Plus, Clairol sponsored a pro-am competition and even Scott Hamilton skated to music from the movie "Hair" in a hippie-style wig. Copying the glorious mane of Gwendal Peizerat, male ice dancers in the early twenty first century grew out their hair in droves... with extremely mixed results.

Whether Tonya Harding's mall bang or Maria Butyrskaya's Florence Henderson bob, the way that the world's top skaters have worn their hair over the years has just been one more way that they have set themselves apart. The grades of execution might have varied, but I think most skaters have earned a 6.0 for composition and style.

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 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.

Toller Cranston's 1984 Comeback

At the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, the lines between amateurism and professionalism blurred when champions from eras past reinstated to the eligible ranks in hopes of challenging the world's best Olympic eligible skaters. It is a topic we've visited before more than once on Skate Guard, but I am quite confident that the subject of today's blog may be news to many of you. It doesn't involve Lillehammer and doesn't even take place in the nineties.

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

Less than three years after winning the bronze medal at the 1976 Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria, the late, great six time Canadian Champion Toller Cranston was very seriously considering the possibility of attempting a comeback to the eligible ranks and competing in the 1984 Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo. In an interview with Linda Jade Stearns in the December-January 1979 issue of "The Canadian Skater" magazine, he spoke of his plan in detail: "Charles Snelling will have nothing on me. I have to perform for a couple more years - I want to do a movie and I know that I can't do that if I'm an amateur. Then I'm going to have to throw myself on my knees and ask the CFSA to give me back my amateur status, which will take a year. Therefore I'm basically aiming for the 1984 Olympics... I'm going to do my comeback at thirty-five as opposed to Snelling in his mid-twenties. And he didn't train the way I'm training now... I just competed in the American Superstars show for TV, and my competitive instincts surged - like wild. I became a tiger, a cutthroat, and I became consumed with the desire to win, which I had never really felt before when competing as an amateur. When I enter the 1984 Olympics - even if I have to skate out of Iceland to do it - I'll put skating in its proper perspective. I'm going to take it very seriously, but I know that my career will not hinge on how well I do. It's not like, 'Oh my God, what happens if Ronnie Shaver beats me - I'll be finished, I'll be through.' I learned how to be afraid in the worst way. When people say, 'Oh, you only came third at the Olympics, you blew it,' I reply, 'Third? It's a miracle!' I was so totally overwrought that when I stepped onto the ice I couldn't believe that my legs were carrying me. I can do figures in my free skating boots now that are better than the ones I did in the Olympics in my figure boots. I realize that it's totally a question of control of the brain. It was nervousness, it wasn't that I had bad figures (that accounted for my low standing in figures at the Olympics.) My figures were just as good as anybody's, but I did not have the ability to zero in, to totally concentrate. I wouldn't be nervous now because nothing is hinging on my performance. I'm not going to enter with the attitude that here's my big chance to win the 1984 Olympics. When you come back at thirty-five to compete in the Olympics, people will say, 'Let's see how good he is... can he beat the champion from Luxembourg? Well, probably. But can he beat the French champion?... Let's see how far he can go. I know that I'm not going to out-triple my competitors because by then they're going to have to scrape them off the rafters. In the performance that I would give, the emphasis would be totally on performing. I would perform like wild. It's not that I wouldn't do a number of things, but I would say, let the skaters doing the quadruples and the eight triples do them. I would do all the things that they don't do. I would create a certain controversy."

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

In the end, the lure of professional competition won out. For seven consecutive years from 1980 to 1987, Toller competed at Dick Button's World Professional Figure Skating Championships in Landover, Maryland. More often than not, he didn't win. We will never know the history books would have looked if Toller had in fact somehow managed a return to the eligible ranks in 1984. Against the likes of Scott Hamilton, Brian Orser, Jozef Sabovcik and the rest, he would have undoubtedly been at a huge disadvantage technically but I don't think anyone can argue that he wouldn't have put on one hell of a show like only Toller could.

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 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.

Boitano And Witt's Skating Tours

I don't think winning an Olympic gold medal is something anyone would call easy, but surely forging out into the unknown and designing your own skating tour can't be either. Following their wins at the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, Brian Boitano and Katarina Witt did just that, headlining in a series of tours aptly called Skating, Skating II and Skating III and bringing a who's who cast of the world's best figure skaters along for the journey.

Marketed towards younger, 'hipper' audiences, the Skating tours were produced by Cellar Door and Bill Graham Presents, sponsored by Chrysler and directed and lovingly choreographed by Sandra Bezic and Michael Seibert. They had three successful runs in North America from 1989 to 1992 and even visited Europe and Japan. At the time, Skating was in direct competition with several other touring skating productions including Stars On Ice, the World Cup Champions On Ice tour, Benson and Hedges Symphony On Ice and Tom Collins' beloved Tour Of World Figure Skating Champions. Despite this, the tours certainly fared well in the height of their popularity, so much so that they became the first skating production to sell out Madison Square Gardens in ten years at one point. Much of the reason for the tour's successes was Boitano and Witt's name recognition but thoughtful choreography and the show's diverse cast made for a well rounded and entertaining tour all around.

In a November 1990 article from "The Christian Science Monitor", Boitano said, "It's the people around us who make the show so good, but it's difficult to cast because a lot of times the producers only hear names. From a personal standpoint, you want people who are good, who will bring a lot of entertainment to the show." Joining Boitano and Witt in the cast were Rosalynn Sumners, Tracy Wilson and Rob McCall, Barbara Underhill and Paul Martini, Gary Beacom, Elena Valova and Oleg Vasiliev, Judy Blumberg and Michael Seibert, Caryn Kadavy, Yvonne Gomez, Robert Wagenhoffer, Vladimir Kotin and Renee Roca and Gorsha Sur.

For Witt, the tours proved liberating after so many years of skating in Communist East Germany. In an April 1990 article from "The Sun Journal", she explained "I can now do whatever I want. I do not have to ask somebody 'Please, can I do this?' I do not have to beg somebody to get out of the country and to work with Brian." Liberation and freedom was a strong undercurrent of much of the skating even - Gary Beacom performed a number showcasing his edges to complete silence in one number. Another highlight of the tours was a truncated version of Boitano and Witt's "Carmen On Ice" act.

After the tour's third run in 1992, Skating sold its dates to Stars On Ice and Sandra Bezic started working with Stars On Ice in time for the 1992/1993 season's tour. Concurrently, Boitano and Witt were both preparing for comebacks when professionals were allowed to reinstate to the amateur ranks in time for the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway where the pair of Olympic Gold Medallists finished sixth and seventh respectively. Although the tour may not be as remembered as many others due to its relatively short run, it produced some excellent skating and provided opportunities for many professional skaters who may not have had the opportunities to tour North America otherwise. With a cast like that though, I don't know how anyone could forget it.

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 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.

Pivots And Polar Bears: The Skating History Of Canada's North

When one Clement Bancroft Burns, territorial and federal secretary of the Yukon Territory, arrived in Dawson City in 1902 during the height of the Klondike Gold Rush he ascertained a need for a sporting and recreation facility. Through pledges, forty five thousand dollars was raised to aid in the construction of the Dawson Amateur Athletic Club. Walter Creamer, dubbed the Barnum of Klondike, became involved and soon an enclosed ice skating rink became one of the facility's most popular features.

The D.A.A.C.'s skating rink measured seventy five by one hundred and seventy five feet, and played host to a series of skating carnivals and parties at the turn of the century, replete with music played by a brass band. On July 21, 1909, the "Dawson Daily News" reported, "The great enclosed ice skating rink attracts devotees of all ages, who, making up a neatly and gaily clad throng spin merrily over the long stretches of carefully prepared ice surfaces; it is here that the mardi gras of the Northland is held each winter, and here that the children hold minor carnivals. It is here that many of the swiftest and most expert skaters of the world join in that swiftest of all human physical contests, hockey, in disputing the championship of the North." We know that during this period Minnie Cummings travelled to the Northwest Territories to perform, and it was likely at this very rink.

Peggy Hanulik came to Dawson City from Manitoba in 1965 and set to work teaching the children of Dawson City to skate. Two years later, she headed to Whitehorse, where she became involved in the Whitehorse Skating Club and helped found the Fireweed Figure Skating Club. The Yukon's first CFSA certified judge, Hanulik judged competitions for close to thirty years. She served on countless committees and boards and did everything from bringing CanSkate to the province to cutting music for carnivals and chaperoning at competitions. Her years of dedication paved the way for the 2007 Canada Winter Games in Whitehorse, the first time the Canada Games ever made an appearance up north. Among the winners at that event? A young Liam Firus, Kirsten Moore-Towers and Andrei Rogozine. Today in the Yukon capital, the Arctic Edge Skating Club is the place to be if you're as into press lifts and pivots as you are polar bears.

Skaters at the first Arctic Winter Games in 1970. Photo courtesy Library And Archives Canada.

In the Northwest Territories, outdoor skating was tremendously popular on the frozen Netla and McKenzie Rivers. The Gerry Murphy arena - known to locals as the 'Murphdrome' - was the go-to skating spot for Yellowknife residents from 1950 until its demolition in 2004. The Yellowknife Skating Club was founded in December 1968 and two years later, the first Arctic Winter Games were held in the Northwest Teritories capital, attracting visiting competitors from the Yukon and Alaska in its first year. Figure skating competitions have absolutely been an integral part of these biennal 'Northern Olympics', which have expanded to include athletes from Nunavut, Greenland, Russia, northern Quebec, British Columbia, Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Photo courtesy "Canadian Skater" magazine.

The skating clubs in Hay River and Inuvik have been around for years and boasted some very talented young skaters, but perhaps the most fascinating figure skating clubs of the North are the Iqaluit and Cape Dorset Figure Skating Clubs in Nunavut. The latter, located in an Inuit hamlet near the southern tip of Baffin Island in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, is one of the most remote figure skating clubs in the world. Founded in 1995, the club established a sister club relationship with the Stephenville Skating Club in Newfoundland. When the Cape Dorset skaters needed skates, the Newfoundlanders took up a collection and shipped them up. In turn, the Nunavut club sent down Inuit art that the club could auction off to fundraise. In 1999, when a new rink opened in Stephenville, eight skaters from Cape Dorset were invited down to perform in the Newfoundland club's opening show... alongside special guests Brian Orser and Jamie Salé and David Pelletier. In 2015, Rachel Pettitt made history by becoming the first skater from the Yukon to win a national title when she won the novice women's event at the Canadian Championships in Kingston. Matthew Powers, a talented skater from Whitehorse, had won the silver medal in the junior men's event in 1991 and become the first skater from the territory to compete at the World Junior Championships.

Canada's north may not have produced an endless list of figure skating champions, but it has certainly had a fascinating history thus far! It may not be long at all before we finally start seeing skaters from Canada's north making a greater impact on the national level. The times, they are a-changin'...

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 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.