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Cover Reveal - Barbara Ann Scott: Queen of the Ice
They Skated Away
December 1 is World AIDS Day. The day brings attention to the value of education, the importance of ensuring access to life-saving drugs, and the need to eliminate stigma and prejudice against people living with HIV. It is also a day of reflection, where we remember those we have lost to HIV/AIDS-related illnesses.
In observance of World AIDS Day, Skate Guard Blog is launching a major new feature that has been four years in development. They Skated Away is an online memorial and educational resource that pays tribute to the skaters, coaches, and choreographers we have lost, featuring biographies, photographs, obituaries, newspaper articles, and oral history interviews. This project will be continuously updated as contributions come in from the figure skating community. You can explore They Skated Away here.
The Convention Hall Ice Palace
The 1961 Canadian Figure Skating Championships
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.
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
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.
Sensations From St. Paul: The Oscar Johnson And Eddie Shipstad Story
By the twenties, Oscar and Eddie were working as a chemist's apprentice at a coke plant and typewriter salesman, taking odd jobs like cutting hot dog buns and squeezing lemons at a ballpark to earn extra money. When they weren't toiling away at their low-paying jobs, they were sweeping the ice at the local rink in exchange for time to practice their popular comedic skating acts. They gave their first performance at the St. Paul Hippodrome in 1924 and were regulars during the intermissions of Duluth and St. Paul hockey games, earning five or ten dollars a show.
In the winter of 1933, Eddie and Oscar staged their first production, which proved a financial flop as it was held on a bank holiday when funds were unavailable. Their next effort, the first annual Midsummer Ice Carnival at the St. Paul Auditorium, proved far more successful. In the year that followed, they successfully staged several hospital fundraisers on ice and organized a tank ice show at the College Inn at the Hotel Sherman in Chicago.
Soon, Eddie and Oscar developed a little tour you might have heard of... Shipstad and Johnson's Ice Follies. Although the Ice Follies went on to become one of the most recognized and celebrated skating tours in North America, its beginnings were humble at best. Including Oscar, Eddie and Roy, the initial cast only included twenty-eight skaters, including Bess Ehrhardt, Lois Dworshak, Ruth Mack and Everett McGowan and Heinie Brock.
The costumes for the entire cast during year one of Ice Follies only cost five hundred dollars. Eddie's brother Roy made his own, stitching sequins to a pair of long underwear dyed black. On the show's opening night in Omaha in 1936, there were more cast than audience members. Eddie called the skeptical cast together for a pre-show pep talk and joked, "Don't worry! We've got 'em outnumbered!"
For over a decade, Oscar and Eddie doubled as producers and stars of the Ice Follies. Some of their routines were legendary. "A Bicycle Built For Two", "On And Off The Beat" and "The Bloody Buccaneers", with Oscar as Spike McDuff and Eddie as Gashouse Annie, set the bar for skating comedy acts to follow.
To this day, many of the themes Eddie and Oscar and their contemporaries - Frick and Frack - developed have been liberally borrowed from. A film inspired by the tour, "Ice Follies Of 1939", featured no less a star than Mommie Dearest herself... Joan Crawford.
Sadly, Oscar Johnson died in Rochester, Minnesota in 1970 after an eight year battle with cancer at the age of seventy-one. Eddie's brother Roy passed away in 1975 and in 1976, both Oscar and Eddie were among the initial group of inductees to the U.S. Figure Skating Hall Of Fame. Eddie Shipstad passed away at the age of ninety-one on August 20, 1998, in Los Angeles, California.
Veterans' Week
On November 11, 1918, the signing of the Armistice near Compiègne, France, signified an end to the gighting on the Western Front during The Great War.
Throughout both World Wars, numerous individuals from the Canadian figure skating community devoted themselves to their country. This included Canadian and North American champions, judges, coaches, club leaders, recreational skaters, and family members of some of our most celebrated skating talents, all of whom served in the military or engaged in vital wartime efforts.
To honour their sacrifices, Skate Guard is proud to present a special Veterans' Week page that highlights the remarkable contributions of these courageous men and women during wartime.