Marching On: The Ralph McCreath Story

"His presence was felt the moment he walked into a room. He had a way about him that made people take notice." - Jim McCreath, December 15, 2008, "Memoir For My Father"

The son of Bert and Margaret McCreath, Ralph Scott McCreath was born on April 27, 1919, in Toronto, Ontario. The McCreath's, a Presbyterian family, maintained a home in the affluent Moore Park district of Toronto and Ralph, his sisters June and Louise and younger brother Ross were doted on by their parents Bert and Margaret and a live-in Danish servant, growing up during the roaring twenties wanting for very little.

Sandy McKechnie, Dudley Reburn, James Bain, Ralph McCreath, Billy Brown and Gordon Gilchrist in the 1931 Toronto Skating Club carnival

As a teenager, Ralph attended the North Toronto Collegiate School where his excellence at athletics overshadowed his considerable scholastic skill. He participated in a wide range of high school sports, but the sports he showed the most passion for were hockey and figure skating.

Photo courtesy Archives Of Ontario, Herbert Nott fonds

One hockey coach had him jump over benches to practice leaping over fallen defencemen on his way to the net, a skill which aided him in his early lessons in free skating. Six-foot-tall Ralph's high-flying jumps soon caught the attention of the coaches at the Toronto Skating Club and in 1935, after he had won four medals in the junior men's and pairs events at the Canadian Championships, he gave up hockey entirely to focus on figure skating under coach Walter Arian.

Left: Ralph McCreath, Veronica Clarke, Constance and Bud Wilson. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine. Right: Veronica Clarke and Ralph McCreath. Photo courtesy Hilary Bruun.

In the years that followed, Ralph's success in singles, pairs, fours and ice dancing was nothing short of remarkable. From 1936 to 1941, he won an incredible twenty-four medals at the Canadian and North American Championships, including gold medals in singles, pairs, the fourteenstep, tenstep and fours at the Canadian Championships.

Norah McCarthy and Ralph McCreath. Photos courtesy "Skating" magazine (left) and "Skating Through The Years" (right).

Ralph's skating pushed the athletic boundaries of the time. He and his partners performed particularly novel lifts and his winning free skating performance at the 1940 Canadian Championships in Ottawa included an Axel, double Salchow and double loop.

Top: Ralph McCreath, Bud Wilson and the Caley sisters, 1939 North American fours champions. Bottom: Mary Rose Thacker, Ralph McCreath and Eleanor O'Meara. Photos courtesy "Skating" magazine.

With partners Veronica Clarke, Norah McCarthy and Eleanor O'Meara, Ralph was one of the most in-demand skaters for carnivals throughout Ontario and the Eastern United States. He performed in a charity ice gala at Madison Square Garden, hitchhiked to Lake Placid every summer to train, competed in forty-below temperatures and even earned a much-coveted spot on the Canadian team set to attend the 1940 Winter Olympic Games that were ultimately cancelled after the outbreak of World War II.

Eleanor O'Meara and Ralph McCreath

In October of 1940, Ralph put his studies at the University Of Toronto on hold and bid adieu to his buddies at the Theta Delta Chi fraternity when he and his younger brother Ross enlisted in the 48th Highlanders Of Canada. Continuing to train and compete that winter despite his military obligations, the twenty-one-year-old Lance Corporal had perhaps his finest hour at the 1941 North American Championships in Philadelphia.

Left: Mary Rose Thacker, Ralph McCreath and Eleanor O'Meara. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine. Right: Norah McCarthy and Ralph McCreath in act.

After defeating Donna Atwood and Eugene Turner to win the pairs event with Eleanor O'Meara, Ralph managed an incredible come-from-behind win in the men's event after being over thirty points behind Turner in the figures. His exciting free skating performance was set to music specially orchestrated by the Toronto Skating Club's musical director Jack Jardine that stopped when he jumped, adding to the dramatic effect of his performance. Even more dramatic was the judging of the competition. The six judges - three from Canada and three from America - split their votes down the middle, with only an eighth of a point ultimately determining the final result. Associated Press reporters called it "one of the most dramatic finishes in the history of the competition." In his book "Dick Button On Skates", Dick Button recalled, "Out of the six judges, the three Canadians voted first places to the Canadian McCreath and three American judges voted first to the American Turner. Each judge placed the skater from the other country second, thereby giving both of the skaters a total of ordinals... The decision was decided on the fact that the Canadian judges had marked the American slightly slower in second place than the Americans had marked the Canadian skater in second place." The results of this event were a textbook example of why having an even number of judges at the North American Championships was a terrible, terrible idea. Interestingly, his narrow win in Philadelphia was followed up by a narrow loss to sculler Theo DuBois in the quest for that year's Lou Marsh Trophy, one of Canada's top sporting honours.

Left: Ralph's brother Ross. Photo courtesy Toronto Public Library, from Toronto Star Photographic Archive. Reproduced for educational purposes under license permission. Right: Ralph in uniform. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

That summer, Ralph sailed for Europe. During the War, he served in England, France and North Africa and rose to the rank of Major in the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps. While in London, he did some skating and went to visit an injured friend in the hospital. He found Stewart Reburn in the next bed.
In 2008, his son Jim recalled, "As a curious youngster I would often ask him questions about his time in the army. He would always talk about the wonderful people he had met and the amazing places he had seen, but there was a different look in his eyes when he spoke of these things. He would try to change the subject as quickly as possible. I am sure he must have felt that after living through those hellish times, some memories are best left untold."

Ralph and Myrtle McCreath on their wedding day. Photo courtesy Toronto Public Library, from Toronto Star Photographic Archive. Reproduced for educational purposes under license permission.

Returning to Canada, Ralph won his third and final Canadian senior men's title in 1946 ahead of Norris Bowden and Roger Wickson. He wore his military uniform for his free skating performance. He later teamed up with Gloria Lillico to perform a pair in carnivals.

Eleanor O'Meara and Ralph McCreath. Photo courtesy Archives of Ontario. 

After obtaining his law degree at Osgoode Law School in 1949, Ralph settled on Kingsway Crescent in Toronto with his wife Myrtle [Franceschini] and raised three sons and a daughter. He practiced corporate law and served as a CFSA judge, referee and team leader. He judged at three Olympic Games and several World Championships, notably voting for Petra Burka when she won the 1965 World title and for Frances Dafoe and Norris Bowden when they settled for silver in 1956. Even though Ralph had voted for him and Dafoe at the 1956 World Championships, Bowden was vocal about his former competitor's appointment as Canada's judge and team leader that season before the team even left for Europe to participate in the Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo. In Bowden's famous letter to the CFSA that got him banned, he questioned "whether the best interests of the team were considered in selecting a judge who, by his own admission, had not been too interested in skating as of late as witnessed by not having seen the Canadian world champion pair skate for three years though they were members of the same club and gave numerous exhibitions."

Barbara Ann Scott and Ralph McCreath. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

Despite serving as a member of the CFSA's executive, a founding member of the Olympic Trust and a trustee of the Canadian Olympic Endowment Fund, the perception that Ralph was a lawyer first and a judge second led some to question where his loyalties lay at a time when North American skaters were frequently at the mercy of panels heavily stacked with European judges. Ralph was also criticized for being a tough cookie. Kenny Moir recalled, "I remember being a demonstrator at a judges seminar being presented by Ralph McCreath back in the late sixties in Vancouver. He was one of Canada's top judges so there was a huge turnout of notable judges which was scary in itself. But he was terrifying. He'd whisper the figure error to make in your ear which is tough to pull off and if you were to do it correctly and you made errors he'd go to town on you in front of the crowd. I did have one high note though, when he asked me to do a series jump combination and no one could break it down, I made his day so he could yell at them!"

Ralph McCreath, Charles Rathgab and Imre Szabo

Ralph may have been a tough judge, but he was also a benevolent one. He accepted Bruce Hyland's invitation to come take a look at the training sessions of his students. In those days, skaters and coaches were very much in one camp and judges in another. Monitoring sessions simply weren't a thing yet, and there was always the worry on both sides that a judge offering constructive feedback to a skater might be perceived as untoward. Debbi Wilkes recalled, "You could never talk about it and you never admitted it because it was totally inappropriate as things were defined in those days."

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

Tragically, Ralph's wife Myrtle passed away at the age of forty-six in 1968. Many years later he remarried. He devoted much of his free time to his farm and travel and was a lifelong fan of football and hockey. Later in life, he played the piano in a musical trio with two of his good friends, performing at special events and parties. In 1994, he was inducted into the CFSA (Skate Canada) Hall Of Fame. After suffering a stroke only months before, Ralph passed away at his Toronto home on May 2, 1997, at the age of seventy-eight. In the "Toronto Star" that year, his son Jim recalled, "He never wanted to admit he was slowing down. He was in great shape until the time of his stroke... The funny thing about him throughout his life, he would never brag about what he could do. He just knew what he could do... and [would] go out and do 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, Bluesky, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering one of six fascinating books highlighting the history of figure skating: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

The 1934 European Figure Skating Championships

Women's competitors at the 1934 European Championships in Prague. Photo courtesy National Archives of Poland.

Originally slated to be held in Innsbruck as part of the city's International Sports Week, the 1934 European Figure Skating Championships were relocated when an untimely thaw rendered the ice in the Austrian city completely unsuitable for competition. The women's and pairs events were hastily relocated to Prague and the men's event moved to the old Austrian farming village of Seefeld, high in the Tyrol Mountains.

Previewing the event for "Sketch" magazine, Pamela Murray wrote, "The European Skating Championship was scheduled 20th and 21st, but [the] thaw switched the event to Seefeld. This meant getting up at six, after arriving late the night before. I was so sleepy when we mustered (competitors and their camp followers) at the station that I loaded my camera backwards - always a bad omen. Sure enough, it snowed all day, and there were thirteen competitors, wavy ice, and some tense moments. It's usual for [a] competitor to have a judge of his nationality, so if a Chinese went in, a Chinese judge would have to be fetched from Pekin by air-mail. Much the handsomest and best-turned-out competitors were [Jean] Henrion and Jackie Dunn, who at barely seventeen, is quite an Adonis. He got a lot of good-luck telegrams, including one from his great-aunt, Mrs. Ralph Philipson, the former Baroness de Knoop... On the second morning, it cleared and we could see snow-laden forests from the train, and imagine high mountains behind veils of cloud; also begin to realize how different this wooded land of chalets is from the Engadine, though the great River Inn now winding through the plain rises in the lake of St. Moritz. At Seefeld the village band played us to the rink, dressed in green coats, white stockings, black knickerbockers, felt hats with white feathers aft, wide belts with names embroidered, scarlet facings, and purple waistcoats. The village idiot, in rags, sold programmes and capered in front, drawing peals of laughter. The church bells pealed too, and the shop-windows were full of long pipes with coloured views on their china bowls, and absurd Tyrolean toys, made with a puckish sense of humour. Behind the band the drum was trundled on a painted trolley, and from a Madonna-blue house, with dark-brown wooden windows, a woman shouted 'Gruss Gott' to a friend in the procession. It was all so joyous and 'gemütlich' I nearly cried."

Photo courtesy Národní muzeum

Now that the backdrop of the latter event in Seefeld has been painted, let's take a look back at the stories and scandals from these events... including perhaps one of the most dramatic school figure competitions of all time!

THE WOMEN'S COMPETITION

Sonja Henie. Photo courtesy National Archives of Poland.

Having recently graduated from Radcliffe College, with the help of the USFSA Maribel Vinson spent a year training overseas in preparation for the 1934 European and World Championships. Realizing that she was at a disadvantage when entering overseas competitions due to the missed training time spent on long trans-Atlantic steamship voyages, she took full advantage of the indoor rinks in Bournemouth, London, Oxford and Edinburgh and time spent skating outdoors St. Moritz. She arrived in Prague ready to make her mark as the first skater from North America to compete in that particular event, which didn't specifically bar non-European skaters at that point in time from participating... provided they held membership with an ISU member nation in Europe. Handily, Vinson became a member of the National Skating Association. However, try as she might have, she found herself in the unenviable position of going up against reigning Olympic, World and European Sonja Henie.

Megan Taylor and Mollie Phillips. Photo courtesy National Archives of Poland.

The January 27, 1934 issue of the Austrian "Sport-Tagblatt" described Henie's victory as "a runaway" one, noting that her lead in the figures made it next to impossible for her chief rivals - Liselotte Landbeck, Maribel Vinson and Megan Taylor - to have challenged her for the title even if they gave the performances of their lives in the free skate. In a rather anti-climactic finish, that's exactly the order the four women finished.

Maribel Vinson's bronze proved to be the only medal ever won by an American woman at the European Championships and the crowd of four thousand who sat in a blinding snowstorm, applauding wildly while the women skated their school figures had to have been the best crowd ever! Vinson recalled the event thusly: "It was a strange competition held outdoors under very difficult circumstances (we skated the school figures in a blizzard) but Yvonne [de Ligne] and I managed to enjoy it thoroughly, and taking into account the far-from-ideal conditions, I at least skated the best I could, both school and free."

THE PAIRS COMPETITION

Emília Rotter and László Szollás. Photo courtesy National Archives of Poland.

The pairs competition in Prague was considerably hyped as a battle royale between the defending European Champions Idi Papez and Karl Zwack of Austria and the reigning World Champions Emília Rotter and László Szollás of Hungary. Before the event even started, the smack talk had started. One journalist writing for the "Sport-Tagblatt" questioned whether the Hungarians would even appear in Prague to challenge the Austrians: "In the tactics which the Hungarians like to pursue, it is by no means certain whether they will actually appear at the start." In the end, both teams did arrive and in a close contest, the Hungarians defeated the Austrians.

Zofia Bilorówna and Tadeusz Kowalski. Photo courtesy National Archives of Poland.

In claiming the bronze, Zofia Bilorówna and Tadeusz Kowalski made history as the first Polish team to medal at the European Championships... a feat that wouldn't be duplicated until Dorota Zagórska and Mariusz Siudek earned the silver medal at the 1999 European Championships, also in Prague.

THE MEN'S COMPETITION

Karl Schäfer

An unlucky thirteen men from six nations vied for the men's title in Seefeld in 1934: six from Austria, three from Hungary and one apiece from Great Britain, France and Switzerland so the deck was heavily stacked for the home team that year. Karl Schäfer, the reigning Olympic, World and European Champion, was of course the heavy favourite. Captain T.D. Richardson's account of Schäfer's actions in the school figures offered some insight into this great champion of yesteryear's character. Recalling the event in 1956, Richardson wrote: "Unfortunately, the ice there was very bumpy and for once - surely the only time in competition - Karli fell on a back-change-loop. Instead of meekly going on, he played merry hell with the referee, Ulrich Salchow (who was also the high panjandrum, i.e. President of the International Skating Union), and with the whole panel of judges, for asking him and his rivals to skate on such appalling ice! The referee thereupon allowed him a re-skate, influenced of course by the fact that Schäfer was reigning World, European and Olympic Champion. Shortly afterward, the late Jack Dunn had a similar mishap. He was ordered peremptorily to 'finish out the figure' which he did, and he received very, very low marks in consequence. Then I, who had taken Dunn to the championship, knowing Karli extremely well suggested to him that this was not quite fair. He agreed, went on the ice, holding up the whole competition, and demanded a re-skate for his British friend. He stayed on the ice until he got his way, and then, on to the ice went Dunn, completely out of turn, re-skated the figure and obtained quite good marks. So much for reputation, personality and superb audacity! I always had the feeling that both Grafström and Schäfer were judging the judges, instead of being judged!" 

In the end, Schäfer won the 1934 European Figure Skating Championships by a landslide with Dunn a distant sixth but the Briton did manage to defeat three of the Austrian's teammates, including a young upstart named Felix Kaspar who would go on to win two World titles and the bronze medal at the 1936 Winter Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. A pair of Hungarians, Dénes Pataky and Elemér Terták, claimed the silver and bronze. The fact that Schäfer went up to bat for his British competitor only goes to show you that even in the Tyrol Mountains, it never hurts to have friends in high places.

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