The 1994 Canadian Figure Skating Championships

After the record-breaking success of the 1993 Royal Bank Canadian Figure Skating Championships at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario, in January of 1993, the announcement was made that the following year the competition would head west to Edmonton, Alberta, for the first time since 1970. The event, hosted by the Royal Glenora Figure Skating Club, served as a test event for the 1996 World Figure Skating Championships. The bulk of the competition was held at the seventeen thousand plus seat Northlands Coliseum, with the senior compulsory dances and many of the junior events held at the Northlands AgriCom. The arena at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology was used as a tertiary venue for practice sessions.

Barbara Ann Scott in Edmonton

1948 Olympic Gold Medallist Barbara Ann Scott acted as the event's honorary chairperson and 1988 Olympic Medallists Brian Orser, Liz Manley and Tracy Wilson were all in attendance as part of a week-long salute to 1988 Olympians.

Part of the strategy for selling tickets for the competition was a promotion with Canada Post, where eight hundred thousand media booklets were distributed free of charge via mail. The CFSA's marketing campaign paid off, with the previous year's record for the highest ticket sales at the Canadian Championships blown out of the water. More than one hundred and twenty-six thousand spectators watched the event despite the absolutely miserable arctic weather outside. There were six hundred volunteers and one hundred and ten accredited media members, among them Debbi Wilkes, who, while covering the event with Brian Orser and Lynn Nightingale for CTV, relived her skating days by navigating an icy parking lot in a pair of pumps. Concerned about skater safety after the attack on Nancy Kerrigan less than a week prior to the competition, organizers beefed up security, enlisting the help of fifteen former RCMP officers. For the first time at the Canadian Championships, passes with photo identification were used, and members of the media weren't allowed to approach skaters without interviews being pre-arranged by the CFSA. On the CTV National News, reporter Bob Makichuk announced, "Don Sprague is beefing up police presence and separating performers from the public. The ice level of Northlands Coliseum will be sealed off to spectators. Autograph hounds will be kept away from skaters. Plain clothes police officers will be hidden in the stands. Just getting to ice level means passing through a virtual air lock of electrically controlled doors. One advantage the Edmonton organizers have is they were originally planning to hold the World Championships here, and security requirements for the Worlds are much stricter than for the Canadian nationals. It's those higher standards that will be in place next week." Halfway through the competition, the news broke that Tonya Harding's camp had a connection to the attack on Kerrigan. Skaters and organizers collectively felt sympathy for Kerrigan and disgust at the situation, but breathed a sigh of relief that the attacker wasn't some deranged fan, as was the case in the attack on Monica Seles less than a year prior. 

Let's hop in the time machine and take a look at the skaters and stories that made this particular competition so memorable!

THE NOVICE AND JUNIOR COMPETITIONS

Amanda Cotroneo and Mark Bradshaw. Photo courtesy Toronto Public Library, from Toronto Star Photographic Archive. Reproduced for educational purposes under license permission.

Leading the pack from start to finish, Isabelle Lefebvre and Ken Mueller of Saint-Blaise-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, decisively won the gold medal in the novice pairs event ahead. Two other Quebec teams, Jennifer and Pregnolato and Sébastien Morin and Genevieve Coulombe and Sacha Blanchet, were tied for third after the short program, but both teams moved ahead of Woodbridge, Ontario's Courteney Robbins and Lenny Faustino to take the silver and bronze, respectively.

Jayson Dénommée of Sherbrooke won both the short and long programs in the novice men's competition to earn Quebec yet another gold. The novice ice dance event was won by Amanda Cotroneo and Mark Bradshaw, the son of British Champions and European Medallists Sue and Roy Bradshaw. Quebec pair Isabelle Bourgault and Jean-Nicolas Chagnon finished second, followed by Teri Ninacs and Kevin Cheshire of Ontario.

To the delight of the Edmonton crowd, twelve-year-old Sarah Schmidek of the Royal Glenora Club moved up from second after the short program to claim the gold in the novice women's event, despite falling on a triple toe-loop attempt. At twelve years old, she was the youngest of the seventeen competitors.

Expanding upon their lead after the short program, Isabelle Coulombe and Bruno Marcotte decisively won the junior pairs event with first and second place ordinals from every judge. After losing in the compulsory dances to Josée Piché and Pascal Denis, Chantal Lefebvre and Michel Brunet surged ahead in the original dance and held on to win the junior ice dance event. A young Megan Wing and Aaron Lowe claimed the bronze.

Tammy Smigelski, Jennifer Robinson and Jamie Salé. Photo courtesy Skate Canada Alberta-NWT/Nunavut.

The Albertan crowd was hopeful when sixteen-year-old Jamie Salé won the junior women's short program, but seventeen-year-old Jennifer Robinson of Windsor, Ontario, only eleventh in her trip to Canadians a year prior, won the free skate and gold medal. Tammy Smigelski, Jamie Salé and Sheila Gangopadhyay made it two-three-four for the Royal Glenora Club. Twenty-one-year-old Matthew Smith of the Mariposa Winter Club landed three triples and two double Axels on his way to a come-from-behind victory in the junior men's event. Yvan Desjardins took the silver; David Pelletier the bronze.

THE PAIRS AND FOURS COMPETITIONS

Lloyd Eisler, Josée Chouinard, Kris Wirtz and Isabelle Brasseur. Photo courtesy Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

Twelve senior pairs teams vied for three pairs of tickets to the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway. During practice, Tina Muur and Cory Watson were practicing a hydrant lift when she landed face first on ice, suffering a black eye, a loose tooth and bruised cheek and lip. Both were sent to the hospital for tests and observation... but they still competed! Nineteen-year-old Kristy Sargeant and twenty-four-year-old Kris Wirtz also took a nasty fall in the warm-up prior to their short program, but went out and skated a clean program. Twenty-three-year-old Isabelle Brasseur and thirty-year-old Lloyd Eisler, who had changed their short program after receiving negative feedback at the Pirouetten pre-Olympic test event the previous autumn, received an ovation during the warm-up. They skated clean as well, landing side-by-side double Axels, earning a string of 5.8's and 5.9's and unanimous first place ordinals from all nine judges. Brasseur had injured her neck weeks before the competition, and her and Eisler hadn't been able to practice any of their twists. The pair had spoken to the judges prior to the competition and advised them of Brasseur's injury, deciding that if she felt a burning sensation in her neck after the twist, they would stop their program until she recovered. A botched lift kept Jamie Salé and Jason Turner in fifth after the short program, behind Brasseur and Eisler, Sargeant and Wirtz, Marie-Claude Savard-Gagnon and Luc Bradet and Michelle Menzies and Jean-Michel Bombardier.

Brasseur and Eisler skated flawlessly in their long program, earning a standing ovation and easily winning their fifth national title. Four of the nine judges gave them 6.0s for artistic impression... their first perfect marks ever at the Canadian Championships and a record in pairs at the Canadian Championships. Their win placed them in the record books alongside Barbara Underhill and Paul Martini and Sandra and Val Bezic, who also had won five National titles. With the skate of their lives to that point, Sargeant and Wirtz easily won silver. Salé and Turner fell on a throw early in their program, but rebounded with an outstanding performance to move up and snatch the third spot on the Olympic team and a standing ovation. The successes of the silver and bronze medallists were major news stories due to the pairs' Alberta ties.

In the book "To Catch A Dream", Lloyd Eisler recalled his seventeenth and final trip to the Nationals thusly: "From our standpoint, we had ended on the highest possible note, and when we received our medals, I was a little teary-eyed, knowing that this was it. Our Nationals was over. We would never be back again. I think I was feeling it more than Isabelle because I had been around so long. In all those years through the novice, junior and senior levels, I had always made it to the podium and I was really going to miss it because I love competing."

Kristy Sargeant and Kris Wirtz, Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler and Jamie Salé and Jason Turner. Photo courtesy Skate Canada Alberta-NWT/Nunavut.

Fittingly, four fours were entered in the fours competition, held on the fourth day of the competition. The winners, hailing from four different figure skating clubs, were Jodeyne Higgins, Alison Purkiss, Sean Rice and Scott MacDonald.

THE ICE DANCE COMPETITION

Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz

With only one Olympic spot available, the fifteen senior ice dance teams in Hamilton had no room for error. Defending champions Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz had only been skating together for three seasons, but were perceived as the clear favourites as 1992 Champions Jacqueline Petr and Mark Janoschak had retired after dropping to third the year prior in Hamilton. Juan-Carlos Noria, who stood on the podium the previous three years with Penny Mann, had teamed up with sixteen-year-old Sophie Dore and was considered an outside threat to Bourne and Kraatz.

At the very end of the very first compulsory dance, the Paso Doble, Kraatz took a tumble, bringing Bourne down with him. Martine Patenaude and Eric Massé, junior bronze medallists in 1991, took a surprise lead in the first dance and surprised many by tying with Bourne and Kraatz after the compulsories. As expected, Bourne and Kraatz made up ground with their Rhumba OSP, earning marks ranging from 5.5 to 5.7 for composition and 5.6 to 5.8 for presentation.

Though Bourne and Kraatz delivered an outstanding free dance to defend their title and nab the only Olympic berth, the stars of the evening were Jennifer Boyce and Michel Brunet, who knocked Patenaude and Massé down to third and earned a standing ovation with a delightful Celtic free dance set to a medley of music by The Chieftans. Rounding out the top six were Montreal's Marie-France Dubreuil and Tomas Morbacher, Janet Emerson of Amherstview, Ontario and Steve Kavanagh of Barrie and Martine McShaud and Pierre Hughes Chouinard of Montreal. Sophie Dore and Juan-Carlos Noria finished eighth.

THE WOMEN'S COMPETITION 

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

Either before or after the competition in 1994, six of the senior women's competitors in Edmonton won the Canadian senior women's title. With two spots on the Olympic team up for grabs, the clear favourites were Karen Preston and Josée Chouinard. Both had won the Canadian senior women's title twice and placed in the top ten at the Albertville Olympics only two years prior. In front of a sold-out crowd, Chouinard, Preston and Tanya Bingert each skated flawless short programs. Chouinard received a perfect 6.0 for artistic impression by judge Pierre Limoges on her way to a first-place finish ahead of Bingert and Preston, making what was supposed to be a two-way race a three-way one. Eighteen-year-old Susan Humphreys upset the apple cart in the free skate by landing six triples and earning the first standing ovation of her career. While Bingert imploded after nailing her opening triple Lutz, Preston rebounded after an early fall to deliver a gutsy six-triple performance of her own, certainly worthy of a spot on the Olympic team.

Chouinard missed both of her triple Lutz attempts but skated an otherwise strong and well-rounded performance to take the win, ahead of Humphreys, Preston, Bingert, Angela Derochie, Lisa Sargeant-Driscoll, Netty Kim, Julie Hughes and six others. Sargeant-Driscoll, the 1990 Canadian Champion, had struggled with injury the previous two seasons and had opted to stay in to compete at the Canadians one final time in her hometown. In the January 9, 1994 issue of the "Edmonton Journal", she said, "I'll have a life after skating... I've had successses. I can say 'well, I've gone to the Worlds, and not a lot of people have.'... It's only a segment of your life. It's not forever." If Sargeant-Driscoll was at peace with her loss, Preston was crushed.

Susan Humphreys, Josée Chouinard and Karen Preston. Photo courtesy Skate Canada Alberta-NWT/Nunavut.

At a teary press conference, Preston told reporters, "I landed six triple jumps at the '92 Olympic Games and I was eighth. I thought it was enough. I guess they deducted a lot for the fall... My goal was to be on the Olympic team again, but I never walked in saying it's mine and I don't even have to work for it. I came in hoping that my best would be good enough. It wasn't. My best wishes go with the team, and I hope that my training mates can get a [World Championships] spot for three ladies, so we can really show what we've got, and nobody has to be left behind." Preston went on to earn a standing ovation for what would prove to be her swan song to the amateur ranks in the Parade of Champions, skating to Judy Garland's "Over The Rainbow".

THE MEN'S COMPETITION

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

With absolutely no question, the two skaters that everyone came to see in Edmonton were twenty- seven-year-old Kurt Browning and twenty-one-year-old Elvis Stojko. Even in the days before high-speed internet and social media, you didn't even have to be a figure skating fan to know their names. Their names were in newspapers, magazines, on television commercials, talk shows and the evening news... and the question of whether Elvis would be finally able to defeat his long-time friendly rival Kurt in Edmonton was a dream for sportswriters covering the event. The short program was full of surprises.

Interestingly, both Kurt Browning and Elvis Stojko drew to skate in the first flight of the men's short program. Browning, first out of the gate in his hometown in front of over sixteen thousand people, skated to trumpeter Doc Severinsen's "St. Louis Blues". He stepped out of the triple Axel in his combination and then slipped on the edge on his double Axel, taking a nasty fall. The audience was in shock and the judges were too, awarding the World Champion marks that ranged from 4.9 to 5.3 for technical merit and a string of 5.9's for artistic impression. Laughing off reporters catastrophizing his errors, he said, "This isn't adversity. No one died out there. I just slipped off the edge of a double Axel. It just made my work a little harder for tomorrow. That's going to happen every once in a while... Brian Boitano isn't national champion. Viktor Petrenko wasn't national champion when he won the Olympics. We really are here to qualify. If I'm in fourth place now... then obviously my priority has shifted from winning to make sure I'm on the team. It sucks."

Elvis Stojko landed his triple Axel/double toe combination, double Axel and triple Lutz with ease in his showy, modern "Frogs In Space" program but had a freak fall of his own going into his final spin. Twenty-three-year-old Marcus Christensen, who'd placed tenth at the 1993 World Championships, then changed coaches from Christy Ness to Jan Ullmark, skated clean and earned a standing ovation. Another twenty-three-year-old, Sébastien Britten of Quebec, also turned in an outstanding performance.

Elvis Stojko. Photo courtesy Barb McCutcheon.

After the dust settled, Stojko was first after the short program, followed by Britten, Christensen and Browning. Though he turned in an outstanding comeback performance in the free skate to "Casablanca" and brought down the house, Browning wasn't perfect. He popped the second jump in his triple Salchow combination and stepped out on his triple flip. Britten and Christensen both landed seven triples in their free skates, but Stojko's six-triple free skate to "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story" was enough to win.

Though he stepped out of a triple Salchow and fell on his quadruple toe-loop - the only quad attempt of the event - Stojko landed two triple Axels, one in combination with a triple toe-loop. His marks, which ranged from 5.7 to 5.9, were enough for gold.

Kurt Browning, Elvis Stojko and Sébastien Britten on the podium. Photo courtesy Barb McCutcheon.

Kurt Browning moved up to take the silver and earned the second place on the Olympic team, and Sébastien Britten narrowly outranked Marcus Christensen for the third spot. Rounding out the top ten were Jean-François Hébert, Matthew Hall, Matthew Powers, Jeffrey Langdon, Brent Frank and Jeremy Kish. After winning, Elvis Stojko told reporters, "I think it will take a little while to sink in. I was so into the program and what I was doing. Then it was like okay, I've won now - what's next? I think I'm going to let it sink in and enjoy it. It's been a long wait."

Although he finished twelfth out of fifteen skaters in the short program and dead last overall, one of the most interesting stories of the competition was that of Brampton's Vern Taylor. After making history by landing the first triple Axel at the World Championships back in 1978, Taylor had turned professional and enjoyed success as a coach. Reinstating to the amateur ranks along with so many others in 1993, thirty-five-year-old Vern qualified to compete in Edmonton by placing fourth at the Divisional Championships behind Stojko, Matthew Hall and Christopher Bourne. He told a reporter from the "Vancouver Sun" on January 14, 1994, "It's not that I'm trying to prove I can still do it. If I hadn't made this decision, I would have been sitting at home now watching the Canadians and wondering 'What if?'" One of Taylor's students, David D'Cruz, competed in the junior men's event. He told reporter Joanne Ireland, "He doesn't really look like an old guy. I think he doesn't look so old because he's so short. That, and he dyes his hair."

When we reflect on the 1994 Canadian Figure Skating Championships in Edmonton, we're swept back to a golden era - when figure skating wasn't just a sport, it was a national obsession. It was the age of Kurt and Elvis, legends so iconic they needed no last names, gliding into living rooms and hearts across the country. That moment in time wasn’t just special, it was electric. Today, in a world that’s always urging us to "move on" and "look ahead," there’s something deeply valuable about skating backwards for a while. Nostalgia isn't just sentimentality - it's a compass pointing us to what once made this sport soar: cheap tickets, unforgettable performances and extensive media coverage that highlighted the compelling stories of Canada's greatest skaters - both on and off the ice. And not a t-shirt cannon in sight!

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 eight fascinating books highlighting the history of figure skating: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.