The Westminster Ice Club

After The Great War forced Prince's Skating Club to close, well-to-do figure skaters in London, England, found their options to be quite limited. A handful of rinks, including the Hammersmith Ice Drome, Park Lane Ice Club at Grosvenor House and a rink in the basement of Albert Hall, filled the skating void. However, all of these ventures proved more or less temporary, and it wasn't until the Westminster Ice Club came along that figure skating in London enjoyed a massive revival in the late 1920s and 1930s.

The Westminster Ice Club was located on Johnson Street (now John Islip Street), just off Horseferry Road in Millbank. Though a stone's throw from the Houses of Parliament and Tate Gallery, the Club's location was somewhat unlikely, also being not far from Page Street, which then played host to a series of decaying windowless Victorian tenements and stables. The private Club was established by Sir Stephen Cortauld, a wealthy philanthropist and member of the Cortauld textiles family, and Walter Keigwin. Cortauld and Keigwin had been inspired by visits to rinks in Germany and Switzerland, and hoped to market the Club to wealthy Londoners who were "too busy to go abroad". Twenty-five thousand shares of stock were issued at one pound sterling apiece.

When the Westminster Ice Club opened on January 14, 1927, the attendance was so great that thousands were turned away. Some who made it inside stood on ladders to view the scene on the ice over the crowds. The January 15, 1927 issue of the "Birmingham Gazette" reported, "Extraordinary scenes were witnessed last evening at the opening of London's new Ice Club at Westminster, when the number of those who arrived and sought admission was so much great than the available accommodation that the building was packed before the proceedings commenced, was surrounded by a large crowd throughout the evening, and at one time people were literally swept into the entrance by the pressure from those behind. Queues of cars and taxis quickly formed all along the thoroughfares leading to the building, and the occupants, most of them attired in evening dress, alighted from their cars and proceeded on foot to the club entrance, only to find they could not obtain admission. Many holders of invitations were unable to enter the building. Women in evening dress, many of them wearing valuable jewelry, were among the crowded audience. Probably about 5,000 people were inside the building, and it is estimated that at least that number, if not more, had to go away without gaining admittance." Later, "The Bystander" speculated that one of the reasons this all happened was because "so many members interpreted their invitations as covering a quantity of friends."

Greta Midgley, Mr. Bullimore and Betty Rushby dining on the balcony on the Club's opening night in 1934.

The Westminster Ice Club had an ice surface of approximately one hundred and eighty by ninety-eight feet - comparable in size to the arena that was home to The Skating Club of Boston at the time. It was decorated in green and pink beige, with pale orange lights illuminating the ice. The Club had heated dressing rooms, a restaurant, a wine cellar and two bars, one of which was on the ground floor and dubbed The Skaters' Cocktail Bar. Fresh off the ice - and still wearing their boots - the Club's members could chat about their figures and listen to phonograph records while sipping brandy and fine scotch.

Dorothy Fane, T.D. Richardson, Miss Peel, Gerard Mitchell, Mildred Richardson and Major Hutchison at the Skaters' Cocktail Bar.

In the mornings, the rink was eerily silent while skaters practiced their school figures. In the afternoons, a full orchestra accompanied those participating in Waltz intervals. A younger crowd showed up around cocktail time and skated until dinner. The Royal Skating Club also made use of the facilities, booking the ice for intervals for their old English Style combined figures. Ice hockey and speed skating were largely frowned upon at the Club, being considered rather boorish, but the figure skaters who ruled the roost did allow curlers the use of the ice.

Captain Fairfax-Ross, Mrs. Jack Cortauld, Henning Grenander, Mr. Lloyd, Jack Cortauld, Mrs. Stephen Cortauld, an unidentified woman and Mr. Ommanney at a carnival at the Ice Club in 1929.

Like Prince's years before, the 'members only' Westminster Ice Club played host to a unique mix of legitimate figure skaters and society types who were more concerned about their outfits than their outside edges. Olympians Sonja Henie, Cecilia Colledge, Belita Jepson-Turner, Maribel Vinson, Jackie Dunn, Rosemarie Stewart and Ernest Yates, Mildred and T.D. Richardson and Mollie Phillips all skated there, as did Sir Samuel John Gurney Hoare, Lord Jellicoe and his wife and daughters, Lord Dunmore, Sir Howard d'Egville and Harry Gordon Selfridge and his family. A number of high-ranking military officials were members, including Vice-Admiral Tritton Buller and Lieutenant Commanders Sir Hugh Dawson and Ivan Davson. Lady Minto was a fixture of the Club, always spotted rinkside in her regal furs. Perhaps most famously, King George VI (then Duke of York) and Prince of Wales, the Duke of Windsor took to the ice at the Club for a game of hockey in 1929. Sir Frank Boyd Merriman, who went on to become England's Solicitor General, made the transition from society to serious skater by competing in an English Style championship at the club in 1928 and Sir Peter Markham Scott won pairs competitions with future World Professional Champion Joyce Macbeth. He so impressed respected coach Bernard Adams that he reportedly said, "If you give me your time uninterrupted for the next two years, I will make you World Champion."

Belita recalled, "At Westminster Ice Rink, Mummy used to skate with us. She got us a teacher who taught us to do edges, three turns and figure eights. Mummy used to waltz and tenstep during the dance intervals. She did them quite well. It was at Westminster, that early in my life, I first saw my future trainer. His name was Jacob Gerschwiler. In those days he had few pupils. There was one, his favourite called Cecilia Colledge, known to all as Fatty. She was as round as a small tub with a pudding basin for a head. Her hair parted in the middle and pulled into two short braids that stuck out each side of her face. Gerschwiler said she would be a champion, but to us she did not seem very good. Fatty did not like the younger children and was nasty to us all. She was three or four years older than I was. I could still not do my own boots up, so I had to go to the ladies skate room and to Number Seven. NUMBER SEVEN! Without him, there would have been fewer girls skating for Britain in future championships. He watched over us with the loving care of a mother hen. He mended our boots, screwed on and sharpened our skates; when we had finished practicing, he wiped and dried our skates, put Vaseline on them and kept our locker keys. He was divine. A round-faced, big, amiable Swedish-type Cockney, with thinning brown hair and a ruddy complexion. I never knew his name."

Claude Langdon once wrote, "Captain [T.D.] Richardson and I were entertained by [Stephen]
Courtauld one night at his club, and of course I was fascinated [by] what we saw. Some of the biggest Mayfair celebrities had been induced away from night-clubs, and in the clear, cool air of the rink were practicing the Salchow jump, the counter-cross-spin and the Axel Paulsen jump! Marples, one of the professionals of the Park Lane Club, had just come from giving private coaching to Princess Elizabeth, today our beloved Queen."

Over the years, the Westminster Ice Club's instructors included Jacques Gerschwiler, Melitta Brunner, Bernard Adams and Lady Katherine Manley. The male instructors wore black; the females a pillar-box red uniform. Howard Nicholson, the club's chief instructor, drove a Cadillac and made over two thousand pounds a year from teaching alone. He charged ten shillings for a twenty-minute lesson.

Several important Championships were decided at the Westminster Ice Club. In 1927, the National Skating Association held the first women's championship for the Martineau Cup, donated by Major Hubert Martineau, a skating judge and bobsled and cricket enthusiast. Kathleen Shaw was the winner. In 1928, the World Figure Skating Championships for women and pairs skating were attended by the King and Queen, the Duchess of York, Prince Henry and Princess Mary. The attendance of the royals generated so much attention that the police had to drive them through the crowd to the entrance! In 1929, Gillis Grafström won his third and final World title at the Club and in 1933, the Club hosted the European Figure Skating Championships.

Hookway Cowles illustration of "The Veiling Of The Sun" ice ballet.

A number of carnivals and ice pantomimes of note were also held at the Westminster Ice Club. In 1929, a carnival in aid of Mary, Countess of Minto's Indian Nursing Association and the Bird in Bush Infant Welfare Centre at Camberwell featured an egg-and-spoon race, a backwards race and tea race, as well as exhibitions by Fritzi Burger, Melitta Brunner and Ludwig Wrede, Phil Taylor and Henning

 Grenander.  A fancy dress ice carnival in aid of the National Council of Girls' Clubs in 1930 was attended by the Duchess of York.

 

In 1935, Howard Nicholson's ice ballet "The Veiling Of The Sun" received rave reviews. The Club's 1936 "Galaxy Gala" featured an ice ballet set to the music of Felix Mendelsohhn called "In The Springtime Of Love" and a daring interpretation of "Dracula", where stilt skater Herman Steinschaden performed as a bat, while his victim lay on the ice in a pool of fake blood. Freddie Tomlins, Belita Jepson-Turner, Gweneth Butler and Mollie Phillips all appeared in this production, which was attended by the Duchess of Westminster, Lord and Lady Ossory and Lord and Lady Inchcape.

Ice dancing was also tremendously popular at the Westminster Ice Club. The Foxtrot, Quickstep, Paso Doble and Argentine Tango were all invented there, as was the Westminster Waltz, first performed by Eva Keats and Erik van der Weyden in a New Dance Competition sponsored by "The Skating Times" at the Club in 1938.

The Westminster Ice Club remained a popular fixture in Millbank until 1939, when - like many rinks in the UK - it was closed due to World War II. The facility was taken over by the military for some unknown purpose, and the freezing plant was sold to the Manchester Ice Palace. In 1942, the rink's glass skylights were shattered in an air raid. The Club was later demolished, and for many years it was a car park. Today, on its site, you will find the Westminster London Curio hotel.

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.

Overlooked Canadian Champions Of The Fabulous Fifties

More people than ever flocked to Canadian ice rinks in the 1950s, many of them inspired to take up figure skating after Barbara Ann Scott's historic Olympic gold medal win in 1948. 

Canada had many memorable champions during the decade, including World Champions Frances Dafoe and Norris Bowden, Barbara Wagner and Bob Paul and Donald Jackson. 

Today, we'll be learning a little more about a handful of Canadian Champions from the decade who are less remembered. Put on your poodle skirt or letter jacket, crank up the Dean Martin and join me for a trip down memory lane as we meet some very talented skaters that have been sadly overlooked.

FRANCES ABBOTT GUNN AND DAVID ROSS

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

The list of Canada's earliest ice dance champions reads as expected: Toronto Skating Club, Minto Skating Club... but a very small club of dancers from the Winnipeg Winter Club managed to weave their way into the record books. In 1938, Janet and Fraser Sweatman won the Canadian Waltz title. Four years later, Evelyn Rogers and George McCullough won the Tenstep. In 1951, Mary Rose Trimble and David Ross were the Tenstep winners. However, it wasn't until 1953, when David won with Frances (Abbott) Gunn, that a team from west of Ontario won the Canadian senior dance title. They retired in 1954 after winning the Silver Dance and Waltz events at the Western Canadian Championships.

Frances Abbott

Frances and David were exceptionally talented skaters, but their dancing took second priority to their off-ice goals. After graduating from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Science in degree in home economics, Frances worked as a diabetic intern at the University of Minnesota hospital in Minneapolis and as a dietician at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital in Bermuda and the Winnipeg General Hospital. David worked as a zone manager at International Harvester, then taught skating at the Connaught Skating Club and Kerrisdale Arena in British Columbia. Frances remained involved in the sport as a high-level judge, presiding over the dance events at the 1967, 1968 and 1973 World Championships. She passed away on February 3, 2014.

MARLENE SMITH

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

The daughter of Almeda (Haile) and Ernest Smith, Marlene Elizabeth Smith was born August 3, 1931, in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Her father, who was born in England, was the treasurer of the Smith Brothers Construction Company. Her mother, who was born in the United States, was a dancing instructor. Her parents married in Welland, Ontario, where her mother was raised.

Marlene first took to the ice at the age of seven, but didn't start pursuing figure skating seriously until she was twelve. She got her start at the Niagara Falls Skating Club but later trained in St. Catharines, Kitchener, Hamilton, Lake Placid and Toronto. Her primary coach for much of her career was Otto Gold, but she also worked with Gustave Lussi and Sheldon Galbraith. Off the ice, she studied at the Loretto Academy and Dominion Business College. Her hobbies were collecting spoons and Dalton figurines, and she always wore yellow socks when she skated.

Marlene won the Canadian junior title in 1948, the year Barbara Ann Scott won Olympic gold. The same year, she took the bronze in the senior class. At a ceremony celebrating her success, a local alderman remarked, "Ottawa can boast of her Barbara Ann Scott and now Niagara Falls can boast of her Marlene Smith."

In 1949, Marlene dropped to fourth in the senior women's event at Canadians but struck gold in the pairs with her partner Donald Gilchrist. She went on to win a pair of silver medals in both singles and pairs at that year's North American Championships. Upon returning home to Niagara Falls, she was greeted at the train station by a huge crowd of well-wishers and a pipe band, presented with a bouquet of roses and driven to city hall, where she received the key to the city.  

Marlene Smith and Donald Gilchrist. Photos courtesy "Skating" magazine (left) and "Skating World" magazine (right).

Marlene's successes continued in 1950, when she and Donald Gilchrist defended their Canadian pairs title, and she took the silver in singles. She represented Canada at that year's Worlds in London, where she placed ninth in the women's event and seventh in pairs. Swiss writer Nigel Brown described her in "Skating World" magazine as "a very speedy solo skater... [with] a very interesting programme which finished on a fast cross-foot spin following three double Salchows."

Marlene and Donald's partnership ended the following year. She returned stronger than ever in 1952, placing in the top ten in the women's event at both the Winter Olympic Games and World Championships and finally winning the Canadian women's title in Suzanne Morrow's absence.

Marlene turned professional after winning the Canadian title and taught at the Buffalo Skating Club in New York and the rink at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. On October 16, 1954, she married Lieutenant James Rollins Eddy, whom she met while water skiing in Florida. She lived, for a time, in Tokyo, Japan, when her husband was stationed at the Johnson Air Force Base. The couple later divorced, and Marlene went on to teach skating at the Washington Figure Skating Club, Ice Club of Baltimore and at a studio rink in Coral Gables, Florida. She passed away on March 1, 2009 at the age of seventy-seven.

ELAINE PROTHEROE AND WILLIAM TRIMBLE

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

Elaine 'Lanie' Fern Protheroe and William Gordon 'Bill' Trimble of the Winnipeg Winter Club were familiar names in skating circles in the latter half of the fifties. In 1956, they won the Canadian title in the Waltz, defeating the following year's World Silver Medallists Geraldine Fenton and Bill McLachlan. The next year, in their final appearance at the Canadians, they won the junior dance event and finished third in the dance, Waltz and Tenstep. A likely exhausted Elaine competed in the junior women's event as well. No slouch as a singles skater, Elaine won the 1957 Western Canadian senior women's title. At the time, she was studying commerce at the University of Manitoba. Bill was a grade twelve student at United College. They trained in the summers in Lake Placid with Jean Westwood. Musically minded skaters, Lanie played the piano, and Bill collected records.

Photo courtesy University of Manitoba Archives

After retiring from competitive skating, Elaine married William Hume and became a skating coach. She later taught at the Royal Glenora Club in Edmonton, the Cleveland Skating Club and the Forest Hill Figure Skating Club in West Toronto. Bill later studied interior decorating at the University of Manitoba, worked at a department store and then taught at Edwina and Cliff Thaell's skating studio in Paoli, Pennsylvania and the Winnipeg Winter Club. Bill passed away on New Year's Eve in 1978 at the age of forty-four.

LINDIS AND JEFFERY JOHNSTON

Lindis and Jeffery Johnston. Photo courtesy Guelph Museums.

In 1955, Lindis and Jeffery Johnston of London, Ontario made history as the first sibling pair to win the Canadian ice dance title, just weeks after winning the first competition they ever entered - the Niagara International Competition in Buffalo, New York. They were students at the Central High School, where Jeff excelled at track and field, football and golf.

Left: Claudette Lacaille and Jeffery Johnston. Right: Lindis and Jeffery Johnston. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

The teenagers trained in Buffalo during the winter and in Stratford, Ontario in the summers. She was only fourteen; he was seventeen - making them the youngest Canadian Champions in dance at the time. They also won the Tenstep and finished third in the Waltz that year. They also made history that year as the first Canadian ice dancers to compete at the World Championships, finishing eleventh. Jeffery had previously medalled in the dance events at the Canadian Championships in 1953 and 1954 with Montreal's Claudette Lacaille.

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

Lindis and Jeffery defended their Canadian title in 1956, narrowly defeating Geraldine Fenton and Bill McLachlan on the strength of their free dance - a new addition to the ice dance event in Canada. They again made history that year by placing ninth out of seventeen couples at Worlds, making them the first Canadian dance team to crack the top ten at Worlds.

In 1957, Lindis and Jeffery placed only fourth at the North American Championships, three places behind Geraldine Fenton and Bill McLachlan. They were so frustrated by their result that they withdrew from that year's Canadian Championships in protest. Lindis went on to skate with the Ice Capades. Jeffery and his wife Mimi Pong taught skating in Woodstock and Simcoe, Ontario and Cleveland, Ohio.

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.

Cold As Ice: What Sonja Henie’s Rivals Whispered Behind Closed Doors

Sonja Henie. Photo courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France.

"I am ten times World's Champion and three times Olympic Champion. I have never been beaten. Please come and see me skate." - Sonja Henie, "The Montreal Gazette", April 8, 1936

Sonja Henie dazzled the world with her Hollywood smile and sensational skating, winning three Olympic gold medals and ten gold medals at the World Figure Skating Championships. 

In Sonja Henie's day, a cadre of equally gifted women fought a very different battle on the ice: one for recognition. 

History remembers Henie as the unstoppable queen of figure skating, but behind every one of her titles stood a line of ambitious, resilient, and often overlooked competitors. Sonja Henie lived rent-free in many of their minds.

Herma Szabo. Photo courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France.

In 1926, Sonja Henie faced off against the reigning Olympic gold medalist and World Champion Herma Szabo at the World Championships in Stockholm, Sweden. Reflecting on that event in the documentary ISU: 100 Years of Skating 1892–1992, Szabo recalled, "Sonja Henie made my life very difficult and her father even more. In Stockholm at the Worlds, we were invited to the Austrian Consulate in the evening and I left my skates in the lounge. The next day was the competition and on my first step on to the ice, the sole with the skates came off my shoe. It had been cut off with a razor blade. That was not nice."

Decades later, in 1994, Fritzi Burger-Russell claimed that Szabo had confided in her about a suspicious encounter. According to Burger-Russell, Szabo said that she "thought she saw a member of the Norwegian delegation in the corridor as she returned to her hotel room the night before the competition – but nothing was ever proved."

Herma Szabo defeated Sonja Henie at the 1926 World Championships, but the following year, the tables turned. At the 1927 World Championships in Oslo - Henie’s home turf  - she claimed the title, with three of the five judges hailing from Norway. All three Norwegian judges voted for Henie, while the remaining two, an Austrian and a German, scored Szabo higher. The controversial result sparked a public outcry and ultimately led to a new rule limiting international judging panels to one judge per country.

Disheartened by the outcome, Szabo retired from the sport shortly afterward. In the charming 1998 documentary Reflections On Ice: A Diary Of Ladies Figure Skating, Fritzi Burger-Russell recalled, "Herma came to my house in Vienna and brought me some tights and a skirt and said, 'now try to beat her!' Didn't help any."

In an interview with Maribel Vinson Owen, following the 1936 Winter Olympics, Sonja Henie expressed utter frustration over the whole scandal. She remarked, "It made me so mad to have people say my winning was unfair... I immediately offered to skate the competition over two weeks later on the indoor ice rink in London - after all, what could I do more than that? - but [Herma Szabo] would not do it and just retired instead."

Fritzi Burger-Russell and Sonja Henie. Photo courtesy "Skating World" magazine.

Fritzi Burger-Russell passed away on February 17, 1999, while vacationing in Austria. After winning the 1930 European title and silver medals at the Winter Olympics and World Championships, her engagement to a German bobsledder was called off because she was Jewish... in a very dangerous time and part of the world. She married Shinkiki Nishikawa, the grandson of Japanese Pearl Tycoon Kokichi Mikimoto in Vienna in 1935 and had a son named Yoshikazu. After spending World War II in Japan, she remarried banker Bob Russell in 1968 and moved to the United States. In the decades after she retired from skating, Sonja Henie was always on Fritzi Burger-Russell's mind. Quoted in a 1994 interview in "The New York Times", she said, "In Budapest, at the 1929 World Championships, I thought I should have won. Sonja didn't skate well; she nearly fell doing a sit spin. But her father began clapping his walking stick so that people would start clapping for her."

Cecilia Colledge performing a layback spin. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

Maribel Vinson Owen recalled a dramatic incident that occurred during the women's school figures at the 1936 Winter Olympic Games, held in Nazi Germany. During the right back bracket change bracket, Vinson Owen remembered, "[Sonja] had almost no speed for the second half of the figure, she came up to the second bracket right on the flat of her skate instead of on an edge, a major fault, and after the turn she had to wiggle and hitch her skating foot to keep going, and then she pushed off for the next circle a good four feet before she reached her center, another very major fault... and when she had turned her twelfth and last bracket, she was at a dead standstill. So, making no pretense of trying to finish out her circle, she just put both feet down, smiled a gay camouflage smile, and walked off the ice. We gasped to see the world champion do such a thing. The figure as it stood, deserved no more than Vivi[-Anne Hultén]'s 3.8 average, if as high as that, and yet when the judges put down their cards, not one, not even Mr. [Charlie] Rotch, who indeed does know correct figures, had given her less than 5! We competitors and those on the sidelines who knew laughed in derision with a 'what can you expect'  tone - I looked at Mr. Rotch with the question 'How could you do such a thing?' in my eyes, and he just shrugged." Despite this display, Sonja defeated Cecilia Colledge by 3.6 points... a margin too close for her comfort. Steven J. Overman and Kelly Boyer Sagert's book "Icons Of Women's Sport, Volume 1" claimed, "This unnerved Henie, who had beaten Colledge in the previous World Championships on the strength of her compulsory figures; upset because of the closeness of the competition, Henie yanked down Colledge's score from the board and tore it to pieces." Fritzi Burger-Russell claimed that Sonja Henie lashed out at her in the elevator at the hotel, accusing her of spreading "advertisements" about Cecilia Colledge's superiority in the school figures. "We almost got into a fight. Well, not really. It was just a little argument. I told her I could say whatever I liked," Burger-Russell later recalled.

Cecilia Colledge, Sonja Henie and Vivi-Anne Hultén on the podium at the 1936 Winter Olympic Games. Photo courtesy National Archives of Poland.

British skating stars Cecilia Colledge and Megan Taylor had no love lost for Sonja Henie either. Phil Taylor wagered a thousand-dollar bet that his daughter and pupil Megan could defeat Sonja in any fair "challenge test". Cecilia Colledge recalled how Henie would isolate herself from her competitors. "She never talked to us," Colledge remarked. "To her, there were no other skaters. Even on the podium after the Olympics, there were no kisses, no handshakes, not even a word. She never would have considered saying something nice."

Lucienne Bonne at the Palais de Glace in Paris in 1932. Photo courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Then there was the alleged run-in between Sonja and French skater Lucienne Bonne. Canadian journalist Dick Beddoes recalled, "One likes to think of the night in Paris in 1932, in Jeff Dickson's Palais des Sports, when Sonja Henie, the Olympic Champion from Norway, was skating 'The Dying Swan', to the music of Saint-Saëns. Suddenly, from the balcony, came a serenade on tin whistles. Henie burst into tears - though not until after counting the house - and management announced that the tin whistle claque had been paid for by a rival skater, Lucienne Bonne. Mlle. Bonne denied everything. 'But what of it?' she added. 'This Norwegian nuisance stole my Swan!'"

Cecil Smith. Photo courtesy City of Toronto Archives.

Canada's Cecil Smith, who finished second to Sonja Henie at the 1930 World Championships, claimed that Sonja stole her idea of wearing white boots. In David Young's 1984 book "The Golden Age Of Canadian Figure Skating", Smith recalled, "First came Sonja, swathed in furs. Then came Mother, swathed in furs. Then Papa Henie, with a fur coat and cigar. Then the brother, with long blond hair, carrying Sonja's skates, and behind him, one of the international judges. Sonja walked over to my patch to see what my figures were like, but I said nothing - just smiled... At that time, only professionals wore white skating boots, while the rest of us wore black or tan. I decided I was going to wear white boots in the World Championships. Well, my mother was horrified. She thought it was brash, and the effect on the judges would be too startling, but I did it anyway. Three months later, Sonja was wearing white boots too." Henie later told the press that she wore white boots because they "reminded her of the beautiful snow in Norway".

Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine

Who could forget Olympic Bronze Medallist Vivi-Anne Hultén, whose candid remarks about Sonja Henie around the time of the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer ruffled some feathers. In an interview with "Sports Illustrated" magazine in the 1990s, Hultén recalled, "Look, I have a great admiration for what Henie did... On the ice, she was terrific, a wonderful acrobat, just like a circus princess, a big smile, dressed perfectly. But she was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a very nasty person off the ice.... I'm just telling it like it is." 

A 2003 article from "The Los Angeles Times" relayed several tales of the rivalry between the two famous 1930s skaters with the last name H: "The rift began at the 1933 World Championships, when Hultén finished only two-tenths of a point behind Henie. 'You are not nearly good enough to get second next to me,' Henie screamed afterward, pointing a finger at Hulténs nose. 'I'm so much better than you are. You deserved to be fourth.'" At the 1934 World Championships], that's exactly where Hultén finished.

Vivi-Anne Hultén and Sonja Henie. Photo courtesy Sveriges Centralförening för Idrottens Främjande.

"'Her father arranged it. She was afraid of me," Vivi-Anne Hultén told a reporter from the "Minneapolis Star Tribune". Hultén claimed that Sonja Henie's father made deals with judges at world championships to ensure his daughter's victories. "Papa Henie would go to these places and tell the organizers, 'You can have my daughter (for an exhibition); come up to my hotel room and I'll tell you how we can arrange it. He played poker with them. If he won, he got an appearance fee for Sonja to skate and he got an agreement that the judges would place me no higher than third. I didn't have a chance. I know this is true because one of my best friends was the President of our club in Stockholm, and he told me about it. Back then, the judges were always with the clubs,'" Hultén claimed. 

On a trip to St. Moritz in late 1935 to train for the 1936 Winter Olympic Games, Hultén was detained at the German border for seven hours and searched from head to toe by a guard named Ulrich Schmidt. After she was released, Hultén filed a complaint with Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda. Goebbels summoned Schmidt and made him get down on one knee and apologize to Hultén. Schmidt admitted to Goebbels, "A young lady came through before her whose name was Sonja Henie. She told me this girl here would be smuggling jewelry, so we stopped her.'"

Belita Jepson-Turner

In the heyday of Sonja Henie's success as a professional, she was a Hollywood star with her name in lights and a lucrative contract with Twentieth Century-Fox. Belita Jepson-Turner, a multi-talented skater/actress/dancer from the UK, had a contract with Monogram Pictures at the same time. When interviewed by David Jacobs in the 1970s and asked directly about her relationship with Sonja Henie, Belita responded with a coy, knowing smile and a carefully measured reply: “That’s a difficult question. I don’t know that I was a successor. We were quite different in style! She was signed up to Twentieth Century-Fox. They actually offered me a contract for life, for as much money as I wanted, if I never touched skates again." When pressed about whether the two were rivals, she added coolly, "Uh, that’s her opinion, not mine."

Though many of Sonja Henie's rivals had no love lost for her, many of her competitors had positive and nuanced views on her. Melitta Brunner, who finished third behind Henie at the 1929 World Championships, forged a friendship with Henie when she was in Vienna. Sonja also took lessons briefly from Pepi Weiß-Pfändler, Melitta Brunner's coach - and incidentally the former coach of Henie's first casualty, Herma Szabo. Sonja Henie also forged a friendship with young Austrian skater Hilde Holovsky and mourned her tragic death at the age of sixteen in 1933. 

Sonja Henie and Hilde Holovsky

Despite their rivalry, Fritzi Burger-Russell, Cecilia Colledge and Maribel Vinson Owen, among others, were able to find charitable things to say about Henie at times. They recognized her undeniable talent and the role that the powerful machine behind her success, her determined Papa, played in the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing of those days.

While skating lore will likely always be laced with larger-than-life tales of Sonja Henie and her ever-watchful father, it's hard to dismiss the chorus of voices from those who shared the ice with her. Surely not every grievance was sour grapes, and not every victory squeaky clean. But what’s equally true is this: love her or loathe her, Sonja Henie reshaped figure skating forever. Without the rivals who pushed her — and sometimes pushed back — the story wouldn’t be nearly as compelling.

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.

The Polar Palace

Skaters at The Polar Palace in 1943. Photo courtesy University of Southern California Libraries.

Los Angeles, California's fascination with figure skating began during The Great War, when the Café Bristol installed a 26 X 60 foot ice tank for its patrons. In 1923, an ice rink was constructed on the United Studios lot for the Allen Hobular silent film "The White Frontier", starring Dorothy Phillips and Lewis Dayton. The film was about "social life in interior Canada" and had a lengthy skating scene, featuring one hundred would-be skaters recruited by Hollywood casting directors. Two years later, the Palais de Glace on Melrose and Vermont opened its doors. The city's first 'true' skating rink had an ice surface that measured 70 X 170 feet and seating for four thousand, five hundred spectators. Howard Nicholson performed at the Palais' grand opening in November of 1925. Ellen Rowena Eliot, the society matron and ex-wife of millionaire John V. Eliot, had a heart attack and died in the arms of one of the rink's instructors. Silent film star Pauline Garon entered a 'flapper race' on ice and a host of 'bright young things' competed in a Charleston contest at the rink, set to music by Bert Crossland's Palais de Glace Orchestra. The popularity and novelty of the rink, coupled with a growing interest in ice hockey, led proprietor C.E. Hopkins to open a second rink, the Glacier Palace, in 1926.

In comparison to the Palais de Glace, the Glacier Palace - renamed the Winter Garden - was a much grander affair. Located on North Van Ness Avenue between Melrose and Clinton, the rink had an ice surface that measured 231 X 90 feet and seating for six thousand, five hundred spectators. The year-round rink struggled in its early years when The Great Depression hit. Things got so bad financially that the owners had to sell one of the compressors out of the engine room. Then, on March 31, 1934, a smouldering cigarette burned the Palais de Glace to the ground. With the 'original' skating rink transformed into ashes and rubble, the Winter Garden took on a new importance. Film studio owner and producer and railroad mogul Billy Clune stepped in with the funds to give the run-down Winter Garden a much-needed makeover.

Sonja Henie at The Polar Palace in 1936. Photo courtesy Los Angeles Public Library.

The Winter Garden re-opened on September 23, 1934, as The Polar Palace and Bert Clark, a comedy and trick skater who later acted as Sonja Henie's stunt double in films, was hired to head up the figure skating program. A full staff of instructors was on hand right from the get-go, and the skating classes had a novel addition - slow motion pictures being projected onto a screen. Yet, in its early years, the rink's bread and butter were hockey games and marathon-style dance contests on ice. Noble 'Kid' Chissell, who went on to become a middleweight champion in boxing, won one of these contests. He recalled, "All the big stars came to watch us. Helen Twelvetrees, Toby Wing, Jack Oakie, Ben Turpin. They all had their favourite dancers, and Ruby Keeler was a big fan of mine. She used to come almost every night with her family." Despite the popularity of these events, the Polar Palace was barely kept afloat in its first two years. Mildred Martin recalled, "Clune was on the verge of transforming his white elephant into a ping pong gallery or a super-market. Then Sonja [Henie] descended on the town. Week after week, her show packed the Polar Palace. Clune's cash register soon sounded like a Swiss bell-ringer act."

The year after Sonja Henie made her professional debut at the Polar Palace, the Ice Follies came to town, packing the rink night after night with its dazzling show. Hollywood fell in love with layback spins and loops, and the Polar Palace soon became a something of institution in California's fast-developing skating scene. It played host to three of California's leading clubs - the Los Angeles, All-Year and Hollywood Figure Skating Clubs.

Photo courtesy University of Southern California Libraries

Verne Carlson, who managed the rink from 1939 until its demise, recalled in 1963, "Our local club produced some of the finest skaters in the world - Gene Turner won the national title, and later appeared in a film as Sonja Henie's partner - Donna Atwood, also a club member here, had fame as star of the Ice Capades, a then new ice show. Then we had a mite of a boy, Richard Dwyer, who went on to star in the Follies, followed later by [Catherine] Machado, who became a star in the Capades. We had a delightful girl from England called Belita, who came and made her home with us - in fact she made a motion picture on our ice. As for TV, we were the first in this country to have a live hour on television, when 'Frosty Frolics' ran for four months. The national championships were held at Polar Palace in 1954, and many lesser events were staged during the past twenty years. We have been proud of our standing in the neighbourhood - race, creed or colour meant nothing to us. In 1958, we decided to close temporarily for a face-lift, and we re-opened with a new floor, new equipment, new lighting - we looked just fine."

Photo courtesy Los Angeles Public Library

It all came crashing down - literally - on May 16, 1963. Around three in the morning, the Polar Palace was engulfed in flames. 

Flames shot as high as sixty feet into the air, and sparks flew onto nearby apartment buildings. A sound stage at the adjacent General Service Studios was a secondary victim of the blaze. Sixteen fire departments battled the inferno to no avail. Within an hour, the iconic rink burned to the ground. Old wiring in the rink's coffee shop was blamed for the fire. The rink was never rebuilt, but lives on in the collective memory of Californians to this very day.

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 figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

The 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.