Figure Skating Remembered:

Attending the Skate Canada International event in Kelowna, British Columbia, this past weekend came about by accident after attending Stars on Ice last May 2026 for the first time. On that Mother’s Day, in the concourse, one table had many cards with pictures of championship Canadian skater. I asked about the event, and two women confirmed Skate Canada International coming to Kelowna in October 2026. I took a card and, in the next two weeks, booked motel and tickets for four full days to attend.

 As a figure skating enthusiast with years of figure skating experiences in my youth to go on to becoming an ice skating instructor feel nervous with excitement. When driving out of my hometown, Vernon, for the one-hour drive to park at Prospera Place returns me to sensitive moments of past times. When a teenager Mom sent me to see the World Figure Skating Championships in Calgary Alberta in 1972. Mom made arrangements for me to leave school in our small community and drive one Sunday with another local couple six hours away by car to Calgary with the parents of the billeters to stay with. The week was memorable with Toller Cranston and Jo Jo Starbuck landing her throw double axel in front of our seats beside strangers, a father and daughter at this event. The daughter took notes. When the moment came, “Wait for this,” the man said, and Jo Jo landed her throw axel with perfection.

Now, this past weekend spend the next three days watching figure skaters from around the world compete reaching pinnacles in their careers: Canada, United States of America, France, Great Britain, Switzerland, Finland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Germany, Estonia, and AIN ( Individual Neutral Athlete) Belarus. My single seat in a row at ice surface, bought six months ago, rests between a mother and daughter from Japan, and a young man from South Korea. The young man explains he came to Canada on a student visa and is a cook at SAIT in Calgary, applying to gain Permanent Residency. His English sounds perfect to me and compliment him on pronunciation without any accent. The young daughter from Japan speaks some English, but her mother speaks none. The young South Korean uses his translator to speak to them from Korean to Japanese.

One time, visiting with Mom, we wrote a poem about my Yellow Dress she made for the upcoming figure skating carnival in February. In those days being ill felt too weak but to skate Mom sat hours sewing by hand this pastel yellow skating costume. Here is the poem published in Horizons in Tongcheng Journal of a Foreign Teacher in China called

Fox Could and the Yellow Dress.

One-thirty in Afternoon

The braid was like silver

Two times around

The yellow dress with zig-zag

Helps Fox Could down the slope.

We don’t have a zag if we do not have a zig.

Maureen