Blades, buffalo bones and Boucher
Ottawa enthusiast and collector publishes book on history of skates
One can only wonder how much, if any, joy the original owner of JeanMarie Leduc’s oldest skates might have experienced as he travelled over a frozen river or lake some 10,000 or 15,000 years ago.
This Mesolithic traveller, a relative newcomer to North America, would have had a pair of buffalo bones tied to his feet, hardly sharp enough to skate in the manner we do today. Instead, he’d have used a pole to propel himself forward, much like modern cross-country skiers.
It’s unlikely he skated for pleasure — the mode of transportation was, if nothing else, faster than walking on ice — but it was surely not as uncomfortable as 15-year-old Lidwina’s final outing on skates, when, in the early 15th century, the Dutch teen fell and broke three ribs and a hip while skating near Rotterdam, rendering her bedridden for the remainder of her 53 years with nothing to do but perform healing miracles on others and earn the (posthumous) title of patron saint of ice skaters.
It was likely also far less traumatic than Christine Boudrias’s experience at the Canadian shorttrack speedskating trials in Montreal in 1990, when she became entangled with a teammate whose skate slashed the back of her leg, severing an artery that requiring 123 stitches to close.
“He would have skated for transportation and survival,” says Leduc of the Stone Age skater, “and later for communication. But he wouldn’t have enjoyed it the way we do, not until metal blades came along and he could glide.”
These are a some of the stories from Leduc’s new book, Lace Up: A History of Skates in Canada, which chronicles the evolution of ice skates from the days of buffalo and whalebone runners to today’s replaceable, state-of-the-art, razor-sharp stainless steel-andaluminum blades.
An Ottawa resident and retired public servant, Leduc, 81, is perhaps Canada’s foremost expert on skates. His collection of them numbers more than 350 pairs, including the aforementioned buffalo-bone blades.
He also has the speedskates worn by Gaetan Boucher in 1984 when he won two Olympic gold medals, a pair of Barbara Ann Scott figure skates, and numerous skates worn by NHLers. And he’s the proud possessor of a pair from 1452, featuring the first metal blades affixed to wooden stock.
Since he started his collection in the early 1980s, Leduc — because of a foot problem, he can’t skate — has given 32 lectures and hosted 53 exhibitions of his skates, worldwide. “Everywhere I’d go, people would ask me to write a book,” he says. “I always said it’ll come, but I have no computer.”
Instead, he called the University of Ottawa to see if there might be any students there interested in helping out. He eventually teamed up with historian Dr. Sean Graham and researcher Julie Léger, and 3 ½ years later, Lace Up was completed.
While the book’s title suggests a Canadian-only theme, Leduc’s history takes readers to other northern climes and imaginations, including Saint Lidwina, Dutch musketeers on skates, Norse god and goddess Ullr and Skadi, and the American father of modern figure skating, Jackson Haines, who first incorporated balletic movements into the sport.
With numerous illustrations drawn from his collection and other archival sources, Leduc also examines the evolution of and innovations to skates and skating, and explains how skates work in the first place, and how they differ depending on the activity they’re being used for, whether it’s hockey, speedskating, figure skating or barrel jumping.
“Without skates,” he says, “how do we spend winter? We have to spend time somehow, somewhere. Our first use was skating races, and then we had figure skating. Hockey was the last sport to discover the blades, and it evolved to a point where people can now skate 12 months a year.
“And that evolved to the point where it’s our national winter sport, and people in Canada today, for winter, feel they have to own a pair of skates, no matter what.”
Lace Up: A History of Skates in Canada is having its launch from 5 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday at Johnson Hall in the Alex Trebek Alumni Hall at University of Ottawa, 157 Séraphin-Marion Private.