Skating coach says club ‘destroyed’ career

Lorri Baier suing Kitchener-Waterloo Skating Club for wrongful dismissal

KITCHENER — A figure skating coach who has trained hundreds of local skaters is suing the Kitchener-Waterloo Skating Club for wrongful dismissal.

Lorri Baier was a recreational and elite-level instructor at the club for more than 20 years before her employment was ended in April 2016. She says the firing came without warning, and was prompted by a personal rift with management.

The coach is taking the club to small claims court in Kitchener, seeking the maximum penalty of $25,000, plus aggravated damages and her legal costs.

“Effectively, my career was destroyed,” Baier said in an interview before her court appearance. “I believe my termination was due to personal animus on the part of just a couple members of the management team.”

The dismissal of the popular coach and choreographer caused some divisions within the club, which has more than 2,500 members and is the second-largest in the country. Some skaters left to follow Baier to the Ayr Skating Club, but she argues the Kitchener-Waterloo club controls access to the vast majority of the region’s skaters.

Last fall, technical director Jean-Michel Bombardier was also terminated by the Kitchener-Waterloo club over an allegation of sexual harassment which he denied. He was never charged, and says he was pushed out because of internal politics.

The non-profit skating club, which has produced some of Canada’s top Olympians from Kirsten Moore-Towers and Dylan Moscovitch to Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, said it will defend itself against Baier’s lawsuit.

“Unfortunately, every once in a while we have to deal with issues such as the lawsuit brought forth by Lorri Baier which detracts from our commitment to the community; however, we are defending ourselves accordingly and expect a decision that is aligned with the existing jurisprudence dealing with private skating coaches,” Jill Brush, president of the Kitchener-Waterloo Skating Club, said in a statement.

She declined to comment further.

Baier, 54, said she was one of the club’s top coaches, working with some of its top up-and-coming young skaters. She said the dismissal came on the heels of her most successful year yet as a coach, with her skaters setting new heights with national testing.

The coach had as many as 30 skaters under her responsibility, including seven of the club’s 18 developing competitive skaters.

After years of offering private and group lessons to skaters ranging from beginners to adults, she says the firing came as a shock. Although she was often paid directly by her students, she says she earned all of her income as a result of her affiliation with the skating club, and calls herself a “dependent contractor.”

Baier contends the dismissal came out of a personal rift with some of the club’s managers, who accused her of not being a “team player.” She believes she was pushed out because she was critical of their methods and coaching decisions.

“They gave no reason for dismissing me. I never had performance issues in the time that I was there,” she said.

“When I was terminated, they told me I had to give back my key. They followed me to the coaches’ room, watched me empty out my locker, and followed me out the front door. It was humiliating.”

As the largest skating club in the region, the Kitchener-Waterloo Skating Club controls access to most local skaters who want to pay for private lessons, she argues. When she was fired, she says that income was cut off.

Baier was barred from approaching her previous students at the club for a period of two years, she said. As a result, her income has decreased dramatically.

“When they terminated my employment, they effectively cut me off from the entirety of my ability to earn a living,” she said.