Keegan Messing finally did it. After nine seasons skating for Canada, Keegs won his first national title, doing it the hardest way possible: in a pandemic, with skates that didn’t arrive (at first), with his best friend suffering from COVID, with a trip from hell to get to the national skating championships in Ottawa. Somehow, […]
Canadian Tire National Skating Championships
Wanted: Standing Ovations
Standing ovations were needed in the pairs short program at the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships. They were not there, of course. Nobody was there, but skaters and officials and coaches. The yawning rink seats echoed in their burgundy stillness. After a season of miscues and slips and lifts aborted, and jumps gone awry, Kirsten […]
Keegan Messing: Keeping the Butterflies in Check
In the annals of Canadian figure skating, there never has been such a buffalo-checked, adventure-seeking, resourceful, colourful, candid patineur of the north as Keegan Messing. The 29-year-old skater proved it this week after a 33-hour trip to the Canadian skating championships from Alaska with his wife and child, only to find that his skates didn’t […]
Keegan Messing’s Odyssey
It was ever thus: Keegan Messing, taking to the airwaves from Alaska to anywhere in the world, always faced the prospect of a long and winding road. But his latest odyssey – to compete at the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships in Ottawa this week – takes the cake. With weather delays and COVID-related cancellations, […]
COVID Clouds Canadian Championships
Vanessa James and Eric Radford are not at all certain they will compete at the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships after testing positive – and recovering – from COVID. The pairs short program is on Friday, Jan. 7 while the long is on Saturday, Jan. 8. The pair, who got together this season, will […]
Age is Only a Number, Apparently
Apparently, it’s never too late. You’re never too old. While there’s breath in the body, there is hope. And hang the doubters. Deanna Stellato and Maxime Deschamps were new faces among a small wave of new faces in the pair event at the at the recent Canadian Tire National Skating Championships. And although they finished […]
A hair-raising experience
Think you’ve had a bad hair day? That somebody took the last Timbit? That you missed the last bus to Barbados in a snowstorm? That the television cable went out in the middle of the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships? So you think YOU have had a bad hair day? Just ask Piper Gilles. She […]
Messing’s Hard Journey
Keegan Messing lived the best of times and the worst of times, all within a couple of months; married in a charming Alaska-style wedding in August, then stunned by the loss of his younger brother, Paxon, in a motorcycle accident in September. Life seemed to stop. In his heart, you could hear a moth pass. […]
Corey Circelli, Artist and Meniscus Manager
Corey Circelli isn’t the norm. He’s a junior skater who stands 6-foot-1 in his socks. And he seems to be an overachiever, energetic enough to compete in both dance and men’s singles at high levels. Throw all of that into the mix with a bum knee, and it’s astonishing that the 17-year-old skater was […]
Fast rise to success: junior dance champions
(Photos to come) Flash of lightning: that was Emmy Bronsard and Aissa Bouaraguia waking up the sparse crowd in their rhythm dance at the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships on Jan. 6, upending Carol Lane proteges Nadiia Bashynska and Peter Beaumont, the elegant red head. There seems to be a bit of a rivalry emerging […]