I like to watch Patrick Chan skate for the same reason I like to watch Audrey Hepburn act, or Lang Lang play classical piano or Mikhail Baryshnikov dance, or a craggy hill in Scotland beckon, all misty and verdant. Chan’s presence on the ice is one of life’s little pleasures: that slip and slide of […]
Stars On Ice
Keegan Messing, Climbing Every Mountain
KITCHENER, Ont. Keegan Messing hasn’t plopped himself down on a rinkside seat for two minutes before he pulls out the cell phone and up pops a photo of his three-month old daughter, Mia. She has so much hair. Dark, of course, like his. And then another one of son Wyatt in a snowsuit, with […]
Patrick Chan Reborn
For the past couple of years, Patrick Chan has done no skating. None. None at all. Nada. It’s hard to believe that a skater so highly revered by others, with unmatchable edges and speed and flow and power and glide, has put those skates on in recent years only to do a bit of coaching […]
Kurt Browning Farewell
KITCHENER, Ont. The rain fell in torrents on Kitchener, Ont., and two hours away in Orillia, Ont., too, on May 7. A soggy Sunday for the ages. It was a time for final curtain calls, all on the same day: one a visitation for songbird Gordon Lightfoot, who died May 1 at age 84, and […]
Patrick Chan’s Hallelujah Tour
Listen easy. You can hear Patrick Chan take a nonchalant breath. His time is his time now. Hallelujah. The 27-year-old skater, a 10-time Canadian champion and three-time world champion if you want to work the abacus, is hot-stepping his way across the country on the Stars On Ice tour. Toss that maddening abacus. The wild […]
Stars On Ice Becomes Hot Ticket
Outside the Air Canada Centre, there was sturm. Inside there was drama. A post-Olympic Stars On Ice had come to Toronto. But it wasn’t like any Stars On Ice we’d seen in years. The Air Canada Centre was packed. Stuffed right to the rafters. That means 17,000 seats sold. A sell-out in Canada’s largest city. […]
Stars in My Eyes
I never miss a Stars On Ice show. In this post-Olympic year, many others didn’t miss it either. The lower bowl was largely filled at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, and some even sprinkled upwards into the nosebleed seats. (Just try to get into a washroom or a snack bar at intermission time- the […]