Police blotter: A deadly party and fisticuffs on ice
By Jason Kirby - Friday, January 25, 2013 - 0 Comments
A roundup of odd police reports from across the country
British Columbia: Two men entered a jewellery store in a downtown Vancouver mall just after opening and robbed it at gunpoint. The thieves smashed display cabinets at La Swiss Watch City and stuffed jewellery in bags. Before fleeing, they unloaded a can of bear spray in the area. Police are looking for two white males in their 40s.
Alberta: A Calgary house party turned deadly after a confrontation with party crashers. When five strangers showed up uninvited, police were called to ask them to leave. Several hours later, the group returned and entered the home. Brett Wiese, 20, died after being stabbed. Mitchell William Harkes, 19, and a 17-year-old young offender have been charged with second-degree murder.
Ontario: Police say a celebration among figure skaters at a Mississauga hotel “got out of hand” earlier this week, leading to a scuffle which left one male skater with a minor cut to his face. Authorities were called at 5 a.m. after a noise complaint. Eight Skate Canada members were involved in the fight. Police are not pursuing criminal charges. Continue…
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Man’s cheek cut as police break up figure-skater fight in Toronto-area hotel
By The Canadian Press - Sunday, January 20, 2013 at 7:09 PM - 0 Comments
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Police were called to a scuffle at a Toronto-area hotel in…
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Police were called to a scuffle at a Toronto-area hotel in what Skate Canada calls an unruly celebration involving figure skaters.
Peel police Sgt. Pete Brandwood says officers were called to the Delta Meadowvale hotel in Mississauga around 5 a.m. Sunday when eight Skate Canada members got into a fight on the second floor.
He says police sent those involved back to their rooms, adding that one man had his cheek cut in the melee but that the injury was minor and didn’t require medical attention.
Skate Canada says there was a celebration at the hotel that “got out of hand,” and that skaters didn’t hush up when hotel staff confronted them over a noise complaint.
Brandwood says the incident wasn’t criminal in nature and that police were there mainly to help the manager on duty quell the unrest.
Skaters from across the country have been competing at the Canadian figure skating championships, a week-long event held in Mississauga that wrapped up Sunday.
Mike Slipchuk with Skate Canada says the organization will investigate the incident. ”We take all of this seriously, we’ll look into it because they represent the sections (regional organizations) and they represent the country,” Slipchuk said.
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Patrick Chan's comeback
By Jonathon Gatehouse - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 2 Comments
He’s perfected the quad, is injury free, and has a new attitude. Next up: world domination
Photography Chris Bolin; Dmitry Korotayev/Epsilon/Getty Images
A furious Patrick Chan is hard to imagine. Downcast, maybe. Buffeted enough by a bad performance, or the vagaries of figure skating judging, to temporarily lose that wide grin. But the 20-year-old throwing a foot-stomping tantrum, complete with screams and curses, is a mental image about as difficult to reconcile as a fuzzy bunny with a machine gun. It simply doesn’t compute.
Still, the affable four-time Canadian figure skating champion (once as a junior, and for the past three years running, the senior men’s winner) swears it happened, out of public view, at the Vancouver Games, last Feb. 16. On the biggest stage of his career, in front of a hyped-up home crowd and an expectant nation, Chan had bombed in the short program. He bobbled the landing on his opening triple axel, stumbled during a step sequence—usually his bread-and-butter—and even received a penalty for finishing his routine after the music, a mistake he had never before made in competition. The score of 81.12 was good enough for seventh place, but a death blow to his Olympic medal hopes. So Chan smiled, waved, threw some kisses to the fans and cameras, then slipped behind the curtains and erupted. “My coaches had never seen me so mad,” he says. “I just said to myself, that’s not the way it was supposed to turn out.” Thirteen years of skating, building toward one ultimate dream, only to see it dashed in just under three minutes. You’d drop a couple of f-bombs, too.
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Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue in conversation
By Kate Fillion - Tuesday, November 2, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments
On pain, nerves, the future, and how their relationship almost fell apart before the Olympics
Photograph by Colin O'Connor
2010 Olympic gold medallists and world champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir have skated together since she was eight years old and he was 10. In early October, Virtue had surgery on her legs to reduce the pain and pressure associated with chronic exertional compartment syndrome, so the pair will not compete in Skate Canada. However, their book Tessa and Scott: Our Journey from Childhood Dream to Gold comes out next week.
Q: Tessa, you’re still on crutches. How are you feeling?
Tessa Virtue: Relieved, more than anything, because finally there’s an answer to the pain I’ve been experiencing. For years it was, “Oh, skate through it,” or, “Work on your breathing to get more oxygen to your shins.” We were actually planning on skating this season, and it’s funny because mentally I was really blocking out the pain, not admitting it to myself. It wasn’t until I met the new team doctor at our national team skating camp and she suggested I do some follow-up testing in Edmonton that we realized surgery was even an option. We considered, briefly, postponing it until after the season, but whenever we take the ice we always want to be at our best, and I think the last two years, training in that pain, I haven’t felt that.
