Chapter 4: It Was a Good Day if I Wasn’t Called a Queer, a Faggot, or a Sissy: Reflections of a Male Figure Skater Turned Scholar¹

In a small Canadian town in the 1970s, I fell in love with figure skating. I was four and my mother signed me up for learn-to-skate lessons at the local ice skating club. The idea was that I would learn to skate properly and then start playing ice hockey the following year. I was a Canadian boy after all and the expectation was that Canadian boys played hockey. But something happened in the first few months of the learn-to-skate sessions. Despite the fact that I was wearing hockey skates, one of the coaches noticed that I had taught myself how to do a waltz jump². I was also, during our organized group lessons and free-time, making up routines to the music that played over the arena sound system. As I recall, Shake Your Booty was a personal favorite.