Toller Cranston

Cranston was born in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1949 and grew up in Kirkland Lake. When he was 11, his family moved to suburban Montreal. Growing up, Cranston had an uneasy relationship with his family, especially his mother, who was a painter and who he said had a domineering and self-centred personality. He later compared his childhood to "being in jail"; in school he had the habit of asking provocative questions that made his teachers think he was being disruptive. After high school, Cranston attended the École des beaux-arts de Montréal. By his third year, he became restless with his studies. One of his teachers suggested that there was nothing more he could learn at the school, so Cranston set out at that point to establish himself as a professional artist. In 1976, he teamed up with personal manager Elva Oglanby to write his first book, Toller, a mixture of autobiography, sketches, poems, paintings, humour and tongue-in-cheek observations. It reached number two in the Canadian non-fiction charts. Cranston co-wrote the autobiographical Zero (1997) with Martha Lowder Kimball, and a second volume, When Hell Freezes Over: Should I Bring My Skates? (2000), also with Kimball. Though he described a sexual tryst between himself and Ondrej Nepela in the second book as well as affairs with women, in his books he presents himself as having lived without forming strong romantic or emotional attachments. ==Artistic career==

After leaving the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Cranston became self-supporting as an artist, making enough money to cover his skating expenses. He held his first exhibition at his coach Ellen Burka's home in the spring of 1969. In November 1971, he had another successful one-man show in Toronto, the result of almost a year's work. Thereafter, he continued to have gallery and museum displays, with over 250 exhibitions around the world. ==Skating career==

Amateur career After an initial failed experience with ballet lessons, Cranston started skating at the age of 7, when his parents bought him hockey skates. He experimented on his own with trying to dance on the ice, and was only later told that what he was doing was called "figure skating". His mother was reluctant to allow him to pursue the sport seriously, but at the age of 11, he met Eva Vasak, who was impressed by his talent and offered to coach him for free. As figure skating historian James R. Hines put it, Cranston was weak in compulsory figures, but his strength was the free skate. Kestnbaum states that Cranston's movements were counter to the classical movements of traditional figure skating movements and the movements of many of his contemporaries, including John Curry from Great Britain. Cranston's movements inspired male skaters of the time into the 1980s, especially in North America and the Soviet Union, even if they were not done with his flexibility and gracefulness. As Hines put it, Cranston was "never a conventional skater but rather a bold modernist who employed angular body movements in a dramatic and highly interpretative style". It was in the 1972 season that he truly established his reputation in the sport. At the 1972 Canadian championships, his marks included four 6.0s for artistic impression and six 5.9s for technical merit. At this time the artistic impression mark was supposed to be based on the quality of the jumps, landings and spins, and the choreography to the music. Cranston skated poor compulsory figures at the 1972 Winter Olympics, but turned in a strong program to finish fifth place in the free skating. The show ran for six weeks and was extended for another four weeks. It also featured Gordon McKellen, Colleen O'Connor and James Millns, and several other former elite champion skaters including (during its run) Ken Shelly and Jo Jo Starbuck. Legacy Cranston was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in 1976, the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 1996, the Canadian Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1997, Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1997, and Canada's Walk of Fame in 2003. He was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1977, and received a Special Olympic Order from the Canadian Olympic Association in 1995. He was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2004. ==References==