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Sheldon Galbraith celebrates with Barbara Ann Scott after she won the women’s World Figure Skating Championships in 1948 in Davos, Switzerland.The Associated Press

Renowned Canadian dance choreographer Brian Foley will never forget the first time he met master figure skating coach Sheldon Galbraith.

In 1966, Mr. Foley arrived at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club to ply his trade with figure skaters, and found Mr. Galbraith "very polite in chastising me that I was standing and teaching in his space."

But what a space. In a corner of the club, Mr. Foley spotted an array of "teaching tools" that Mr. Galbraith used to bring out the best in his skaters, including 1948 Olympic champion Barbara Ann Scott, 1954 and 1955 world pair champions Frances Dafoe and Norris Bowden, 1960 Olympic pair champions Barbara Wagner and Bob Paul and 1962 world champion Donald Jackson, the first man in history to land a triple Lutz in competition. Mr. Galbraith was unusual in that he taught world and Olympic champions in three out of the four skating disciplines.

In the rink, Mr. Foley saw "a homemade flying harness contraption," trampolines with crash mats, a few wooden poles, some climbing apparatus and "other paraphernalia that reminded me of an early Cirque du Soleil," he said.

Mr. Galbraith died April 14 at the Eagle Terrace Long Term Care facility in Newmarket, Ont., of pneumonia. He was 92. Jeanne, his wife of 69 years, died three years ago.

Mr. Foley soon learned that Mr. Galbraith was a man ahead of his time, with a lively curiosity about his sport – the science, the music and the rhythms of it, as well as the people. Ms. Scott used to say he was "an entirely agreeable man" who never lost his temper, but "never missed any tricks, either." He was inventive, without actually inventing anything. He borrowed ideas from the experiences in his life to get results in a creative way. He tinkered magnificently with all the rules of physics. "I watched him get results that were unbelievable with skaters," Mr. Foley said.

During the summer of 1961, Mr. Galbraith began to work with Mr. Jackson, who had been impressed with the coach's sense of fair play during the 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Olympics. Mr. Galbraith coached Canadian champion Wendy Griner, and was to oversee Mr. Jackson while his own coach was elsewhere. Still, Mr. Galbraith flipped a coin to determine whom he would coach first, instead of reserving the best patch of ice for his own student. "That was just the type of man he was," Mr. Jackson said. "Fair. Honest." Under Mr. Galbraith's guidance, Mr. Jackson started to land the triple Lutz.

Sheldon William Galbraith was born on May 24, 1922, in Teulon, Man., a tiny town near Winnipeg, the youngest child of Mabel and William Galbraith, an amateur hockey player. When Mr. Galbraith was an infant, the family, including his three siblings, moved to Tacoma, Wash., and by the time he was in his early teens, they lived in San Francisco, where the patriarch of the family got a job with the National Cash Register Co.

In San Francisco, Mr. Galbraith and his brother Murray gravitated quickly to nearby rinks, where Mr. Galbraith was audacious enough to try jumping in hockey skates. Both brothers competed at novice and junior levels at U.S. championships, but in 1940 they were coaxed into joining the professional ice show Ice Follies. They developed routines as a "shadow pair," in which the two of them would skate side by side, doing moves in perfect unison. They were dynamic.

Mr. Galbraith benefited from the resources that came with being part of a skating show. He learned lessons from dance choreographers and musicians, and understood the importance of each beat of music and how to express it. And he passed on the practice of perfecting each move with countless repetitions, so they become second nature. Mr. Galbraith and his brother would skate their routines 13 times in one practice session, for example.

When he began coaching Ms. Scott in 1946 at the Minto Skating Club in Ottawa, he ensured she had suitable music to use and that the choreography matched it – a novel development in skating at the time.

While working out her new routines, Ms. Scott recalled the sight of her tall coach in his bulky coat, cap with ear flaps and big galoshes working on ice with her: "The extremely masculine Sheldon [was] giving the spectators a good deal of amusement as he imitated the characteristic feminine ways of pirouetting on ice. Not that he was trying to amuse anyone. He was dead serious and so was I, as he illustrated precisely what he wanted me to do."

Ms. Scott appears to be one of his few students who had the luxury of calling him "Sheldon." Later, he would correct any who tried. "He was always Mr. Galbraith," said former pupil Casey Kelly, an international figure skating judge. "Even my mom [Andra Kelly], she never called him Sheldon. It was always Mr. Galbraith." This was so, even though Mr. Galbraith and his wife and Andra and her husband, hockey great Red Kelly, would share a table at Hall of Fame inductions.

Mr. Galbraith, who already had his pilot's licence, joined the U.S. Naval Air Corps during the summer of 1942 and became a flight instructor. This experience taught him about the importance of high-altitude training, especially since Winter Olympics were often staged at high, mountainous sites. He had a difficult time convincing the Canadian Figure Skating Association that it was necessary to train skaters at high altitude three weeks before competing. "They wouldn't believe there was a problem," Ms. Dafoe once said. "They thought it was all in our heads."

For his skating work, he also borrowed the principle of teaching by flight simulation. He had skaters use trampolines or ropes suspended from the ceiling to teach them how to rotate without fear of falling. And he was the first coach to film his skaters to enhance their understanding of skills. In 1946, it took 11 days to process a film.

Nobody could forget Mr. Galbraith's infamous video room, open only to students. Few others were invited in. Ms. Kelly recalled that the windows were covered with plastic bags so no one could see inside.

"If you were his student, he was going to share the absolute best of what he had," she said. "We'd go in, sometimes for half an hour, watching video. Usually it was a video of you and he was showing it backwards and forwards, talking about the rules of flight he learned as a pilot. He'd talk about parabolic curves.

"And he would tie your legs together while you were doing [compulsory] figures. He wanted you to learn that it was coming from your core. Now everybody talks about the core. He was way ahead of his time."

Mr. Galbraith would also make students take off their skates and put on one of his big galoshes atop a loose blade. He'd ask them to stand on it and see if they could do a turn, without the blade attached. That taught balance.

Sometimes, his subjects would call him "Captain Video." Years later, Mr. Foley's tap-dancing son, Ryan, got the benefit of a home viewing when he happened to mention to Mr. Galbraith that he was going to work with Olympic silver medalist Elvis Stojko.

"The next morning, there was a knock on the door to my house," said Ryan, who is married to Mr. Galbraith's granddaughter. There stood Mr. Galbraith with five bags of historical footage that he wanted to share. "I knew I would never need to use it," Ryan said. "But he just wanted to share with me and I knew I was in the room, sitting next to greatness. I'll never forget that."

After Mr. Galbraith's retirement from teaching in 1988, after 39 years at the Toronto club, he worked to turn his vast, historical film collection into DVDs. The video room had shifted to the basement of his home. He tinkered and could make mechanical things, such as computers, serve his needs.

Though he was named a member of the Order of Canada in 1999 and received numerous other honours, Mr. Galbraith always remained humble. In his latter days, he'd visit the cricket club, where he was a lifetime member, and watch Brian Orser work. "His respect for Brian was such that he wouldn't go in and tell Brian things," Casey Kelly said. "But he'd say to me: 'If you think he'd be willing to listen to this, I have a few things I would share,' He respected that Brian was in charge now."

Mr. Orser would always go and listen.

Mr. Galbraith leaves four children: Jeannie Branston, Brian Galbraith, Barbara Galbraith and Mary Louise Teakle, as well as seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his daughter Kathy.

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