see above
The Royal Acrobatic Trio 1940's Winnipeg and Thunder Bay
Description
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- Description
- Born in Sturgeon in 1910, and Winnipeg in 1920, Victor Hartley and Gladys Crow met at the Winnipeg Y Tumbling and Hand Balancing classes in the late 1930's. At the time, Gladys was in training with the Winnipeg Ballet School, but Vic and Gladys were quick to realize their winning performance combination as adagio performers. Turning to even more challenge, they joined the Winnipeg Roller Skating Club, and their artistry, aerial stunts and balletic strength soon made them very popular entertainers in the Winnipeg area. In 1941 they married and followed Vic's work with Dun and Bradstreet to Fort William. There was no roller rink, so another new sport entered their lives - figure skating at the Thunder Bay Figure Skating Club (see their photo archives). Vic and Gladys married in 1941, kept refining their adagio act, and soon were simply called "The Hartley's." In Fort William, Gladys and Vic teamed up with Bob Cotton of Vickers Heights, and did some amazing performances as "The Acrobatic Trio." The photo incclosed is but one of many showing the risky and beautiful aerial throws of the three athletes. Acrosport did not exist back then, so while never entering competition, the pictoral records of their skills shows extremely skilled pioneer advancements in performance, likely based on their years of passion and training. In 1952, Vic was promoted again and this time to Vancouver. Joning the Vancouver Figure Skating Club, they thrilled crowds alongside Sonia Henie and Dick Button iin Stars on Ice in 1953, who were single skaters and not doing aerial lifts of the pair skaters called "The Hartleys." The archives of the Winnipeg YMCA, the Thunder Bay Llibrary, the Thunder Bay Figure Skating Club, and the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame have obtained archival materials on the legacy that began in Winnipeg and Thunder Bay. The B.C. Obituary in the Vancouver Sun also carries information on Gladys Hartley. The Hartleys are buried in Capilano Cemetary in West Vancouver.
- Donor
- Sandra Hartley (daughter, and Olympian)
- Creative Commons licence
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- Copyright status unknown. Responsibility for determining the copyright status and any use rests exclusively with the user.
- Contact
- Thunder Bay Public LibraryEmail:research@tbpl.ca
Website:
Agency street/mail address:Brodie Resource Library
216 South Brodie Street
Thunder Bay, ON
P7E 1C2
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