Sport: Ado About an Auto

From Halifax to Victoria there were outraged cries. Canada’s heroine of the year, Figure Skater Barbara Ann Scott, had been maligned, and to a man Canadians leaped to the rescue of their starry-eyed sweetheart.

In Toronto last week, the Globe & Mail’s Columnist Jim Coleman wrote her an open letter: “We read in the public prints where some acorn named Avery Umbrage, who lives down in the Excited States, is trying to have you expelled from the amateur ranks because you accepted a nice yellow Buick phaeton as a gift. . . .” Amidst the commotion, Prime Minister Mackenzie King reassured his people; he guaranteed to the Commons that everything possible was being done to safeguard Barbara Ann.

Cause & Effect. It all happened because Canada could not do enough for her little girl. Two months ago, when 18-year-old Barbara Ann came triumphantly home from Sweden as world’s figure-skating champion, home-town Ottawa rolled out the royal carpet. The Governor General’s Foot Guards Band played the music; Cabinet Ministers rallied round; kids were let out of school. Then His Worship, the Mayor, fumbled through his welcoming speech—and gave her the auto, the gift of her fellow citizens. Nobody complained at the time that amateurs were not supposed to accept shiny new Buicks as presents.

But a voice from across the border did complain. The objection came from strait-laced Avery Brundage, president of the U.S. Olympic Association. He had once dismissed Swimmer Eleanor Holm Jarrett (now Mrs. Billy Rose) from the U.S. Olympic team for late hours and champagne-drinking. But to Canada, this was different: why should he run to fellow members of the International Olympic Committee with grievances that did not concern his own team? (He also complained that Barbara Ann had accepted jewelry.)

Though he had never wilted before, high-handed Avery Brundage melted before Canada’s hot wrath. He was ready to admit after a day or so that “extenuating circumstances” might even permit Barbara Ann to keep her car. But Canada’s pin-up girl was taking no chances. Said she: “It would be selfish of me to keep the car and lose a chance to bring honor to Canada.”

What would the people of Ottawa do with it—her canary-colored Buick? Said Ottawa’s Mayor Stanley Lewis: “I guess we’ll put it in a museum with a plaque saying that due to certain people this car had to be returned to the city by Barbara Ann Scott . . . Ottawa’s most beloved daughter. And I’m not joking.”