Toller Cranston
| Toller Cranston | |
|---|---|
Toller Cranston performs a split jump at the 1974 World Figure Skating Championships
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| Personal information | |
| Full name | Toller Shalitoe Montague Cranston |
| Country represented | Canada |
| Born |
April 20, 1949 Hamilton, Ontario |
| Died | January 24, 2015 (aged 65) San Miguel de Allende, Mexico |
| Home town | Kirkland Lake, Ontario |
| Height | 172 cm (5 ft 8 in) |
| Former coach |
Ellen Burka Eva Vasak |
| Skating club | TCS & CC |
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Medal record
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| Olympic medal record | ||
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| Men's figure skating | ||
Representing  Canada
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 |
1976 Innsbruck | Singles |
Toller Shalitoe Montague Cranston, CM (April 20, 1949 – January 24, 2015) was a Canadian figure skater and painter. He won the 1971–1976 Canadian national championships, the 1974 World bronze medal and the 1976 Olympic bronze medal. Despite never winning at the World Figure Skating Championships due to his poor compulsory figures, he won the small medal for free skating at the 1972 and 1974 championships. Cranston is credited by many with having brought a new level of artistry to men's figure skating.
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 says 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. Although he enjoyed history, he disliked more structured subjects like mathematics.
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 Tollerance (1997) with Martha Lowder Kimball, and a second volume, When Hell Freezes Over: Should I Bring My Skates? (2000), also with Kimball. While 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.
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