Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine
"Some claimed that the figure skating should have been in an enclosed rink, or at some place at least where the weather could not interfere with skating. However... it was far more delightful skating outdoors than in. The rink itself was a fine one and the ice remarkably good, especially considering the enormous size of the rink. The cold nights and warm Southern sun of the country, produce outdoor ice which on this continent, we can rarely hope to duplicate; ice of that smooth waxy texture which to my mind is perfect for figure skating." - Melville Rogers on the 1924 Winter Olympic Games, "Skating" magazine, 1925
The son of Amos and Margaret (Falkner) Rogers, Melville 'Mev' Falkner Rogers was born on January 5, 1899, in Ottawa, Ontario. Melville, his older brother Frankford and younger sisters Norma and Gladys grew up in the Rogers family home on Cooper Street in Ottawa, doted on by the family's maid Jemima, an immigrant from Scotland.
The Rogers family were devout followers of the Church Of England and Melville's father was a physician and surgeon who had shares in 'Fruitatives', fruit liver tablets that claimed to have "laxative and healing properties."
An athletic, six-foot-tall young man who was bilingual and excelled in rugby, hockey and tennis while attending Ottawa Collegiate, Melville learned to figure skate at the
Minto Skating Club's rink on Laurier Avenue under the tutelage of Arthur Held. Though he showed prowess on the ice, he put skating somewhat on the back burner for a time while attending the University Of Toronto. However, he did pop in to practice at the Toronto Skating Club's Dupont Street rink alongside Bud and Constance Wilson... and coach Gustave Lussi.
Nora Ahearn and Melville Rogers. Photo courtesy Minto Skating Club.
While taking undergraduate courses, he earned his colours in tennis and served on his second and fourth-year class executive, as well as the executive of the university's tennis club. He also spent sixteen months training in the Canadian Officers Training Course, enlisting as a Corporal in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in May of 1918 at the age of eighteen, nearing the end of The Great War.
Frankford and Melville Rogers' graduation photos from Osgoode Hall. Photos courtesy The Law Society Of Upper Canada.
Melville's first forays into the world of competitive figure skating occurred in the early twenties, when he and his brother Frankford were studying law at Osgoode Hall in Toronto. After finishing third in the senior men's event at the 1920 and 1921 Canadian Championships, he was the runner-up in both singles and pairs with Jeanette Rathbun in 1922, the same year his father passed away.
Melville Rogers, Clifford Sifton, Sydney Pepler and Katherine Capreol skating fours at the Toronto Skating Club in the early twenties
Graduating from Osgoode Hall in 1923, he won his first Canadian senior men's title and a bronze medal in the pairs event with Cecil Smith. That same winter, he finished third to Sherwin Badger and Nathaniel Niles in the very first North American Championships in front of a hometown audience. Not long after, he began working with Swedish coach Bror Meyer.
Melville and Gladys Rogers, Cecil Smith, Beatrix Loughran, Theresa Weld Blanchard and Nathaniel Niles in 1925. Photo courtesy "Skating Through The Years".
Cecil and Melville's successes in 1923 earned them both invitations to participate in the 1924 Winter Olympic Games in France. They weren't initially slated to skate together as a pair though. Melville's partner was supposed to have been Dorothy Jenkins, the 1922 and 1923 Canadian Champion in women's singles. Dorothy was given an ultimatum from her father - go to the Games or study singing in Paris. She chose the latter. Then, when other Canadian skaters who trained outdoors were forced to withdraw due to warmer-than-usual temperatures that left them without ice to practice on, Melville and Cecil - who both trained indoors at the Toronto Skating Club's rink on Dupont Street - became the first two Canadian figure skaters in history to be sent to the Olympic Games. Before departing for Chamonix on the R.M.S. Montcalm, the duo gave an exhibition in Saint John, New Brunswick at a hockey game against the Charlottetown Abegweits that drew "rounds and rounds of applause." Though Melville finished way down in seventh in both singles and pairs at those Games, his and Cecil's performance reportedly drew the most applause. Following the Games, he was also well-received when he gave an exhibition at the
Palais de Glace in Paris. In a letter to "Skating" magazine, Melville wrote,
"Some claimed that the Figure Skating should have been in an enclosed rink, or at some place at least where the weather could not interfere with skating. However, in the case of France,there was no choice. Chamonix was their best winter resort and the country has no artificial ice rink big enough for competition purposes. Then too, the thaw which robbed us of several valuable days was an extraordinary occurrence [that] had been unheard of for years at that season. Apart from [the] competition, too, it was far more delightful skating outdoors than in. The rink itself was a fine one and the ice [was] remarkably good, especially considering the enormous size of the rink. The cold nights and warm Southern sun of the country, produce outdoor ice which on this continent, we can rarely hope to duplicate; ice of that smooth waxy texture which to my mind is perfect for figure skating."
Cecil Smith and Melville Rogers in Chamonix. Top photo courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France.
From 1925 to 1929, Melville dominated the North American figure skating scene, winning four consecutive Canadian senior men's titles, four medals in the Canadian senior pairs competition and gold and silver medals in singles and pairs at the North American Championships. In 1927, he was one of the first four skaters in Canada to pass the First Class Gold Medal test.
Left: The Minto Four skating in a carnival. Right: Melville's medal from the 1929 Canadian Championships.
Interestingly, Melville skated with two pairs partners interchangeably during this period. With his sister Gladys, he won three of his four Canadian pairs medals and with his wife Isobel 'Tish' (Hossack Blyth) Rogers he claimed a fourth. In Janet B. Uren's wonderful book "Minto Skating Through Time", Mimsi Cruikshank recalled, "Mev Rogers was... a very strong skater. Tish Rogers, his wife, [was] absolutely beautiful - not a strong skater, but delicate - and when Mev took her into his arms, it was magic! He was very handsome. He always wore a dark blue overcoat and Homburg hat, with suede gloves. A real Beau Brummell."
Melville and Tish Rogers. Photo courtesy Library And Archives Canada.
In 1926, Melville and Tish participated in the very first "Minto Follies", an annual ice carnival that would prove to be something of an institution at the Minto Skating Club for decades to come... and one he'd often play a role in directing. In one such show - as you'll perhaps recall from one of the Skate Guard blogs during Black History Month in 2017 -
he appeared in blackface.
Top: Competitors and judges at the 1927 Canadian Championships. Back: Miss Morrissey, Dorothy Benson, Margot Barclay, John Machado, Elizabeth (Blair) Machado, Cecil MacDougall, Mr. Sharp, Norman Mackie Scott, Evelyn Darling, Constance Wilson, Jack Eastwood, Maude Smith, Bud Wilson. Front: Kathleen Lopdell, Paul Belcourt, Frances Claudet, Jack Hose, Henry Cartwright, Isobel Blyth, Melville Rogers, Marion McDougall, Chauncey Bangs. Photo courtesy "Skating Through The Years". Bottom: Melville and Tish Rogers. Photo courtesy Library And Archives Canada.
In 1930, Melville and Tish both appeared in the lavish "Land Of The Midnight Sun" ice carnival in New York City. Dressed as Wōtan (Odin), Melville made his big entrance to the ice in a piece based on Norse mythology on a white horse that stood on a platform high above the orchestra pit. Around this time, Melville's sister Gladys married and moved to London with aspirations of becoming an actress.
Melville turned his attention to fours skating - which he said he preferred to singles or pairs because of its musicality and sense of fun. In 1931, he was an integral part of the Minto Four that won the Connaught Cup at the
North American Championships in Ottawa. Andrée Aylen recalled, "He was a bit of a dour character but extremely elegant, and he loved the girls. He used to call me by my sister's name. 'Connie!' he would say, 'You're out of step!'"
Tish and Melville Rogers
A later incarnation of the Minto Four, which consisted of Melville,
Guy Owen, Prudence Holbrook and Margaret Davis, went on to win the North American title three consecutive times. Undefeated in competition, the Minto Four performed in ice carnivals throughout North America throughout the thirties and received the lion's share of applause wherever they went. Maribel Vinson Owen - a lifelong friend of Melville's - recalled, "Starting practice in November the four skaters would train together for two solid hours daily from then through the competitions in February and the exhibitions that filled their March calendar. The last three weeks before a major event this schedule would increase. They would all rise at 5:30 in the morning, skate from 6:30 to 8 on clear ice before the men had to go off to work, and then returned at night to practice again from 5:30 to 7. Often this would be still further augmented by a hurried noontime practice on clear ice. Their procedure was roughly as follows: in the morning they would practice parts of the routine and then would skate through the whole program to music three or four times. At night they would remember the things that had not gone well during the programs in the morning and would practice them before again running through the whole routine several times. Next morning they would once more practice the bits and pieces that had been recalcitrant the night before and again run through the entire four several times, etc... Although each member of this celebrated group suggested figures for the program and felt free to initiate a new swing here, an accentuation of rhythm there, Mr. Rogers was the acknowledged 'leader' who called the moves during practice, set the timing, and did the major part of the correcting."
Top: The Minto Four at a skating carnival in Boston. Bottom: The Minto Four at the 1933 North American Championships in New York City. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.
When Maribel's husband Guy Owen turned professional to tour with his wife's "Gay Blades" show, Melville decided to call it a day. Quoted in the January 2, 1938 issue of the "Buffalo Courier Express", he explained, "There is no one here [that] can step in and take Guy Owen's place. He is a brilliant skater and it would require several years to train one to fill his shoes. It's either that or some skilled skater from outside of Ottawa, and there aren't any prospects coming this way."
Cecil Smith and Melville Rogers
By the time Melville opted to retire from competitive figure skating in 1940, he was a father of three who was serving a three-year term as the President of the Amateur Skating Association of Canada. Under his presidency, ice dancing was popularized in the Dominion and the first skaters from west of Winnipeg competed at the Canadian Championships. From 1944 to 1946, he served as the President of the CFSA, playing an integral part in keeping figure skating alive in Canada during World War II. During a tumultuous time when many Canadian skaters were serving overseas, the Western Section was established, summer skating schools proliferated in Ontario and the groundwork was laid for the CFSA joining ISU in 1947. Throughout the War and in the decades that followed, Melville retained his membership at the Minto Skating Club, doing everything there from teaching skaters to serving as the club's President multiple times. Nigel Stephens recalled, "When I first skated, Melville Rogers was Mr. Minto. He was President for many years, and what he said, went... He was personally interested in the skaters and he always went out of his way to help the young ones." In 2010, Donald Gilchrist remembered, "He was the big poobah of skating in Ottawa in every sense of the word. He was a very imperious guy, extremely handsome and, as far as I know, had deep pockets." In 2020, Wayne Ayre remembered, "He was a very large man. He was also a terrific dancer... He was a big fan of the ice maker (my Dad). He fired Otto Gold as coach and brought in Sheldon Galbraith... When Mr. Galbraith took over it was a matter of weeks before the first competition. He threw out the program that
Barbara Ann Scott had been given and started from scratch."
Melville Rogers and Barbara Ann Scott. Photo courtesy Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
In the forties, Melville worked closely with Donald Cruikshank to ensure that no Canadian skater - in particular,
Barbara Ann Scott - lost their amateur status by indirectly endorsing a product or accepting lavish gifts. He also donated the Rogers Trophy to the CFSA, which was awarded to the winner of the men's competition at the North American Championships until the final time the event was held in 1971.
In a 2002 interview with Greg Hill, Canadian Champion and choreographer extraordinaire Osborne Colson recalled, "Melville Rogers was an average skater - very handsome! His son is extraordinarily handsome and lives in Toronto. We have lunch twice a week. Melville was very pompous. He came from a wealthy family. He knew he was good-looking and he sort of demonstrated that to all. He skated a pair with my cousin, Cecil Eustace Smith. My cousins skated against Maribel [Vinson Owen] at Worlds and Cecil came second to Sonja Henie. She was a very beautiful girl and she never did turn pro. She chose to get married. She didn't want to marry a skater and she turned out to be as successful in golf [as she was in skating]. Melville would come to Toronto (that side of my family was quite wealthy) and he would always sponge off them."
Lansing Rudd, Charles Cumming and Melville Rogers greeting Jacqueline du Bief as she disembarks from her plane on a trip to Ottawa to perform in the 1958 "Minto Follies". Photo courtesy Minto Skating Club.
A respected international judge who served as chairman of the CFSA's International Judge's Committee for some fifteen years, Melville acted as team leader and judge in 1948 when Barbara Ann Scott competed at the
European Championships, Winter Olympics and World Championships overseas in Europe. In a report he penned after those Games in St. Moritz where Scott's win made her a household name, he proudly proclaimed, "Miss Scott was undoubtedly the outstanding figure of the entire Winter Games and added great credit to Canada not only by her brilliant skating, but her sportsmanlike attitude and charming personality." Had it not been for Melville's quick work with Donald B. Cruikshank in raising thousands of dollars from Ottawa businessmen in mere days to help finance Scott's trip to Europe, she never would have been an Olympic Gold Medallist that year. However, not everyone was singing Rogers' praises at the Olympics in St. Moritz. When he placed Canadians Suzanne Morrow-Francis and Wally Distelmeyer in a tie for second after the winners had fallen - contributing to the Canadian's ultimate loss - amid a judging scandal, he was labelled as something of a coward.
Melville Rogers, Barbara Ann Scott, Frances and Otto Gold. Photo courtesy Minto Skating Club.
Beginning in the fifties, Melville served a fifteen-year term as President of the Canadian Sports Advisory Council, established in 1951 "to give organized sport an opportunity to discuss common problems and to present a unified voice for sport in Canada." Under his presidency of this organization, the Fitness and Amateur Sport Act of 1961 was passed in Canada's Parliament. He later served as a member of the first National Advisory Council on Fitness and Amateur Sport. It was through this council that Canadian skating received its first stipend of government money, part of which was used to develop a short film promoting skating which Rogers assisted in the production of. It won an award at the American Film Festival. Gerald Redmond recalled, "He was one of the first to preach against Canada becoming a nation of watchers but for so many years he was a voice crying in the wilderness for help in amateur sport... During a visit by Prince Philip, there was a news story out of Toronto where the Prince [took Canada to] to task for their lack of fitness programs. It seemed natural enough because Prince Philip had been urging mass participation in sport in Britain for many years and was a leader in the development of fitness programs there. But to those who knew Rogers, the Toronto speech sounded as much Rogers as the Prince. Later Rogers admitted he had written a letter to the Prince, outlining the situation in Canada. So Rogers using 'heart and mind' left no area unexplored in his promotion of the idea of the idea of Canadian fitness. The Canadian Sports Advisory Council became the Canadian Amateur Sports Federation, with Rogers at its head and out of that organization came the drive for a National Sports Centre which Ottawa now has, the Canada Games and so many other programs that have enhanced the position of amateur sport in Canada."
As a figure skating judge, Melville also stood up for what he believed to be right, even if he was in the minority. At the 1954 World Championships in Oslo, he was only one of two judges who placed Tenley Albright ahead of
Gundi Busch. At the 1962 World Championships in Prague, he placed bronze medallist Regine Heitzer twelfth. All but the American judge had her in the top three. After Wendy Griner lost that year's World title to Sjoukje Dijkstra, Melville reportedly approached Wendy and her mother and said, "I'm very sorry to say that I placed you second. I meant to place you first, but I put the wrong marks down." As Dijkstra had been placed first on all but one judge's scorecards that year in Prague, ironically the one time Melville had 'made a mistake' was one of the few times he voted with the majority. Domestically, Rogers suggested that a system needed to be in place to ensure that judges weren't being hastily promoted and that skaters weren't being 'pushed through' tests that they weren't prepared for. He played a key role in the development of the CFSA's first trial judging system in the 1950s.
Lynne Cowden and Melville Rogers skating at the Minto Skating Club in the sixties. Photo courtesy Minto Skating Club.
Although figure skating was always 'number one', Melville practiced as a barrister for many years and was an accomplished golfer, winning tournaments at the Royal Ottawa Golf Club and Rivermead Golf Club in Aylmer, Quebec and serving as a director of both clubs. He also served as a governor of the Royal Canadian Golf Association.
Melville passed away on September 26, 1973, in Ottawa at the age of seventy-four, five years after his wife Tish. His home club, the Minto Skating Club, gave him an honorary membership and established a memorial scholarship fund for male skaters in his name. He was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Amateur Athletic Hall Of Fame, the CFSA (Skate Canada) Hall Of Fame in 1990, the Ottawa Sports Hall Of Fame in 1991 and in 1999, he made the "Ottawa Citizen" List of Top Area Sports Icons of the 20th Century.
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