By: Debbi Wilkes

World and Olympic Ice Dance Coach Marijane Stong (nee Lennie) started skating because her mother had always wanted to skate.

Photo Credit: Skate Canada

When her Mom was a young girl, the family lived in Hamilton where the only place you could take lessons was at the private Connaught Skating club. Since membership was felt to be too expensive for the family, Marijane’s Grandfather came up with an interesting alternative.

He bought Marijane’s Mom a pair of brown skates with curly blade toes and when Lake Ontario was frozen over in Hamilton Bay, he would take her a couple of times a week. As time progressed, the family’s skating seed was planted.

Fast forward many years to when Marijane was 4 or 5 and spending a few weeks in the summer with her Grandparents. What she saw then were the neighborhood kids all on roller skates, but she had no interest in that. It was figure skates she wanted!!

By the age of 7, she was taking group lessons on the outdoor ice rink close to home in Weston. Once Weston Arena was built, skating moved inside and the Weston Skating Club was born. Initially she was coached by Kate Amyes (sp) however when a new professional arrived at the club in the person of Hungarian Champion Liliane De Kresz, Marijane found her long-time coach. Skating was not Liliane’s only forte; she was also gifted musically, another talent she passed on to her eager young student.

As Marijane’s commitment to skating grew, she also started skating in the summer at the only off-season school in Toronto at the Lakeshore Arena beginning modestly at first with a short two-week session. Of course it didn’t take long before she was skating the entire summer, times which exposed her to the expert coaching of Finnish champion Marcus Nikkanen.

It was here at Lakeshore where Marijane’s skating friendships really blossomed too. She met athletes from clubs all over Ontario, some eventually becoming her best friends and others, her competitors, all of them striving to learn and progress.

Photo Credit: Skate Canada

Her move to concentrate on musical interpretation and movement wasn’t surprising. From a young age she had studied for years at the Birdsall Dance Academy … ballet, then pointe and modern jazz. (**Spoiler alert – husband Louis also studied at Birdsall as a child, but they never met until years later.) Both Marijane and Louis believe it was this early education in learning the skill of movement to music which ultimately made them better skaters, better coaches and certainly better choreographers.

Ice Dance was a natural fit for Marijane. And to develop her talent, a family decision was made that she should change coaches to Marg and Bruce Hyland, Bruce’s specialties being Pairs and Dance.

In those days, to obtain adequate coaching and training time, skaters often had to travel far and wide to many different clubs. That found her at the Unionville SC with the Hylands, her Mom sitting in the lobby watching sessions and talking about baking with other parents. One recipe for butter tarts is still in Marijane’s recipe book.

At the time, testing for Gold Dances, it was required that partners had to be amateurs. So Marijane’s tests were partnered by members of the “Who’s Who” list of figure skating: among others, Otto Jelinek, Louis Stong, and Karl Benzing with whom she ultimately formed a competitive partnership. Finally the CFSA changed the rules which allowed Coach Bruce Hyland to partner her for her final gold dance, the Quickstep, when she became one of the youngest women in Canada to ever receive a gold dance medal.

Photo Credit: Skate Canada

Following a successful competitive dance career with Karl, Marijane realized she was drawn to the idea of teaching. And then … out of the blue … came a request from a skating school in Rochester for her to join the Faculty of the Rochester Institute of Technology. “I learned a lot in those early years,” she describes. “It was like teaching Phys Ed, but on the ice.”

After her time in Rochester, she returned to Toronto, eventually teaching at the Credit Valley Skating Club in Dixie Arena. It was there her creative juices could really flow; every spring the club produced an ice show and it was there Marijane learned about the value of real teamwork. “It was a small club, but it had big energy with every member ‘into it’. It was fun”. It was also the outlet for her ever expanding creativity.

From there she and her husband Louis were invited to lead The Granite Club staff into the future, and where, in the excellent facility, they did some of their best work, producing many national and international champions in all four disciplines: men, women, pairs and dance.

Marijane even found time to coach at the Canadian Ice Dance Academy in Richmond Hill where her career as a world class coach really took off, producing a rare Olympic medal in ice dance.

Photo Credit: Skate Canada

Looking back she remembers how different the club vs skating school situations may have been at the time … with one fundamental exception: “For a club or school to be successful, the foundation of everything that happens and every decision that’s made, TEAMWORK must be the first consideration.”