Collector's rare finds span 15,000 years of skating history
Jean-Marie Leduc has been collecting skates for almost 4 decades, and has now authored a book on the subject
Most of us have boxes of knick-knacks and old photograph albums crammed into the corners of our basements, but one Ottawa man has a distinctly Canadian collection that spans thousands of years.
Jean-Marie Leduc, a retired public servant, collects skates. Lots of them.
What started as a love affair with speed skating has morphed into a vast collection of 367 pairs of skates and a book titled Lace Up: A History of Skates in Canada, inspired by his own collection.
"My son was a speed skater in 1977 and 1978. He got into skating and I followed him," Leduc told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning.
His interest in the sport morphed into a fascination with the history of the skates themselves, and the one question that drives his collecting habit: "Do the people know … what people skated on 100 years back?"
Whale, buffalo bone skates
Leduc has 22 bins of skates in his home, numbered, coded and secured with large padlocks.
It's no random collection; Leduc is a collector who knows what he's hunting for.
"I'd been looking [for this] for 12 years," he said, gesturing to one wooden skate from 1871 that would inspire the lifting mechanism on speed skates today.
But that's not even the oldest piece of Leduc's collection, which includes skates made from buffalo and whale bones that date back 15,000 years.
"They had a pole and they were pushing themselves, a little bit like people do when skiing," he explained.
He'd found the set in another aficionado's collection and purchased them for $24 — a deal she would later come to regret, he laughed.
The most sentimental pair, however, are skates Olympic champion Barbara Ann Scott wore, signed just for him.
Leduc met Scott at an exhibition he hosted. The famous skater had asked to meet him after hearing of his collection. After chatting for a few minutes, he asked her for an autograph. She winked and promised him a pair of her skates, too.
Though his passion for skating is unimpeachable, Leduc doesn't skate himself.
"I was a tennis player, and because of the type of shoes we wore, and they wore out my arches."
His book launched Tuesday, and is already sold out at some locations.
With files from CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning