Frank Gartrell
| Frank Gartrell | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1941-10-06 Hamilton, Ontario |
| Died | 2019-11-17 Bridgewater, Nova Scotia |
Frank De Witt Gartrell (6 October 1941 – 17 November 2019) was a Canadian ski jumper, coach, judge and broadcaster from Fort William, Ontario.[1][2]
Skiing
He learned to ski at the Fort William Ski Club's ski school in the early 1950s, won the Ontario intercollegiate ski jumping title while at Fort William Collegiate, and was named to the national ski jumping team in 1962.[3] He placed 50th on the large hill at the 1962 Nordic World Ski Championships in Zakopane and was named to Canada's team for the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, but a serious injury on the Olympic jump two days before the Games kept him from starting.[1][3]
He later became a certified FIS judge and national ski jumping chairman, sat on the board of the Big Thunder ski jumping centre, coached and helped maintain its hills, and was a CBC colour commentator, including at the 1988 and 1992 Winter Olympics.[3][1][2] Around 1979 he and Rob McCormack recruited Jeff Thingstad to help with the jumping events they ran at the Little Norway jump.[4] He was inducted into the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame on 26 September 1992.[3]
Outside sport he taught shop at a Thunder Bay high school. He moved to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, late in life and died at Bridgewater in 2019.[2][1]
See also History of skiing in Thunder Bay
See also Big Thunder National Training Center, whose ski jumping centre board he sat on.[5]
Thunder Bay Museum material (October 2026)
In 1963 a Port Arthur News-Chronicle column said the Hansen brothers wanted their planned 90-metre jump at Little Norway (later Big Thunder) "to send more than just Frank Gartrell to the Olympics".[6]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Frank Gartrell". Olympedia.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Frank De Witt Gartrell" (obituary). Dana L. Sweeny Funeral Home, Lunenburg, NS, November 2019.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 "Frank Gartrell" (athlete profile, inducted 26 September 1992). Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame.
- ↑ Angus, Nancy. "The Community Crew". Bayview Magazine, September 2016.
- ↑ "Frank Gartrell". Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame (inducted 1992).
- ↑ Sports column ("A new ski resort is in the making..."). Port Arthur News-Chronicle, 29 August 1963; clipping from the Thunder Bay Museum archives, supplied by Emma Hurley Warren (archival assistant) in an email to Michael Currie, 26 October 2026 (personal communication). Scan.
