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From being just a determined little girl, she became a dedicated big girl. At 15, she was national champion. Somebody at the Minto Club figured out that Barbara Ann skated eleven miles a day on school figures alone. She and her mother had moved into a cheerful, chintzy apartment on the top floor of an old house on Metcalfe Street, trying to make ends meet on Clyde Scott's pension of about $3,000 a year. The big problem was to get money to pay skating instructors, buy skates (at $60 a pair for boots and $30 for blades) and pay expenses to places like Seattle, St. Paul and Vancouver for competitions. Some Ottawa businessmen, old friends of Clyde Scott, came to the rescue. Last winter they raised almost $10,000 to send Barbara Ann to Stockholm, where she became world's champion.
Suddenly she was a national heroine, along with Princess Elizabeth and the Dionne quintuplets. Her mother took the name plate off the front door: the callers were kind, but there were apt to be too many of them.
When she is home, Barbara Ann still gets up at 7, makes her own bed, helps wash the breakfast dishes, spends the day skating and is usually in bed by 8:30. She no longer has much time for boys, dances and movies (her favorites: anything with Ingrid Bergman or Walter Pidgeon in it) or flying, which she learned to do because her father, although no pilot, liked flying.
The Ambassadress. Barbara' Ann's conversation, like the chatter of most girls her age, is full of expressions like "super" and "fiendish" and "divine"—and she giggles. For all that, she knows how to handle herself, and without prompting. Prime Minister Mackenzie King calls her Canada's "ambassadress." On the big circuit in Europe, she has learned to take one sip of champagne ("so people won't think I'm stuffy") and leave the rest, hoping no one will be offended. "Give me a good old American milk shake any time," she says.
Last year, after winning the world title, she got a tip, as her train was neafing Ottawa, that the townspeople were going to give her a new car. Quickly she hurried into the women's toilet, wrote out and memorized a short speech. Sure enough, when she stepped off the train, the Governor General's Foot Guards' Band struck up O Canada!, there were cheers from M.P.s and the kids who had been let out of school, and she was given a canary-colored Buick convertible. Her speech, which sounded spontaneous, went over big. Two months later, when she had to give the Buick back (for fear it would harm her amateur standing), her tears were unrehearsed.
The Crossroads. Like every champion, Barbara Ann has reached a point where people are trying to knock her crown off. There is also a polite tug-of-war being waged over her. On one side is Sheldon Galbraith, her coach, an earthy, likable American ex-G.I. who thinks that, since her basic skating has reached its peak, she should now improve her showmanship. On the other side is her mother.