Known as “Canada’s Sweetheart,” Barbara Ann Scott is still the only Canadian to ever win Olympic gold at the senior women’s figure skating level. Love of the sport, dedication, sheer determination and plain hard work helped her achieve this impressive goal. Her grace, sportsmanship, technical brilliance and modesty, on and off the ice, are remembered more than 50 years later.
Barbara Ann won many titles in her short skating career: Junior Figure Skating Champion of Canada (1940); Canadian Senior Women’s Champion (1944-1948); North-American championships (1945-1948); two European championships (1947-1948); two World championships (1947-1948) and an Olympic gold medal at the 5th Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland on February 6, 1948. In February 1947, when Barbara Ann won her first European championship title in Davos Platz, she became the first North American to win that title since its inception in 1896.
In June 1948, she gave up her amateur status to start a professional career. She skated at the Roxy Theatre in New York, and during the 1949-1950 season she toured Canada. In the summers of 1950 and 1951 she starred in Rose Marie on Ice in London, England. She also headlined in the Hollywood Ice Revue for four years. But the gypsy life and gruelling schedule took its toll, so at the age of 25, Barbara Ann decided to give up skating as a career.

Frances was very creative, Norris was more mechanical due to his longer training as a single skater in figures and free skating. Both actually complimented one and other. The work was mostly just to find the potential in each of them. Both fine skaters, Norris had been a Senior Champion and together they were Dance champions. Melding them into a pair was a product of utilizing their ideas and and melding them into a unique and orignal pair.
Frannie was helpful and cooperative in choosing the music and the steps that made it easy for them to perform. In training Norrie and Frannie he used something quite similar to something called the dual instruction in aviation which he learned from aviation. Basically the timing and the placement of the information was given identically to the location of the need. Sheldon skated with his skaters giving instruction even helping Frannie during the death spiral. In Schumacher, Sheldon recuited Dennis Silverthorne for help teaching the death spiral.
Dafoe and Bowden recorded a number of firsts in pair skating, including the first twist lift, overhead lasso lift, throw jump, and "leap of faith" They finished second at the 1953 World Championships by only one-tenth of a point, missing the gold by the narrowest margin in history.
They were 1954 & 1955 World Champions and went on to the 1956 Olympic amd World silver medals. .

"Donald Jackson was a superb jumper". He had the fastest reflexes of anyone with whom Sheldon had worked. "Don could have been a gun fighter if he wanted". He was so quick in the early stages Sheldon could not tell if he wanted to do a double or a triple jump. It took nearly a month to gain Don's trust but once that happened and once they got on track with each other they made great headway.
At the world championship in 1962 with Don trailing Divin by almost 50 points following compulsory figures which in those days counted for 60% of the total mark, Sheldon advised Don he must not injure himself as it is possible to win without the triple Lutz. Don wanted to do it and therefore carried the initiative to execute. The rest became history as he received a standing ovation from the Prague crowd at the Fucik Arena and became the first male skater in the world to successfully complete a triple Lutz jump in World competition and the first Canadian male singles figure skater to win a World Championship.

Donald Knight was probably the finest male single figure skater with whom Sheldon had ever worked. He was very strong in school figures and very adequate in free skating. He was a shorter man; the same height as Don Jackson and those quick short legs are very good at handling timing.
In 1967 at the North American Championships in Montreal, I was working with Donald and he had just performed the forward change bracket school figure for the judges. He had drifted off axis after the backward change of edge and missed his alignment, but had received good marks. It was the same figure Donald Jackson had skated poorly in 1962 at Prague, just five years earlier.
I told Don that the American coaches had noticed this and had gone rallying to their judges. I told Donald "you had better skate a cracker jack of a double three change double three because those coaches are after your hide"! Donald did just that! He was one of the few men in Canada that I had seen who could skate the 24 turns absolutely clean! Donald was a rarity.
Don was so consistent in school figures that he put himself into a World Bronze Medal in Colorado Springs in 1965.

Sheldon taught at the Schumacher Summer School for 19 years until the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club requested that he operate his training facilities at the spring, summer and fall schools. Sheldon retired from TCSCC September 30, 1988 after being there 39 years. In 1996 they bestowed a life membership on him for the years of his valuable service to the club.

His Awards Include:
Canada's Sport Hall of Fame Award - August 23, 1980
Canada Olympic Hall of Fame - February 23, 1990
Canadian Figure Skating Hall of Fame Award (now Skate Canada) - 1991
World Museum Hall of Fame United States - 1996
Member of the Order of Canada - February 9, 2000
Professional Skater's Hall of Fame - 2003

He was awarded The Order of Canada by Her Excellency Adrienne Clarkson, the Govenor General of Canada. It was an overwhelming experience for him to be among those great Canadians in Ottawa.

Today Sheldon is an avid computer enthusiast who spends part of his time organizing and and convertiing his rare and extensive film library to DVD. Much of his footage has been used in Canadian and American television specials.
It's obvious as you spend time with the man how his technical knowledge and his intellectual curiosity for how things work helped him with the success in his coaching career. It makes one believe that he would have been successful at anything he put his hand to.

Sheldon and Jeanne currently enjoy retirement living in a small town north of Toronto Ontario.

Some of the Atheletes Who Trained with Mr. Galbraith

Frances Dafoe and Norris Bowden

Bob Paul and Barbara Wagner

Donald Jackson

Donald Knight

Donald Gilchrist and Marlene Smith

Beatrix Shuba

Carole, Nancy and Bruce Heiss

Barbara and Elizabeth Gratton

Jirina Nekolova

Wendy Griner

Peter Dunfield

Valerie Jones

Carole Pachl

David McGillvary

Maurice LaFrance and Gertie Desjardin

Monty Hoyt

Tina Noyes

Greg Folk

Chris and Alexis Shields

Vern Taylor

Peter Firstbrook

Juko Ueno

Yutaka Higuchi