Olympic Rewind: Canada at the Cortina d'Ampezzo 1956 Winter Olympics
The Winter Olympics will return to the city 70 years later in 2026.
Welcome back to Olympic Rewind, a series here at True North where we’re looking back at past editions of the Olympic Games, highlighting the top Canadian athletes and stories.
With the next Winter Olympics set to take place in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy in 2026 — beginning exactly one year from the date of this article being published — this edition of Olympic Rewind will look back on the 1956 Games, which were also hosted in Cortina d'Ampezzo.
The 1956 Games were significant for several reasons, including the figure skating events being held outdoors for the final time, the Winter Olympic debut of the Soviet Union team that went on to top the medal table, and the Olympic Oath being sworn by a female athlete for the first time — Italian Alpine skier Giuliana Chenal-Minuzzo.
Let’s take a trip back to the Cortina d'Ampezzo 1956 Winter Olympics and the top Canadian stories.
Highlights:
Canadian athletes sent: 35 (27 men, 8 women)
Opening ceremony flag bearer: Norris Robert Bowden (Figure Skating)
Closing ceremony flag bearer: André Bertrand (Alpine Skiing)
Medal tally: Three (one silver, two bronze)
Place on medal table: 10th
Medallists:
Silver:
Canada’s top result in Cortina d'Ampezzo came in the pairs figure skating competition, where Frances Dafoe and Norris Bowden — Canada’s opening ceremony flag bearer — finished second.
The duo from Toronto, Ontario were the 1954 and 1955 world champions, but lost the 1956 world championship to Austrian duo Sissy Schwarz and Kurt Oppelt. Schwarz and Oppelt also won the Olympic crown in 1956, with Hungarian sibling duo Marianna and László Nagy finishing third.
Another Canadian pair, Barbara Wagner and Robert Paul, finished sixth, but would not lose again in the next four-year cycle, including four world championships in a row and taking gold at the 1960 Olympics.
Bronze:
In her second Olympic appearance, Lucile Wheeler became the first North American alpine skier to win a medal in the downhill event, taking bronze. The daughter of Harry Wheeler — a 1932 Olympian in the sport of dog sled racing — she competed in Oslo four years prior where she finished 26th or 27th in all three of her events, but showed improvement in Italy in 1956. She finished third in the downhill event and just missed the podium with a sixth-place finish in the giant slalom, but was disqualified in the slalom event.
Two years after the Olympics, Wheeler won the Lou Marsh Trophy (now known as the Northern Star Award) as Canada’s top athlete after becoming a double world champion, and was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame before retiring in 1959. After retiring, Wheeler married CFL Hall of Famer Kaye Vaughan, and their son Jake went on to play in the CFL as well.
In 1956, Canada continued their streak of medalling in ice hockey at every edition of the Olympic since the sport’s debut in 1920, although a third-place finish was the nation’s worst Olympic result to that point.
Canada was represented by the Kitchener-Waterloo Dutchmen, a team from the Ontario Hockey Association Senior Division who won the 1955 Allan Cup for the right to wear the maple leaf in Italy. They represented Canada again in 1960 — the only team to represent Canada twice, and the last team before Canada started picking the best players from different teams.
Six of the top ten point scorers in the tournament played for Canada, with James Logan leading the way with seven goals and eight assists. Jack McKenzie, who had seven goals and five assists in eight games, was named the best forward of the tournament. The Soviet Union won the tournament for the first time, while the United States picked up a second straight silver medal.
Denis Brodeur: A hockey legacy on and off the ice
One of Canada’s goaltenders at the 1956 Olympics was Denis Brodeur. If that surname sounds familiar it should. Denis was the father of Martin Brodeur — arguably the best goalie in hockey history.
The elder Brodeur was an accomplished goaltender in his own right, as his Olympic medal suggests, but his biggest legacies came off the ice. Martin had a legendary career — and is the NHL’s all-time regular season record holder in wins (691), shutouts (125), and games played (1,266) among other things. He won three Stanley Cups with the New Jersey Devils, two Olympic gold medals with Canada, and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018.
Denis’ other contribution to the game of hockey, however, was the more-than 110,000 photographs he took during a 40-year career, a lot of which was spent as a team photographer for the Montreal Canadiens. The NHL acquired Brodeur’s photograph collection in 2006, which features some of the greatest players in the sport’s history, including images that had never been seen before.
The Brodeur family has had an incredible hockey journey, which continues on as Martin serves as executive vice president of hockey operations for the Devils.
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