Pamela Grant-Ponikau has been a child model, a child actress, an ice show performer and a skating coach and she continues to run her own dance studio. She grew up in England and performed in Europe and the United States but credits the people of Pictou County with making her feel at home. (Rosalie MacEachern photo)
Her family dug out a wealth of press clippings and promotional shots to display at her 80th birthday celebration last week.
“It is a good thing I have the photos and clippings or I wouldn’t believe it myself,” she laughed, pointing to a photo of herself in an extravagant costume - a photo taken by Sir Cecil Beaton, who frequently photographed the British Royal Family.
Grant-Ponikau, who often shares her wartime memories with elementary school students, was born in Brighton, U.K. She and her sister were evacuated to the north of England, but her mother learned they were being mistreated and brought them back to the city.
“She decided we’d all die together if need be. There were 10 of us in the family home – grandmother, aunt, uncle, cousins, all of us together.”
Brighton was attacked from the air 56 times between mid-1940 and early 1944.
“We had the airfields from which the Spitfires came and went so there was bombing all the time. I was injured by machine gun fire and shrapnel on my way home from school and I suffered a type of shock as a result.”
Her parents were struggling to find something in which she might excel when a minister noted she was always acting in air raid shelters to entertain herself and others. He suggested she might be useful to the war effort.
“They really didn’t know what to do with me and with England in the middle of a war. There wasn’t much help to be had for a traumatized child. Somehow they got me into London Guild Hall Dramatic Arts at half price which was very fortunate because we were not a wealthy family.”
All actors were required to take dance lessons and she eventually received teaching certification. She also acquired an agent and had her first professional acting role at the age of 12.
“I hope I’m not bragging, but I did very well in theatre for quite a few years - on stage and on television. I was cast in a Noel Coward show and in Jane Eyre. I also played in Alice in Wonderland and you can find me on YouTube in George Orwell’s 1984 – you know the one with the line, “Big Brother is watching you.’ I even took over a role from Julie Andrews when she was moving on to another company.”
Grant-Ponikau, who is four-foot-nine, was almost always cast to play children younger than herself.
“I was very willing to learn, but as time went on, I felt like the child who was never allowed to grow up. But there was a very special show with a role everyone wanted and I was so pleased to get it. Then an actress with the show refused to work unless my role was given to her daughter. I’d won the role and it was taken from me.”
A defiant Grant-Ponikau turned her back on the stage, much to her family’s chagrin, and went back to her other love - skating.
“I’d helped my brother and sister through school and now I wanted something for myself. I was young and decided I didn’t have to put up with all that went on in the theatre. I wanted to skate, so I joined a professional ice show where people seemed less troublesome.”
She credits Canadian soldiers with her athletic style of skating.
“I learned from Canadian soldiers, a bunch of hockey players. They were stationed in Brighton at the end of the war and we took lessons. They gave us chewing gum if we could do tricks.”
She performed with The Ice Follies and Holiday on Ice - both esteemed British ice shows. She also got up early while other performers slept and went to the wardrobe department to learn how to sew, a skill that proved invaluable when she opened her dance studio locally.
“I went to Yugoslavia on a skating exchange and met a skater, an ice dancer, who convinced me to go to Switzerland to train with him. I’m afraid my parents thought I joined the circus.”
She later went with the same skating partner, Horst Ponikau, to perform in Chicago’s famed Conrad Hilton Hotel Ice show and became friends with many entertainers including the iconic Liberace who was photographed with her.
“Horst couldn’t go back to his home in East Germany because it was now behind the Iron Curtain and I couldn’t take a German home to my parents in England so we decided to come to Canada. Friends in Moncton pointed us to New Glasgow.”
Grant-Ponikau looks back on the 20 years she and her husband spent in New Glasgow as exciting and rewarding.
“Our two sons were born here and we taught and coached so many wonderful young skaters and they earned quite a few awards. We loved that Pictou County allowed us to be ourselves and it really was a place we could settle.”
In 1984, Horst Ponikau, who was 20 years older than his wife, died suddenly and Grant-Ponikau’s world fell apart.
“I had never paid any attention to finances or government requirements, so it came as a shock to learn I had to leave the country because I was only a landed immigrant.”
Her oldest son was out on his own so she packed up his 10 year-old brother and went back to England but her parents were now elderly and ill, with little income.
“Nothing I tried worked out and I could see the only money I had disappearing. After nine months I was convinced I had to give my son up for adoption. I remember walking along the street and my despair was so great. I thought it was the last thing I could do for him and if I had to do that, I didn’t care what happened to me.”
She spotted a public phone and almost without thinking she called skating supporters and friends, Dr. Howard and Elsie Locke.
“They insisted I come home - home to New Glasgow - and we’d sort things out together. How many people have friends like that? On the basis of that call I came back to New Glasgow and while it wasn’t always easy, I do think things worked out rather well.”
It is all gentle jokes and good-natured encouragement in the dance studio, but beneath Grant-Ponikau’s high spirits and ready laughter is a steely sense of self-preservation born of her own experiences.
“I encourage all my dancers to get their teachers’ certificates. You never know when it will come in handy, when it might be what makes the difference.”
Rosalie MacEachern is a Stellarton resident and freelance writer who seeks out people who work behind the scenes on hobbies or jobs that they love the most. If you have someone you think should she should profile in an upcoming article, she can be reached at r.[email protected]
