At first sight, skaters called her the Dragon Lady. She seemed fearsome because she was brutally honest, missed nothing and knew everything.

But once anyone got to know Barbara Graham, a one-woman tour de force in the ethereal sport of figure skating, they often were left feeling forever in her debt.

When Barbara Graham died on May 8 in an Edmonton hospital at the age of 67, an era ended. She was largely responsible for creating the golden age of Canadian skating during the 1980s and 1990s, when a flood of talented skaters from Canadian outposts won Olympic and world medals.

For about 20 years from 1972 to 1991, Ms. Graham acted as the technical director for the Canadian Figure Skating Association, now called Skate Canada. She was a skating purist who had the ability to impart what was most important about the sport, not only to skaters, but to coaches and judges.

After Ms. Graham was inducted into the Canadian Figure Skating Hall of Fame during the national figure skating championships in Saskatoon in 2003, a group of Canadian judges and friends organized a party for her.

Her friends filled a hotel ballroom. Some judges made the trip to Saskatoon only to support Ms. Graham, knowing that she was ill with cancer. They knew she didn't like fuss. Quietly in the background, they planned ways to make sure someone would be with her after the hype of the induction wore off. Divorced, Ms. Graham had no family or close relatives. Her skating friends were her family.

Coaches, judges and former skaters pelted Skate Canada with letters of support for Ms. Graham to be placed in the Hall of Fame. Hall of Famer Linda Brauckmann, coach of world champion Karen Magnussen, said: "Barbara cut through the malarkey. There was no wasted time or words in her assessments. . . . She was objective, without being mean. She was assertive, without being arrogant. She called the shots as she saw them."

If Canada is producing great athletes today, it is because they are "second-generation Barbara Graham results," dance coach Bernard Ford said.

"If we say today we have great officials, not only in the line of judging, but in their ability to assess great skills and diagnose weaknesses, this is a result of spending time at the knees of this great lady," he said.

Brian Orser, the 1987 world men's champion, said last week that he gives Ms. Graham all of the credit for discovering him and sending him in the right direction. "The very first national seminar [for the Canadian Figure Skating Association] that she spearheaded back in 1973, they took 40 skaters from across the country," he said. "She picked one pre-novice boy and that was me."

Mr. Orser was only 11 or 12 years old at the time. He doesn't know why Ms. Graham singled him out. "I wasn't making any big steps up to novice or anything," he said. "But she saw me at a sectional competition, found out where I was, came up to visit me and invited me to this seminar. Every year after that, she would come up and see us.

"She has an eye, a knack for discovering young talent," he said. "Not only that, she would just put the fear of God into you, especially when you knew she was coming [to a club]. Everybody pulled up their socks. When she walked into a rink, there was always a buzz. . . . There were those who wanted to show off their double Axel. Then there were the others who wanted to avoid her, because she'd tell you you'd have to drop five pounds or something. She was honest."

Ms. Graham also helped Mr. Orser's fledging coach, Doug Leigh, set up his new skating school in Orillia, Ont., advising him on how many hours to operate, the kind of programs to use and the need to get help from choreographers and experts in compulsory figures.

After Mr. Orser began to rise up through the ranks in the Canadian skating world, he came under pressure from the CFSA to leave Mr. Leigh and the small-town club, but he resisted.

He said Ms. Graham was one of the few people from the skating association who did not endorse the move. Mr. Orser rewarded her by winning two Olympic silver medals as well as the world title. And Mr. Leigh's little club, now in Barrie, Ont., has turned into a major international training centre.

Ms. Graham was a talent scout beyond compare. She would take copious notes in a steno pad. She would write down every mark at a competition. She knew of the development of every juvenile skater across the country and how they were progressing and why.

Results weren't enough. Ms. Graham knew all the details of the skaters' lives, knew that they hadn't competed well perhaps because they had a death in the family, had grown a few inches, or were injured. She could foresee their development, where the skater could be several years down the road. She was a walking encyclopedia of skating information.

"David Dore [former director-general of Skate Canada] did a tremendous amount for Canadian figure skating, but his strength was promotion and TV and all of the stuff that brought money to the association, and got skaters funding," said Canadian coach Kerry Leitch, now working in Florida.

"But Barbara was responsible for producing the Orsers and the Wilsons and McCalls and the Liz Manleys, just from the driving force she had organizing national seminars and camps. Barbara's role wasn't the glamorous one. She had to set up schedules, discipline the athletes. She had the dirty work. Both jobs were equally important, but David would not have achieved the success he did in Canada by himself. Barbara played a major role. She will be missed."

Mr. Leitch said he spoke to Ms. Graham four months ago, and realized she hadn't changed a bit. "What's doing?" she asked abruptly when he called.

"She was always very direct and to the point, very efficient," he said. "Her job was to monitor skaters. She'd show up with a set of [weight] scales under her arm. She'd come in and say: 'Good morning. Get on the scales.' She was the kindest person, but it always sounded as if she was abrasive."

Skating judge Susan Heffernan saw Ms. Graham three times in March, and drove her to the office the last day she went in on her job as a skating development consultant to the Alberta section. "It was unbelievable the phone calls coming in from all around the world, particularly from Australia and New Zealand, phoning to see how she was," Ms. Heffernan said. "She would spend about 15 nanoseconds on how she was and then you'd hear her say: 'Now, what's happening with so-and-so.' She wanted to know about an athlete, or about a coach that maybe wasn't feeling well."

Ms. Heffernan said Ms. Graham was responsible for persuading both her and Sally Rehorick to become international judges. Ms. Heffernan was judging the pairs event at her first world championship in 1994 when Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler finished second to a Russian team. She placed the Canadians first in both the short and long program.

Later, Ms. Graham told Ms. Heffernan: "It was a tough call, but the right call. You did it right. Don't worry."

"Then it wouldn't matter what anybody else said to you, even if the referee challenged you on it," Ms. Heffernan said. (She wasn't challenged.) "I had all the confidence in the world to answer for it, because Barbara had said I'd done it right. She was so supportive."

If judges made an incorrect decision, Ms. Graham would never batter the judge. She would candidly point out what the judge could learn from it, what they failed to consider. "That's why people went back to her 100 times to get opinions," Ms. Heffernan said.

Ms. Rehorick, who was chef de mission at the Salt Lake City Olympics, recalls the second Canadian divisional championship she ever judged back in the 1970s. She made an error, failing to take mark deductions for Lynn Nightingale doing a single Axel instead of a double. Ms. Graham wasn't there, but when she asked Ms. Rehorick how her work had gone in Toronto, she said she had judged well, but had made one error.

"I heard about it," Ms. Graham told her.

"She knew everything that was going on," Ms. Rehorick said. "From the judging seat, you always cared what Barbara thought about your judging. . . . She always shot from the hip, but never unkindly. I think it was largely because of Barbara and her relationship with athletes, judges and coaches, that Canadian skating really soared through the 1980s and 1990s. She had a vision."

World and Olympic bronze medalist ice dancer Tracy Wilson also felt Ms. Graham's sure hand in her skating career. "You might not like what she said, but she said what she believed," Ms. Wilson said. "It didn't bother her whether she hurt your feelings or you disagreed or that maybe she could be wrong, but you knew you could count on her for an honest opinion. That was very difficult because it's such a competitive sport and such a fickle world. People are with you one minute, and not the next."

When Ms. Wilson found herself without a partner and was on the verge of retiring, her father in Port Moody, B.C., called Ms. Graham.

Ms. Graham, true to form, knew of a skater in Dartmouth, N.S, called Rob McCall. While many thought Ms. Wilson and Mr. McCall were not a match because they were almost the same height, Ms. Graham was the only person who thought the match was a possibility. The pair became one of Canada's great ice dancing teams.

"Forever in my life, I will be grateful," Ms. Wilson told Ms. Graham at the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.

Ms. Wilson ran aground of Ms. Graham's brutal honesty at her first world championship with Mr. McCall. Early in the week, after a practice, Ms. Graham took her aside and told her that she didn't look as if she belonged.

"I remember looking at her and thinking, 'Well you're right, because I don't feel like I belong,' " Ms. Wilson recalled. "I went so fast from being sixth in Canada and the next year I was on the ice with Torvill and Dean. She nailed it. Her point was that I did belong out there. But you've got to get over that and you can't be out there thinking you don't belong."

When Ms. Wilson first heard the words, she fumed. "I thought, how dare she tell me that. It's going to make me feel worse. But I dealt with it. I had to acknowledge that it was the truth."

Ms. Graham was a singular figure in the sport, recognizable in her leather pants and sunglasses and known sometimes simply as BG. She knew where to find all the good restaurants in an area before anyone else. She travelled on her own to India, and even to Iraq and Iran years ago. She spent years setting up a coaching program for Australia, where she is highly revered.

"Here was this tough woman feared in skating, but she loved to laugh," Ms. Wilson said. "At dances, she'd be right out there. She could laugh at herself too.

"She was the rock. She stayed the course. She kept you on course, so you wouldn't get caught up with the gimmicks and fuss. She was very much a leader."

Ms. Graham was a jogger who Ms. Wilson admits could put athletes to shame on a training session. Mr. Eisler, a two-time Olympic bronze medalist and world champion with Ms. Brasseur, found this out when he was only a 14-year-old skater, taught by Mr. Leitch.

"I had him at the junior world championships in Megève, France, and making the kids do fitness out there," Mr. Leitch said. "I told Lloyd he had to do some running that day. Barbara was standing there, and she said he could run with her. She was running that afternoon." Probably much to Mr. Eisler's consternation, Mr. Leitch agreed. But he was astonished when Mr. Eisler returned. "He looked absolutely dead," Mr. Leitch said.

As it happened, Ms. Graham had run all the way to St. Gervais, which was nine miles up a mountain -- and back. "Eisler had run 18 miles," Mr. Leitch said. "It nearly killed him. She was an absolutely fit person."

People poked fun at Ms. Graham at their peril. At a world championship during the early 1980s in Finland, Mr. Leitch returned to his hotel from a night of partying with three other coaches, including Alex McGowan, who later trained Debi Thomas of the United States to a world title in 1986.

While walking down the hall, the irrepressible Mr. McGowan spotted an order tag for one full breakfast slung around the doorknob of a room. Without knowing who was in the room, he snatched the order, wrote in a "0" after the "1" and replaced it.

At 7 the next morning, the hotel sent four hotel carts with 10 breakfasts to Ms. Graham's room.

"To the day she died, she believed it was me who did it," Mr. Leitch said. "She got on the bus that morning and she gets this shaking finger pointed at me and said: 'That was not funny.' She went on and on. She was so angry."

Others, like Mr. Orser, Mr. McCall, and national team athletes Gordon Forbes and Dennis Coi, understood what made Ms. Graham laugh, without having a shaking finger arched in their direction.

Last week, her best friend, International Skating Union official Ann Shaw, spent a week with her in her palliative care room in Edmonton. A week ago, when told that chemotherapy would no longer help her and doctors could do no more, Ms. Graham took the news with stoicism.

"I was not allowed to show any weepiness when I was in the hospital with her last week," Ms. Shaw said. "I was reading a wonderful letter to her from Bernie Ford and one from Benoit [Lavoie, vice-president of Skate Canada] praising her to the sky. My voice was cracking as I was reading them and she said: 'Ann, you're not going to cry, are you?' "

Ms. Graham's final hour could not be scripted more perfectly. Young coach and former skater Ravi Walia had visited her every afternoon for the past few weeks, telling her about skaters, about skating seminars he had to organize without her, about details of a new judging system promoted by the ISU.

"She talked skating to the last day," said Mr. Walia, who spent many hours with her after he became a coach, helping her with seminars. "I have tremendous respect for her. . . . I feel very lucky and honoured that I was able to be there at the end."

On Saturday about 8 p.m., something told Mr. Walia to return to the hospital. He was holding her hand, talking to her, hoping she could hear him, when she died an hour later. "I thought, 'Wasn't it wonderful for a coach and former skater to be with her at that moment.' " Ms. Shaw said. ". . . It was the most appropriate ending for her. She supported skaters for so many years, and now a skater was supporting her. She would have been thrilled."

At her request, there was no funeral. Her skating family will hold celebrations of her life in Edmonton and Toronto.

Beverley Smith is a Globe and Mail reporter who specializes in figure skating.