A family that fled Czechoslovakia with almost nothing after Communists nationalized their father’s factory went on to produce a World Champion figure skater and, decades later, a member of the Canadian federal cabinet, all in the person of one man. Otto Jelinek died on September 5, 2026, at the Trillium Health Centre in Mississauga, Canada, after living with Parkinson’s disease for nearly 20 years. He was 86.
Born Otakar Jelínek on May 20, 1940, in Prague, Jelinek’s family escaped to Switzerland and eventually to Canada in 1948 following the Communist coup d’état. He and his sister, Maria, went on to become one of the most decorated pairs skating teams in Canadian history, winning bronze medals at the World Championships in 1957 and 1958, silver in 1960, and gold in 1962, alongside North American and Canadian national titles. The siblings represented Canada at the 1960 Winter Olympics, finishing 4th, before retiring from competition after their 1962 World Championship victory and touring professionally with the Ice Capades. Both were inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1962 and the Skate Canada Hall of Fame in 1994.
After retiring from skating, Jelinek founded Canadian Skate Industries, manufacturing figure and hockey skates, while also building substantial real estate investments. He entered politics in 1972, winning election to the House of Commons as the Progressive Conservative MP for High Park-Humber Valley, later representing Halton and then Oakville-Milton across a parliamentary career spanning more than 2 decades. When Brian Mulroney’s Tories formed government in 1984, Jelinek was appointed Minister of State for Fitness and Amateur Sport and Minister responsible for Multiculturalism, later serving as Minister of Supply and Services and, from 1989 to 1993, as Minister of National Revenue. He left politics when Mulroney retired and did not seek re-election in 1993.
Jelinek’s career took another turn in 1994, when he moved to the Czech Republic to become chairman of Deloitte & Touche Central Europe and managing partner of the firm’s Czech operations, a post he held until 2006. He went on to chair Colliers International’s Central and Eastern Europe region beginning in 2007 and led the society advocating for Prague’s bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics. In 2011, he joined Canadian oil and gas company Passport Energy as managing partner overseeing European corporate and financial affairs, and in 2013 he was appointed Canada’s ambassador to the Czech Republic, bringing his career full circle to the country his family had once fled.
Otto Jelinek’s life carried him from a refugee ship out of Communist Czechoslovakia to a world figure skating championship, a seat in Canada’s federal cabinet, and finally an ambassadorship to the very nation his family had escaped, a journey that reflected both the possibilities and the resilience of the immigrant experience he lived firsthand.