Darth Vader unmasked
by GRAHAM COX
   OTTAWA (CP) — Darth Vader is alive, well and lurking In Ottawa, ready to repel another assault on The Empire by rebeilious Luke Skywalker and displaced Princess Leeh.
   To keep the rebels off balance, he takes the guise of Bob Anderson, slender, soft-spoken, 60-year-old technical director of the Canadian Fencing Association.
   In his 12th-floor office in the National Sports Centre, Anderson chuckled as he recalled his stuntman roles in Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and hundreds of other films in the last three decades.
   David Prowse, a six-foot-five weightlifter, plays the part of the menacing, black-clad Darth Vader in the films — except in the fight scenes when it's six-one, 170 pound Anderson in the heavy costume. He will be back in it for Jedi, the third in the series of Star War adventures, which is to be filmed this year.
   Anderson said being a movie stand-in and stuntman has been rewarding. "It's all been a lot of fun for the last 30 years and it's made it possible for me to follow my life in fencing both here and in Britain.
“I admit I like the publicity but mainly it's to publicize fencing.”
   His movie career started in 1952 when he had 10 days to spare until going with the British fencing team to compete in the Helsinki Olympics.
   Elstree Studios wanted three fencers to help Errol Flynn and Anthony Steel make Master of Ballantrae. So Anderson applied and won the job.
   He was injured before the sabre finals of the Olympics, but was able to return and complete the sword-fighting scenes of the movie, doubling for everyone who fought Flynn.
   In one sequence, after cutting and editing, the finished product showed him fighting — and killing — himself.
   Since then he has taken his holidays each year to make films with such notables as Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Ryan O'Neal, Tony Curtis, Roger Moore and “when Charleton Heston was killed in the climax scene of Gordon of Khartoum, that was me taking the spear in the chest."
   His life always has had excitement. As a Royal Marine in the Second World War, he was cast adrift when HMS Coventry was sunk during the Allied landings at Tobruk in North Africa in 1942. Then he had an outstanding career as a fencer for Britain and coaching and developing fencing in Britain and Canada.
   "I started fencing relatively late—I was 22," he said. “But as soon as I first picked up a sabre, I knew that was what I liked.
   “That was in 1947 and I immediately started preparing for the 1948 Olympic Games. Of course I didn't make it, but I was ready for 1952."
   Getting ready for 1952 meant winning two gold and three silver medals at the 1950 Commonwealth Games in Auckland, NX, taking the 1951 and 1952 British amateur and professional all-round championships, being combined services three-weapon champion from 1950 through 1954 and European services sabre champion in 1951.
   He also earned his diploma from the British Academy of Fencing in 1952, making him eligible to coach at the national level. In 1954 he became British National team fencing coach, a position he held with notable success until he retired in 1979.
   “When I started, there was no real national coaching program and no co-ordination among the various coaches," he recalled. "They were all going their own way and it was very confusing."
   So he developed a program that placed fencing on the school curriculums of England, developed six world or Olympic medallists and in 1969 initiated what was to become the British Association of National Coaches.
   "And we did it without any government funds beyond them paying 80 percent of my salary as national coach," he said. “All the rest came from what we could gather from private sponsors
and donations.                 
   Ice should be at least 8 cm 
   thick on ponds, and rivers  
ru before you go skating.      
 When evil Darth Vader picks up a light-sword to do battle in Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, the man in the costume is Bob Anderson (inset), technical director of the Canadian Fencing Association.
     “That was one of the major attractions when I was asked to come here two years ago. I was offered $24,000 to spend just on coaching—nothing to do with my job as technical director— as well as my salary."
     His aims now are getting fencing into school curriculums in Canada—"that's where the champions of the future will come from" — and establishing a five-stage national coaching program in Canada.
     “When the national coaching program is in place in three or four years," he said, "Canada won't have to import its national coaches any longer.
     "And it will have the best coaching program in the world. After that it will just be a case of getting the people to coach to world-class levels."
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