Burka was one of the leading skating coaches in the North American nation and helped daughter Petra Burka claim a bronze medal at the 1964 OIympic Games in Tokyo and gold at the following year’s World Championships.

Legendary Canadian skater Toller Cranston, who passed away in 2015, was also a student of Burka and won bronze at the Montréal Olympics in 1976 under her tutelage, as well as a host of national titles.

“She was one of the first coaches to take a figure skater, Toller Cranston, and let him be free with movement when nobody else was, and it started a whole new trend,” daughter Petra Burka told Canadian newspaper The Toronto Star.

“She was a very strong lady and expected perfection from everyone.

“She was tough, tough as nails.”

Astra Burka, another of her daughters, described her as a “life coach and not just a skating coach”.

Burka was born in Amsterdam in The Netherlands to Jewish parents in September 1925 and lost both of her parents early on in her life after they were killed at the notorious Sobibór Nazi death camp.

She was then shipped to the Westerbork transit before she spent time at the Theresienstadt concentration camp in the Czech Republic.

Burka, who was a promising skater as a youngster until the Nazi’s prohibited Jewish people from public places, managed to survive and it was there where she met former husband Jan Burka, a Czech artist.

Ellen, a Dutch champion in 1946 at the age of 25, and Jan Burka then moved to Toronto, where she began to make her name as a coach after the pair divorced.

Burka was given the order of Canada for her achievements in 1978 before she was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1996.

Skate Canada called her one of the world’s “most respected coaches and choreographers” who took skaters to the “highest level of competition” during her life.

“Skate Canada offers its sincere condolences to Burka’s family and friends,” the organisation added in a statement.