The Masters Swimming Ontario SWIMS Award

Beth Whittall - A Lifetime of Service

Please congratulate Beth Whittall as one of the recipients of the Masters Swimming Ontario SWIMS award for 1998. Her career and talents speak for themselves and Canada and indeed, world Masters Swimming as a whole, has benefited from her experience and expertise. The following gives a brief synopsis of her accomplish-ments and skills as a swimmer, administrator and active member of the global swimming community.

Beth was born in Montreal and swam for the downtown YMCA as an age group swimmer. She attended university at Purdue in Indiana, swimming for the Lafayette Swim club, since there was no women’s swim team at the school. Beth graduated with a degree in Pharmacy.

While swimming age group, Beth attended the 1954 British Empire Championship in Vancouver, the 1955 Pan-American Games in Mexico and the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. She won the Lou Marsh Trophy, as the outstanding amateur athlete in the country, in 1955 for her efforts in Mexico where she won gold in the 100 Butterfly and 400 Freestyle. She also swam in the finals of the 100 Butterfly at the Melbourne Olympics.

After retiring from elite swimming, she continued to coach at the age group level in Montreal (in St. Laurent) and in 1973 she started the St. Laurent Masters Club, which continues today. At the same time, she started the Quebec Masters Committee and co-hosted the first masters meet in Quebec in 1974.

Moving to Ontario in 1976, she joined the Ontario Masters Committee, eventually becoming its president for two years, 1987-88. During that time, Beth led our organization through the process to become independent from Swim Ontario. The structure of MSO was created and incorporation became a reality on January 1, 1989.

Beth was the Rules chairperson for Masters Swimming Ontario and Masters Swimming Canada and was a member of the MSI Rules Committee. Part of her efforts during this period led to the first Canadian Masters Swimming rulebook. She also acted as assistant manager (with Kay Easun as manager) of the Canadian Masters Championship held at the Etobicoke Olympium in 1987. As well, she earlier worked with Ted Roach and others on the Steering committee for Masters as part of the Canadian Amateur Swimming Association, before Masters Swimming Canada became independent and self-administering.

Since withdrawing from committees and boards for some well-deserved rest and moving to Meaford, on Georgian Bay, Beth has started another club, the Georgian Bay Masters and initiated an annual 1 and 3 kilometre open water swim in Meaford. In 1997, the Georgian Bay Swim was designated the Ontario Open Water Championship for those distances.

In addition to all of her efforts on behalf of Masters Swimming worldwide, Beth has also written, edited and published Wavelengths, a quarterly Masters magazine, for the last 16 years. This brought together Masters Swimmers and served as a critical information source long before the advent of the Internet. When the first editor of the MSC news resigned in 1995, Beth stepped into the breach, discontinuing her own newsletter in favour of the editorship of this Canada-wide magazine. During her tenure, distribution of the magazine has been extended to door-to-door delivery, greatly increasing the reach of a key publication to Masters in Canada.

Were this not enough, Beth has also found time to set numerous Ontario and Canadian records in multiple age groups. From all of us Beth, thanks for your lifetime of service and best of luck in your future endeavours. We wouldn’t be here without your efforts and Ontario Masters salute you!