Here is a very interesting and untold story about one of the first people to try and swim across Lake Ontario… she didn’t make it… and Marilyn Bell did, shortly after. Amazing how life turned after too. Congrats to Shirley for getting her World Championship trophy back… after 59 years!
Cheers,
Rob
By Mary Ormsby of the Toronto Star
MAPLE, ONT.—This is a tale of endurance about former Toronto world champion distance swimmer Shirley Campbell, her missing 59-year-old trophy, and a life celebrated, then fractured by a quest to cross Lake Ontario.
“I was taught never to give up,” says the 76-year-old Campbell, who for nearly two years had been requesting the return of a beloved lost trophy from Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.
For Campbell, the 1953 award from the Egyptian Federation for Long Distance Swimming symbolizes her “fairytale” run as Toronto’s “It Girl”, before booze, pills and petty crime rendered her penniless and destroyed her relationship with her two children.
“I am not a quitter,” declares Campbell, who campaigned for her memorabilia via phone (with the help of social worker Erica Zandona) from the long-term care facility in Maple where she’s lived for five years.
On Thursday, that doggedness paid off.
“Sex!” shouts Campbell, instead of “cheese” as a giggling Zandona takes Campbell’s photo with the slightly tarnished trophy —it resembles the Grey Cup with two large handles on a wide silver jug. It sits on a tall wooden base.
“I am so thrilled,” says Campbell as fellow residents, staff and visitors cheer while she mugs with her jug.
“That trophy meant the world to me.”
Which is why when only the base was returned last year, Campbell kept lobbying the hall to search for the heavy silver top she won six decades ago.
Stories and photos of Campbell, then a 16-year-old beauty born in Fergus, Ont., first splashed across Toronto newspapers when she won a three-mile, Lake Ontario world championship against an international field. The race was part of the 1953 Canadian National Exhibition and big news because Campbell was so young.
Part of her triumphant haul: $1,650 in cash (a fortune for her poor family, she says) and the massive Egyptian trophy.
Campbell donated the hulking prize to the hall of fame in the 1980s. It was displayed at the former Sports Hall of Fame site on Toronto’s CNE grounds, where the old Hockey Hall of Fame existed too. The tired and tatty sports museum was closed years ago, and was given a stunning new home in Calgary (it opened on July 1, 2011).
At some point (no one knows when), Campbell’s trophy broke. The base and the jug were separated. The jug has no markings at all on it — not even the image of a swimmer, nor Campbell’s name or the date etched into the metal.
Still, both parts had been “specially packed and shipped” on three tractor trailers carrying thousands of sporting artifacts from Toronto to Calgary in July, 2010, Janice Smith, the hall’s director of exhibits and programming, explains in an email.
Calgary hall staff found the base, which had an engraved brass plate on it, last year and couriered it to Campbell. Only getting half angered her.
“I got to this age and I said, ‘I want to see that again,’ ” she says of expecting to regain her treasure intact. The base is broken in a few spots but it’s fixable.
“I didn’t think I would see my (entire) trophy again.”
So Zandona swung into action by digging into Campbell’s scrapbooks for photographic evidence. Those scrapbooks are crammed full of memories.
After her 1953 triumph, the outgoing Campbell attracted a city-wide following for her athletics and her looks. She was showered with gifts, cash and attention from admiring patrons — including the Toronto Star, which photographed her frequently — as she prepared to become the first person to swim across Lake Ontario.
It wasn’t to be. A younger training partner named Marilyn Bell, only 16, beat her to it in 1955 and became an instant international sensation.
Campbell came close but failed on two brave attempts, in 1955 and ’56, the latter trip sponsored by the Star. Overshadowed by Bell, beaten by the lake, abandoned by fans, Campbell retired after the aborted 1956 crossing, her hopes of Hollywood movies, modelling contracts and book deals all gone. Instead, a life of chronic addictions lay ahead, along with divorce after a marriage she describes as tumultuous.
But no one could take away Campbell’s world championship. Her scrapbooks held a solid clue to finding the Egyptian trophy.
Zandona found a 1953 newspaper photo of Campbell with the distinct silver jug with two large handles. The pair sent a copy of the photograph and a letter to the hall earlier this year. Then they waited.
Smith says the mountain of Canadian sporting artifacts — including more than 600 trophy collections —are now unpacked and “much more accessible than the last seven years.” She adds that the letter and photo helped hall staffers locate and identify the top half of Campbell’s trophy.
The jug was couriered to the Star. The Star phoned Zandona to tell her about the package and she, in turn, ran to Campbell’s room to relay the good news.
“We hugged,” Zandona says of Campbell’s joyful reaction.
“I said, ‘You did it Shirley. All that tenacity paid off.’ ”
Now, Campbell has one more wish. To connect with her children, Gary and Sandra, whom she hasn’t seen in 25 years.
Campbell’s addictions, she admits, have made that a difficult request. Her substance abuse issues were compounded by a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, jail time, homelessness and begging on Toronto streets.
Was this ruinous behaviour rooted, somehow, in the shattering disappointment of not swimming across Lake Ontario first? Did it ultimately cost her the love of her children? Campbell isn’t sure. But to this day, she is haunted by what might have been.
“I really had the world by the tail,” is how she once described her halcyon days.
During her adult life, Campbell enjoyed extended periods of sobriety, good health and financial success in real estate — but it wasn’t enough to maintain a strong mother-and-children bond. She doesn’t even know where her son and daughter are; Campbell says they severed contact with her as young adults.
“My wish for Shirley at this point in her life is to just hear from her children, even if it’s just a note to say they’re OK and for them to know Shirley is doing well and is in a good state,” Zandona says.
Campbell nods, making a visible effort to compose herself. “I’d still love to see my kids,” she says.
Then chatty Shirley Campbell gets very quiet on her special day of celebration.
Shirley how are you? My favorite pool was in Fergus. I beat George Stulac the for the fist time there. I remember you all training in that outdoor pool during the winter.
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