Seals Founders Inducted into
Paralympic Hall of Fame
By Bonnie-Lee Lambert with Scott Taylor
Wilf Strom,
Paralympic Hall of Fame
Audrey Strom
There is very little doubt that Winnipeggers Wilf and Audrey Strom are Canadian swimming legends. In fact, these two
wonderful people – two people who
never swam competitively themselves –
have been inducted into the Paralympic
Hall of Fame.
Last November, the late Wilf Strom
joined his wife Audrey in the Hall. Wilf
had built Canada’s para-swimming
team into an international powerhouse
in the 1980s, the effects of which are
still with us today. He has been inducted into the Hall as a coach. His wife
went in as a builder.
It was while working with his star para-swimmer, Winnipeg’s Tim McIsaac,
Canada’s most successful Paralympian
with 28 medals, that Wilf and Audrey
Strom created the tap system for blind
swimmers. It’s a system in which the
visually impaired swimmer is tapped
on the head just before the wall, and
rotates on the turn like a sighted
swimmer. It’s a method that is still used
today.
“I have to give credit to my coaches
for that,’’ said McIsaac. “My desire was
to be the best I could. In them doing
their job as coaches to help me be the
best I could, they felt it was a skill I
needed to learn if I wanted to get better.
They were really the driving force behind it.’’
According to its mandate, “The
Canadian Paralympic Hall of Fame was
created in 2001 and celebrates those
who have made a significant contribution to the growth and development of
the Paralympic Movement in Canada.
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These individuals will be acknowledged
within the Canadian Paralympic Hall
of Fame Honoured Members section
located in the Olympic and Paralympic
Gallery at Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame
in Calgary. Joining the ranks of many
incredible individuals who have established the success of the Paralympic
Movement, inductees to the Canadian
Paralympic Hall of Fame will be celebrated and admired by all Canadians
who visit Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame
now and in the future. Typically, the
Canadian Paralympic Committee holds
an induction process every two years.”
Audrey Strom was inducted into the
Hall for her contributions in building
the sport of blind swimming in Canada.
As the first Chairperson of Swimming
for the Canadian Blind Sports Association (CBSA), as well as the International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA)
in the early 1980s, Strom worked to
ensure that innovative rule changes
for blind swimmers, such as tapping,
were instilled in the ISBA and later the
International Paralympic Committee
swimming rules. Integration of blind
swimmers was possible in Canada due
to the rule modifications and coaching
materials developed by Strom, whose
work has helped shape where the sport
of para-swimming is today.
The Stroms carried out their marvelous work at Winnipeg’s St. James Seals
Swim Club. The St. James Seals Swim
Club grew out of a “Speed Swimming”
program that began in the St. James-Assiniboia Y.M.C.A. back in 1958. The
original club name was “The St. James
‘Y’ Seals,” according to a story in The
Times and at that time the club was the
city’s only local swim club competing
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