“Maybe I’ll do a mile next year, but I’m enjoying it,” Bell says. “It’s like I’ve been reborn.”

When she was 16, Bell was not only the first girl, but the first person ever, to make it across Lake Ontario, swimming for almost 21 hours over a 32-kilometre stretch.

It was Sept. 9, 1954, 60 years ago today, and the sky was gloomy from an earlier storm. There were no stars or moon to illuminate the sky and Bell had never swum at night before.

“I was very afraid of the dark,” she says. “When I looked out from the shore, I couldn’t see the horizon line. It was just black.”

The Canadian National Exhibition had invited American swimmer Florence Chadwick to swim across the lake, offering a $10,000 prize upon successful completion. She was the only one eligible for that prize. Bell was just crashing the party.

“For me, it was about a Canadian organization inviting an American to come and swim the lake and sponsoring an American when there was such a wide range of Canadian swimmers,” Bell says. “I knew I wanted to challenge Florence Chadwick and my goal was to swim further than her. However far she went, I wanted to go further. I don’t think I ever really thought about getting to the other side because I didn’t think anybody could.”

But alongside her cash-strapped parents, Bell has her coach Gus Ryder and the Toronto Star to thank for contributing to her success. Bell says without the willingness of the Toronto Star to support her financially by providing support boats, she never would have been able to try the endeavour.