NORTH SAANICH, B.C. — She was once hailed as Canada’s best athlete and Elaine Tanner has the accolades to prove it as a teenage swimming prodigy known as “Mighty Mouse” at Olympic, Commonwealth and Pan American games.
But her most cherished medal came outside the pool. It’s a sterling silver Medal of Service, the forerunner to the current Officer of the Order of Canada medal.
When the Canadian government wanted it back, to switch for the replacement honour, Tanner, now 71, refused. She says she can’t let it let go because it tells the story of her life.
Tanner went to the 1968 Mexico City Olympics overwhelmingly favoured to win gold. Instead, with the weight of a nation on her 17-year-old shoulders, she came home with two silvers, in the 100 m and 200 m backstroke, and a bronze in the 4×100 m freestyle relay.
Tanner was devastated. At 18 she retired from competition. She suffered for years with panic attacks, eating disorders and depression.
Now, almost 55 years since Mexico, Tanner says from her Victoria-area home that she has turned losing gold into her greatest victory.
She says she hopes the way she emerged from the “black hole” that her life became after the Olympics can inspire other people facing hard times.
The service medal symbolizes that. She picked up the medal from a table covered with photos of her athletic achievements and explained the honour’s significance in her search for life’s gold.
“I thought my big quest in life was to win gold at the Olympic Games, but I realized that’s not the gold that hangs around your neck,” said Tanner.
“It’s the gold you mine within yourself. That’s my message.”
In 1970, Tanner became the youngest Canadian to be awarded the Medal of Service, created to recognize exemplary achievement and service to the nation.
The medal was introduced in 1967 and was awarded to 294 people before concerns about its modest appearance prompted a restructuring by the government in 1972, including the request to voluntarily return the award.
It meant too much to Tanner.
“My heart told me that this is the medal that was given to me by the government, actually by (former) governor general Roland Michener, and he pinned it on my dress, and I went, ‘This means the world to me,’ and I don’t want to hand it in,” said Tanner.
“I like it just the way it is,” she said from her living room overlooking a marina. “I’m so glad I kept it.”
Tanner had gone to Mexico City as a sporting and cultural phenomenon.
She got the “Mighty Mouse” nickname in 1965 after winning her first Canadian national swim title in the 100 m butterfly at aged 14.
“I must have been four-foot-nine and probably just under 90 pounds soaking wet,” said Tanner. “I was really small. I got up on the podium to receive my medal and the other girls were towering over me and a coach from Ocean Falls, the swim coach, yelled, ‘Way to go Mighty Mouse.’
“The crowd laughed, and the media picked it up and it just stuck.”
More national titles, world records, and gold medals at Commonwealth and Pan American games followed.
She was an unbackable favourite to win gold in Mexico City.
Instead, she placed second.
She may have been the first Canadian woman to win any Olympic swimming medal, but the headlines were “Tanner loses gold,” she said.
Tanner said she returned from the Mexico City an emotional and psychological wreck.
“Not only did I want to win for myself and my family, I had to win for Canada,” she said. “It was a heavy burden … In my own little mind, I let everybody down.”
Crawling out of the “black hole” took years. “I struggled for so long,” said Tanner. “I really did.”
She is now a mental health advocate and children’s book author and hopes she can help others.
“We all go through challenges in life,” she said. “We will meet defeat but keep going. The key of life is to keep going.”
Tanner wrote an open letter in 2017 to Olympic champion swimmer Penny Oleksiak, who won medals for Canada at 16 years old, advising to her to trust herself and listen to her inner voice.
Tanner and Olympic ski champion Nancy Greene Raine are likely among the few living Canadians who still have a Medal of Service, said Christopher McCreery, who has written a dozen books on Canadian orders, decorations and medals.
Of the original 294 medals, 104 were returned in the early years, McCreery said. About 30 people kept their medals but most have died, he added.
“It’s a super rare, scarce medal and it’s a very unusual story because she was so young when she got it and obviously retained a great attachment to it,” he said in an interview from Halifax. “It’s not just the medal, it’s the story behind it.”
Tanner said that despite breaking five world records, winning gold at Commonwealth and Pan Am games, and winning the Lou Marsh Award as Canada’s top athlete at the age of 15, she considers the Medal of Service the prize that best honours her journey.
“It’s a symbol of all my accomplishments wrapped up in one, from the country I did it for,” she said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 4, 2023.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A linebacker at Division II West Virginia State was fatally shot during what the university said Thursday is being investigated by police as a home invasion.
The body of Jyilek Zyiare Harrington, 21, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was found inside an apartment Wednesday night in Charleston, police Lt. Tony Hazelett said in a statement.
Hazelett said several gunshots were fired during a disturbance in a hallway and inside the apartment. The statement said Harrington had multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. Police said they had no information on a possible suspect.
West Virginia State said counselors were available to students and faculty on campus.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with Jyilek’s family as they mourn the loss of this incredible young man,” West Virginia State President Ericke S. Cage said in a letter to students and faculty.
Harrington, a senior, had eight total tackles, including a sack, in a 27-24 win at Barton College last week.
“Jyilek truly embodied what it means to be a student-athlete and was a leader not only on campus but in the community,” West Virginia State Vice President of Intercollegiate Athletics Nate Burton said. “Jyilek was a young man that, during Christmas, would create a GoFundMe to help less fortunate families.”
Burton said donations to a fund established by the athletic department in Harrington’s memory will be distributed to an organization in Charlotte to continue his charity work.
West Virginia State’s home opener against Carson-Newman, originally scheduled for Thursday night, has been rescheduled to Friday, and a private vigil involving both teams was set for Thursday night. Harrington previously attended Carson-Newman, where he made seven tackles in six games last season. He began his college career at Division II Erskine College.
“Carson-Newman joins West Virginia State in mourning the untimely passing of former student-athlete Jyilek Harrington,” Carson-Newman Vice President of Athletics Matt Pope said in a statement. “The Harrington family and the Yellow Jackets’ campus community is in our prayers. News like this is sad to hear anytime, but today it feels worse with two teams who knew him coming together to play.”
DETROIT (AP) — Joe Schmidt, the Hall of Fame linebacker who helped the Detroit Lions win NFL championships in 1953 and 1957 and later coached the team, has died. He was 92.
The Lions said family informed the team Schmidt died Wednesday. A cause of death was not provided.
One of pro football’s first great middle linebackers, Schmidt played his entire NFL career with the Lions from 1953-65. An eight-time All-Pro, he was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1973 and the college football version in 2000.
“Joe likes to say that at one point in his career, he was 6-3, but he had tackled so many fullbacks that it drove his neck into his shoulders and now he is 6-foot,” said the late Lions owner William Clay Ford, Schmidt’s presenter at his Hall of Fame induction in 1973. “At any rate, he was listed at 6-feet and as I say was marginal for that position. There are, however, qualities that certainly scouts or anybody who is drafting a ballplayer cannot measure.”
Born in Pittsburgh, Schmidt played college football in his hometown at Pitt, beginning his stint there as a fullback and guard before coach Len Casanova switched him to linebacker.
“Pitt provided me with the opportunity to do what I’ve wanted to do, and further myself through my athletic abilities,” Schmidt said. “Everything I have stemmed from that opportunity.”
Schmidt dealt with injuries throughout his college career and was drafted by the Lions in the seventh round in 1953. As defenses evolved in that era, Schmidt’s speed, savvy and tackling ability made him a valuable part of some of the franchise’s greatest teams.
Schmidt was elected to the Pro Bowl 10 straight years from 1955-64, and after his arrival, the Lions won the last two of their three NFL titles in the 1950s.
In a 1957 playoff game at San Francisco, the Lions trailed 27-7 in the third quarter before rallying to win 31-27. That was the NFL’s largest comeback in postseason history until Buffalo rallied from a 32-point deficit to beat Houston in 1993.
“We just decided to go after them, blitz them almost every down,” Schmidt recalled. “We had nothing to lose. When you’re up against it, you let both barrels fly.”
Schmidt became an assistant coach after wrapping up his career as a player. He was Detroit’s head coach from 1967-72, going 43-35-7.
Schmidt was part of the NFL’s All-Time Team revealed in 2019 to celebrate the league’s centennial season. Of course, he’d gone into the Hall of Fame 46 years earlier.
Not bad for an undersized seventh-round draft pick.
“It was a dream of mine to play football,” Schmidt told the Detroit Free Press in 2017. “I had so many people tell me that I was too small. That I couldn’t play. I had so many negative people say negative things about me … that it makes you feel good inside. I said, ‘OK, I’ll prove it to you.’”
VICTORIA – British Columbia’s Environment Assessment Office has fined Coastal GasLink Pipeline Ltd. $590,000 for “deficiencies” in the construction of its pipeline crossing the province.
The office says in a statement that 10 administrative penalties have been levied against the company for non-compliance with requirements of its environmental assessment certificate.
It says the fines come after problems with erosion and sediment control measures were identified by enforcement officers along the pipeline route across northern B.C. in April and May 2023.
The office says that the latest financial penalties reflect its escalation of enforcement due to repeated non-compliance of its requirements.
Four previous penalties have been issued for failing to control erosion and sediment valued at almost $800,000, while a fifth fine of $6,000 was handed out for providing false or misleading information.
The office says it prioritized its inspections along the 670-kilometre route by air and ground as a result of the continued concerns, leading to 59 warnings and 13 stop-work orders along the pipeline that has now been completed.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
