Sean Nuttall Swims Across Lake Ontario And Back to Raise Money For Toronto Brain Research Center

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Sean Nuttall Swims Across Lake Ontario And Back to Raise Money For Toronto Brain Research Center

Open water swimmers have crossed some of the Great Lakes in the past, some as individuals and others with a group relay.

Sean Nuttall took the next step and swam across Lake Ontario — and back — in a 100 km swim from Toronto to St. Catherines and back.

The marathon swim began Friday, Aug. 12, and took 42 hours.

Nuttall completed the swim to raise money for brain research at the University of Toronto. The University of Toronto’s Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases does scientific research on debilitating brain disorders.

​”This cause is incredibly personal for me. My father, a criminal defense lawyer in Toronto, passed away five years ago this August after an extremely brief struggle with an unidentified neurodegenerative disease,” Sean Nuttall told the Toronto Sun. “In November 2016, he completed a complex jury trial. By February 2017, just three months later, he was in emergency care in a psychiatric ward.

“By May, he had largely lost the ability to talk, and by August he was gone. With few treatment options, all my family and I could do during this nightmarish time was watch, try to adjust to each heartbreaking new phase, and offer him and each other what little comfort we could.”

Nuttall’s goal is to raise $50,000. Donations can be made at engage.utoronto.ca/seanswims.

According to the Toronto Sun, it is the longest unassisted open-water swim in Canada or by a Canadian, and the eighth-longest unassisted swim on record in the world, meaning it did not have the help of a wetsuit, flotation devises, tides or currents.

This was not the first marathon swim for Sean Nuttall, who crossed the English Channel last year.

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A. Fielding
A. Fielding
1 year ago

What’s the point of more research if positive out comes are put aside. As an example epadilex a seizure medicine approved by WHO in 2018 not available to Canadians with epilepsy

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