Jaring Timmerman passed away in hospital early Wednesday morning.
The Winnipeg man swam his way into the record books as the world’s oldest master swimmer.
His son Don Timmerman said his father was admitted to hospital Monday after he started feeling ill.
He said he wants his dad remembered as an inspiration.
“I guess you know his determination and his inspiration to so many people,” said Timmerman. “One of the things that really stood out in our minds is the swimming heat on January twenty-fourth when he set two world records.”
Timmerman admits the swimming started taking a toll on his father’s health last January.
But, he said, his dad had no regrets about that, because of his love of swimming.
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Read his obiturary here on The Globe and Mail
In his long, industrious life, Jaring Timmerman was a Royal Canadian Air Force veteran, a dedicated member of the Salvation Army and an insurance executive. He witnessed two world wars and the rise and fall of nazism and communism.
But it was as a centenarian athlete that Mr. Timmerman gained fame. In the last three decades of his life, the Winnipeg resident won more than 160 swimming medals and set six world records.
Mr. Timmerman died on Wednesday at Grace Hospital in Winnipeg. He was 105. “[His] heart stopped beating, and his marvellous life on this earth ended,” his family said in a death notice e-mailed to The Globe and Mail.
