Marilyn Grace Bell Di Lascio OOnt (born October 19, 1937) is a Canadian long-distance swimmer who has retired. She was the first person to swim across Lake Ontario, and she went on to swim across the English Channel and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. She holds the records for both crossings. Di Lascio became interested in swimming at an early age. When she was 12 years old she set a world record by swimming 500 meters in under 10 minutes. At 15 she won her first international medal when she took third place at the British Empire Games in Perth, Western Australia. Four years later she won another bronze medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. In 1964 Di Lascio decided to try to beat the existing records for crossing bodies of water. So she traveled to Europe where there were more records to break. But she had to stop after she suffered some brain damage due to a congenital heart defect. After this incident, she stopped competing in aquatic events. Now that she has retired from swimming, Marilyn Di Lascio works with disabled children and teaches art classes to adults with mental disabilities. She lives in Port Dover, Ontario with her husband Paul and they have two sons. Her son Tony died in 2003 at the age of 40. Di Lascio says that people sometimes ask if she would like to go back into competition.