2025 Canada Games Profile

Leading up to the Canada Games, Swim Ontario is highlighting some of the members of our fantastic team!

It can be summed up in a few words.

Alyssa Smyth is a three-time Canadian swim champ and record holder.

That’s it. Well, to be fair, there’s more to be said about this exceptional young female swimmer who is a member of the Orangeville Otters Swim Club – and likes the butterfly. We’re talking about the swim stroke and not the winged insect from the lepidopteran superfamily.

In the water, let’s start with what she accomplished at the 2025 Canadian Trials in Victoria, B.C. Only 15 years of age, Smyth had a Canadian record time of one minute, 06.42 seconds in the S13 100-metres butterfly. The remarkable performance at the meet also included three second-place finishes - the 400-metres freestyle, the 200-metres individual medley and 100-metres butterfly.

Earlier in 2025 in Toronto, she broke the Canadian S13 national record in the 200-metres butterfly in 2:31.41. Then, it was the S13 1,500-metres freestyle mark that fell with her time of 18:52.68.

In para-swimming, S13 is a classification for athletes with visual impairments, specifically those with the least severe visual impairment within the Paralympic classification system. These athletes may have some degree of vision, but their visual acuity is contracted and strained.

Smyth was diagnosed at age 11 with Stargardt disease, and three years later was legally blind. Her eye condition is genetic and leads to progressive vision loss. It is the most common form of inherited juvenile macular degeneration. Symptoms often appear in childhood, but some may not experience them until they become an adult.

Smyth has had her share of challenges but finds ways to persevere.

Take the sport she adores – swimming. At the 2024 Ken Demchuk International Invitational in December held at the Pan Am pool in Markham, she helped her swim club break a 20-year-old Canadian record in the S13 women’s 200-metre butterfly with a time of 2:35.48. That lowered the previous record by nearly five seconds.

Smyth is focussed on her first appearance at the Canada Games set for August 8 to 25 at the Aquarena Fitness Complex in St. John’s, Nfld.

She’s a member of the heavily talented Ontario squad – and a province that traditionally shows up with great athletes. Ontario’s objective, which goes beyond the traditional friendship, adventure and experience, is to win another overall title.

Ontario’s team consists of 34 young, skilled and gifted individuals. Olympic, Paralympic and Special Olympics athletes make up Ontario’s roster whose aim is to claim supremacy at the largest amateur sports event in the country. It’s considered to be a showcase of able-bodied athletes and athletes with physical and intellectual disabilities.

Twenty-four swimmers are in the Olympic classification for Team Ontario while only six Paralympic and four Special Olympics athletes were chosen. All have the same objective: medals, personal best times and leaving with provincial bragging rights. Stellar performances at previous Canada Games can become a stepping stone to other major events.

“Really looking forward to competing for Ontario,” said Smyth, an academic honors student who enters grade 10 at Westside Secondary in the fall. “This will be a good experience.”

As expected, excitement and joy were evident when informed that she was chosen for the Canada Games. The news came in an email from Swim Ontario to her mother. Smyth said she is ready to compete in as many as seven events.