Mark Tewksbury
Mark Tewksbury is an Olympic gold medalist and LGBTQ advocate known for his athletic achievements and contributions to equality in sports.
Mark Tewksbury (born February 7, 1968) is a Canadian former competitive swimmer best known for winning the gold medal in the 100-metre backstroke at the 1992 Summer Olympics.
Raised in Calgary, Alberta, Tewksbury trained at the University of Calgary. He competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, and won a silver medal as a member of Canada’s relay team.
For some years he ranked as one of the top back-strokers in the world. He made the cover of Time magazine and was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame, the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, and the International Swimming Hall of Fame and was named Canada’s Male Athlete of the Year.
After the Barcelona games, Tewksbury retired from swimming. Tewksbury also became a prominent advocate for gay rights and gay causes in Canada and the world. On May 16, 2003, Tewksbury joined the board of directors for the 2006 World Outgames in Montreal and was named co-president.
He was a panelist at the 2003 National Gay and Lesbian Athletics Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on a panel of LGBT Olympians. In 2006, he published his second book, an autobiography entitled Inside Out: Straight Talk from a Gay Jock.
Tewksbury remains a public figure working as a motivational speaker, a television commentator for swimming events, and a continued activist. He was a board member of the Gay and Lesbian Athletics Foundation.
In December 2008 Tewksbury was invited by the government of France to speak at the United Nations in New York City on the day that a declaration was introduced that affirms gay rights and seeks to decriminalize homosexuality.
On August 5, 2010, he was named the chef de mission of the 2012 Canadian Summer
Olympic team. In 2015, Tewksbury was presented the Bonham Centre Award from The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto, for his contributions to the advancement and education of issues around sexual identification.
In 2017, Tewksbury was chosen as a Grand Marshal for the Fierté Canada Pride Montreal, and in 2020, he became a Companion of the Order of Canada.