Billed as the "Aqua-Queen of Lake Erie," 18-year-old Greta Patterson marked the Fourth of July in 1955 by swimming 24 kilometres across Lake Erie from Angola, N.Y., to the Crystal Beach dock.

It was quite an event. Broadcast live on radio, a TV crew and newspaper reporters recorded the activities of "her historic, 13-hour swim," as described in a picture booklet recently acquired by the Fort Erie Historical Museum.

Photos in the glossy booklet also show her at home in Batavia, N.Y., playing phonograph records, reading her high school yearbook and sketching fashion designs. She was variously described as "beautiful, blonde," or "blonde, blue-eyed," or simply "beautiful," and the cover photos focus on her blonde, blue-eyed facets.

The local newspaper at the time, the Times-Review, described thousands greeting her on the Canadian shore. Boat whistles, sirens, bells and cheers sounded. RCMP officers kept watch over hundred of boats in the bay while OPP officers waited at the dock to pull her in.

At 7:35 p.m. she reached her destination, and when she climbed up the ladder – under her own power – a bouquet of flowers from Crystal Beach Reeve Claude Brewster and a trophy from Fillmore Hall, manager of the Crystal Beach Transit Company, awaited her.

Greta's swim took place in the wake of a craze among marathon swimmers to cross lakes. Toronto's Marilyn Bell was the first recorded person to swim 34 miles across Lake Ontario in 1953 as part of an event at the Canadian National Exhibition. It's quite possible Greta was hired for a holiday event at Crystal Beach Park.

The next year she swam around Abescon Island at Atlantic City, a 26-mile ocean route against men and women, finishing 11th.

Others have crossed Lake Erie, and according to residents of the time, it wasn't unheard of in Greta's day. More recent notables include Vicki Keith who swam across all five Great Lakes, Ashley Cowan, a quadruple amputee, in 2001, and Terri-Lynn Langdon, who has cerebral palsy, in 2002.

The booklet is an interesting glimpse at sports promotion in the fifties, the trends and fashions of the day and attitudes about women. It can be seen at the Historical Museum in Ridgeway.