Welland double-amputee dives into new challenge: Swim across the canal

After a year in which he lost both legs and then his apartment, Welland’s Mike Hominuk went and found something this year: A love of swimming.

Not in the traditional sense, of course. But when he took a dip in the river by the Lincoln Street Docks a couple of months ago, he found he could “float” and back stroke easily.

“I slide down the ramp and I slide off my chair, into the water,” he said. “And I found out, boy, do I ever have buoyancy.

“I’ve been here every day since, in the water.”

Looking across the canal one day, he gave himself a challenge: Become, as far as he knows, the first double amputee to swim across it and back.

Hominuk, 69, lost both his legs last year from complications of diabetes shortly after he was inducted into the Welland Sports Wall of Fame. In 1973, he coach