Chris Smith, 91, was the swimmer to beat last year.

He crushed all records in his age group and had the highest total points globally of all male swimmers in Federation Internationale de Natation meets.

“Last year was a very good year,” said Mr Smith, who completed the 50 metres freestyle in 51.57sec, the 100 freestyle in 1:54.46 and the 200 freestyle in 3:58.06.

The Bermudian did it all in a 25-metre pool in Toronto, Canada, where he has lived for more than 50 years.

Twelve years ago he was in the middle of a ten-kilometre race when he started to feel tightness in his chest. Although it was not painful, it forced him to “slow down and do a very relaxed slow stroke”.

He finished the race in just under four hours, an hour longer than he had anticipated.

The following year, three quarters of the way through a 50 butterfly, the tightness returned, but it was even more intense and accompanied by pain on the left side of his chest.

A doctor found he had severe blockages in the arteries adjacent to his heart.

“I started a treatment programme to remove these. However, over the next two years things got worse,” Mr Smith said.

In November 2014 he had a minor heart attack and then underwent quintuple bypass surgery to open the blood flow.

Three months later he got the nod to start training again.

“I did not feel any stress or pain as I built up my strength and speed but I did not, and still do not, push myself too hard,” Mr Smith said.

He battled asthma while living on Cobbs Hill Road, Warwick, as a child.

“In the summer I had no problems,” he said. “My friends and I would swim from one South Shore beach to another. I think that’s why I’m good at long-distance swimming. But in the winter, we lived in an old, damp house, and my asthma was really bad. Back then they would tell you to lie still in bed. How do you get a ten-year-old to do that?”

A doctor recommended he keep swimming; it would help his lung strength.

“I went away to Canada for high school,” he said. “In Canada, my asthma cleared right up.”

He swam competitively but gave it up when he graduated.

“I developed an eye problem and in those days there were no goggles,” said Mr Smith.

“Also, there were no swimming races for adults. Masters swimming was introduced in 1971.”

After high school he spent two years in a military academy.

“This was during the Korean War,” Mr Smith said. “I did a two-year course in engineering. Then the war ended and they said there would never be another war, so if we wanted to go off and study something else, we could.”

He went to the University of Toronto to become an architect. In his last year at the school he returned home to work with Wil Onions as he designed City Hall.

“He was very enthusiastic about Swedish architecture,” Mr Smith said.

Mr Onions, who is considered Bermuda’s most influential architect of the 20th century, based the design on Stockholm's City Hall.

“Our City Hall is basically the Stockholm City Hall in miniature,” Mr Smith said. “In the Stockholm building, the sweeping staircase leads up to the ballroom where they award the Nobel Peace Prize. The building in Stockholm is huge, about three times bigger than ours.”

On graduating from the University of Toronto, Mr Smith married the late Anne Mueller and went to Sweden to gain some experience.

“We lived on the west coast, but most of the work I did was in Stockholm,” he said. “I was looking at the co-operative housing sector.”

In 1966 the couple moved to Bermuda for a little while but soon left again for Toronto.

He was always interested in urban design and spent time building high-rise office buildings. He worked for the Toronto City Council developing affordable housing in the St Lawrence neighbourhood.

“When we designed it, it was low-density housing but now there are a couple of high rises there,” he said. “We did a lot of street-related housing. Everyone had a front door. You either went straight into the house or up two floors.”

In the 1980s he took up swimming again and then started racing in 1990.

He spent the rest of his working life producing affordable housing that was resident-controlled.

“There are two kinds of resident-controlled houses – ownership and non-ownership,” he said. “This was non-ownership. There were, say, 20 units and 20 members who controlled the project. They made decisions about its operation but they could not tear it down or sell it. They did not pay anything for it, just the operating costs. There was no profit involved and when they left, they could not sell it. They just resigned.”

He thought it was a great idea but the conservatives of the world disagreed.

“In the late 1990s both federal and provincial governments cut off all funding to co-operatives,” said Mr Smith who now spends most of his time at home working in the garden or swimming at the YMCA.

“I stay active,” he said. “My legs are not as strong as they used to be but in swimming it is your upper body that matters.”

Earlier this month he was back on the island for his granddaughter's wedding. He swam every day while he was here.

Mr Smith and his wife, Allison, have been married for 45 years. He has four children, Tomas, Kersten, Annika and Dave, and six grandchildren.

• Lifestyle profiles the island’s senior citizens every Wednesday. Contact Jessie Moniz Hardy on 278-0150 or jmhardy@royalgazette.com with the full name and contact details and the reason you are suggesting them