Jason Kloss, SoloSquid
Hitting the gym or the pool before going to the office can be a great way to squeeze in a workout, but for Jason Kloss, his early morning swims are part of a much larger and more important goal.
In the pool by 6:00 a.m. most mornings, Kloss swims about two hours a day, or roughly 15 km a week. He’s training for a swim across Lake Ontario this August to raise money for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).
The swim, which will take Kloss across the lake between Niagara-On-The-Lake and Marilyn Bell Park, Toronto, is not without precedent — it’s actually a family tradition.
Kloss’ grandfather, Dick Kloss, swan across Lake Huron in 1991 on his 50th birthday. Jason Kloss completed that same 65km trip 20 years later, raising $22,000 for cancer research.
“As a kid, I’d always looked up to that and what he had accomplished. I had it in the back of my mind to do [that too],” says Kloss of his grandfather, who trained him leading up to the Lake Huron attempt, and joined him on the crossing in a support boat.
Kloss remembers his 2011 Lake Huron swim as an extreme physical ordeal — complete with frigid water, nausea and fatigue. “It was daunting and challenging in a lot of different ways I would never have thought of,” he says.
But the experience also helped to define the person he is today. Kloss says he met his wife as a result of the swim and his affinity for endurance swimming was also a major influence when he established his own security company just over a year ago.
SoloSquid, a services firm that specializes in security software integration and optimization, was so named in recognition of Kloss’ solo crossing of Lake Huron and as a metaphor for a company that can handle complex projects (squids have 10 arms and multiple hearts).
Kloss naturally has his own hands full running SoloSquid, but he says he felt the time was right to attempt another long-distance swim this summer.
He will be swimming across Lake Ontario on Aug. 11-12 to honour his grandfather, who passed away in 2021 at age 80, and in memory of a friend he lost to suicide last year.
Kloss is aiming to raise $50,000 for CAMH, which works out to about $1,000 a kilometer. “Raising money is one piece and the awareness [of mental health issues] is the other part of it,” says Kloss.
In addition to fund-raising, Kloss is also looking for help from volunteers who can be pace swimmers or provide support boats for the trip. “It’s a solo swim; it’s a community event. It takes a lot of preparation to get us across,” he says.
For additional details on volunteering, donations and sponsorship, visit the Kloss2Cross website.
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