Pacita Wiedel

Pacita Wiedel was born in Spain and moved to Germany at a young age, where she was a survivor of bombings during World War II. She came to Canada in the late 1950s, where she took up work at the Bank of Nova Scotia as a loan officer. Then known as Pacita Dumenieux, she was a highly successful member of Toronto’s Harmonie Fencing Club in the late 1950s, which mainly consisted of German-Canadians.

She won the women’s foil competition in 1960 at an international tournament hosted by the Amateur Fencing League of America in Buffalo, and married clubmate, Gerry Wiedel around that same year. Pacita Wiedel was a seven-time Canadian women’s foil champion (1959–64; 1966) and runner-up on three occasions (1967–68, 1971). She also won nine provincial titles.

She continued to be active in fencing throughout the 1960s and 1970s, competing at the 1966 British Empire Games, 1967 Pan American Games, and 1970 Commonwealth Games. She won three bronze medals, two in the team foil event (1967, 1970) and one in individual foil (1967). She and her husband later retired to Port Carling, Ontario.