Last summer, I swam in Lake Erie for the first time; the year before that, it was Lake Huron, and this year, it was Georgian Bay, not technically a different Great Lake, but Great Lake adjacent! It was my first time camping at Killbear and it was positively glorious. It felt like I was living inside a Group of Seven painting, with the rocks and the sparse trees. 

This wasn’t the first time I’d swum in Georgian Bay. The first time was years ago. I was nineteen, or maybe twenty, and visiting a friend’s cottage. His dad had just died and his mom was grieving and it was so sad and the skies knew it. It was grey and rainy the entire time we were there. 

We went snorkelling—the first time I’d ever been snorkelling, but the water was so cold, and I was freezing and the water was rough and churned up the sand, and the only thing we saw was a crayfish.

This visit to Georgian Bay was much better. Each morning, we would gather on a huge rock face while the kids searched for minnows and slid down the slippery surface into the chilly water. The water wasn’t warm-warm, but was still very swimmable and we spent our days sitting on the sun-warmed rocks, chatting and reading and handing snacks to kids while they searched for minnows with nets we found at the General Store. The mosquitoes nearly capsized my youngest, and a whole in the air mattress nearly did me in, but we hiked and stopped for a swim, and hiked again and found a beach to swim at, and found beaches and more swimming spots and it was a most perfect four days.