It's mid-July, which means the end of July is fast-approaching, which means August is nigh and I'm trying not to panic about ALL THE SWIMMING I WANT TO HAPPEN! There are some grand swims on the horizon—a swimming hole date with one of my best ladies (sans kids!), a trip to Toronto Island, swimming lessons for my oldest timed so I can swim while he does, a trip to my favourite Haliburton lake...but as I sit here with my hair dripping with chlorinated water, I'm pretty excited about the last few weeks.


I woke up at 5am for my first training swim in 23 years (!). It was a beautiful morning—Sunnyside pool was still and glorious, the sun just rising over the Gardiner Expressway. My hope was that the triathlon team I was swimming with was going to swim the length of Sunnyside, but alas, we did widths. It was fun to swim with others—I so rarely do! And it was a bit of a confidence boost to note that I'm a stronger swimmer than I'd previously given myself credit for. If it was lengths, I'd be all for 5am starts, but I'll stick to sleeping in to 6:30 and doing my widths whenever I can rustle up childcare.


One of my first dips was in my newly beloved Smythe Park Pool—down a windy, tree-lined path to its 50m glory, and waiting for me in the parking lot was a snapping turtle! And then I had the glorious 50m to myself for a long stretch and it was magic. I've been back a few times and it's such a lovely, quiet spot.


I also remembered that the 50m Giovanni Caboto pool has an 8:30-9:15am swim (strange time, I know!) on Mondays and Wednesdays so I biked over on a daycare day and went for a glorious swim. I've heard it gets a lot more full in the evenings, so if there's anyway you can swing it, I highly recommend it!



I also just wrapped up a poolsitting gig (and the house attached to it!). There were a lot of cannon balls and star jumps and I even hosted my very first pool party (and then another because it was so much fun the first time 'round!)  My youngest is a water baby through and through and would wail every time it was time to take her suit off (I feel you, kid!), but the best part about it was that my not-particularly-exuberant-around-water kid FELL IN LOVE with it. He started swimming (in a puddle jumper) on his own, and was just bursting with joy. It was the greatest.


And one of the very best things about this summer has been everyone's responses to our crowd-sourced user guide to Toronto pools! I've gotten so many notes from SO many people, some I know and many I don't, with tips and intell about pools, and notes about how they're trying out pools for the first time, or have been inspired to gor for a dip. It's all so very inspiring. Holler if you have questions about a pool, or if you have any info about one not on the list yet!! (List is here. I just updated it today!!)



Oh, and we started an Instagram account! All turquoise blue and beautiful. Come find us there!

Summer has finally arrived in Toronto. It has been gloriously sunny for days – perfect swimming weather – but I have a three-month-old and leaving her on the side of the pool in a car seat like my mom did with me back in the early 80s is probably not going to fly. So instead of swimming every day like I want to, I've decided to write about swimming every day that the outdoor pools are open in Toronto. I started on June 17th and will keep on until Labour Day.

Some days are long meandering tales of swimming and water and lakes and rivers, other days are just a few words. Some days I write about swimmable puddles, other days are about lifeguarding. It really is the next best thing to swimming...

June 18
I want my arms to be too tired to hold anything, my legs too heavy to carry the weight of me.

June 19
Four years ago today I sat on a beach made out of rock that clacked under foot, a dry, dull clack that competed with the carousel's song and the waves against the shore. I sat on the stones and wondered if this was the Atlantic, or the sea (I still don't know). I wondered if the tide was coming in or going out – I come from a world of lakes and find the idea of a shifting shoreline disorienting. I sat and debated going around and around on the carousel.

I let the sun sink into my shoulders and slipped sun-warmed stones into my pockets so I wouldn't forget the afternoon.

I wish I had gone swimming in Brighton.

June 26
I want my arms to be too tired to hold anything, my legs too heavy to carry the weight of me. I want to lose count and lost time and feel the calm flood my lungs, the calm that settled into the rhythm of my arms, my breath – 1-2-3-breath, a glimpse of the lane rope, 1-2-3-breath, a glimpse of the tiled edge.

July 1
Underneath the lifeguard chair, between the pool and the deck,
the smallest bit of green watches the sun shift turquoise and blinding.

I lose all sense of time when I'm swimming. As soon as I'm front crawling, it could be 5 minutes or 45, I really have no gauge – it's one of the reasons I love it so much. Outside of the pool, I am ruled by clocks and always know exactly what time it is and how long I've been doing whatever it is that I'm doing, but when I'm swimming that all disappears.

I used to have a waterproof watch, but I haven't been able to find it since I moved homes almost two years ago, and most of the time I don't miss it. I guess if I counted my lengths I'd know approximately how long it'd been, but I don't. I can't let my mind wander to all the strange and wonderful places it wanders to when I'm swimming if I'm trying to remember that I'm on length 8, or is it 10?

"Fancy" indoor pools have a racing clock, the red-blue-green-yellow second hand counting down when you have to push off the wall, even if you still haven't caught your breath, but most City of Toronto pools don't have them (or they do, but they broke years ago and are now art installations). Most indoor rec pools usually have a clock somewhere, perched above the pool, often times an hour off because no one re-set it when when Daylight Saving Time started or ended. Then, I count out my 30-minute warm up, 10 minutes of kicking, 5 more minutes of front crawl, 10 minutes of sprinting and 5 minute cool-down.

But outdoor pools rarely have a clock big enough to see from the deck. I would love do it not to matter, to be able to swim until I was tired, but I usually know I've got 45 minutes to an hour to swim.

My trick to make sure I don't entirely lose track of time, is the LZV-patented Lifeguard Clock: using the lifeguards' changeovers to mark the minutes. Guard changes at big pools usually happen every 15 minutes, 20 minutes at smaller pools. I try to remember one feature about a guard near the fast lane – that they're wearing a cowboy hat, or reflective sunglasses, or have a ponytail, or a long-sleeved shirt. When Cowboy hat is replaced with Ray Bans, I know it's been 15 minutes. When Ray Bans is replaced with Side Pony, it's been 30 minutes. It's not a perfect science, and sometimes guards look so similar it's hard to tell if there's been a guard change or not, but it keeps me from getting out of the pool after 10 minutes, or staying in for hours...

I'm not sure there's anything sadder than the sight of an empty pool, especially when the nearby indoor pools are closed for maintenance. My body misses being buoyant and my arms miss the exhaustion and my lungs are tired of breathing through air and not through water and my legs miss the muted thunk, thunk, splash.

Soon, I tell myself, my hair will be knotted with chlorine again, and soon, though not nearly soon enough, I will be swimming outside again.