There's still a solid month left, but I'm going to call it already: this is hands down the best swimming summer I've had since 1988. I've had such incredible swims in all sorts of different pools, and lakes, a veritable swimiracle, a quarry even. My baby girl is ALL about swimming, my kiddo is on board and practices front crawl in his bed instead of sleeping. It is the best. Just the best. More on some spectacular swims I've had and places to jump in soon, but in the meantime, I'm celebrating the renaming of the Regent Park Aquatic Centre after the wonderful, generous local councillor who was a huge supporter of the centre. It's now the Pam McConnell Aquatic Centre. Even typing that out makes me a bit weepy.

In other public pool news, I'm *still* thinking about Katrina Onstad's piece about public pools in the West End Phoenix: "A public pool on a summer day feels beautifully optimistic," she writes. "Today's pools feel inclusive, and provide a kind of informal social infrastructure."

What a beautiful homage to public pools – their imperfections and beauty and necessity.

This swimming article in the New Yorker by Carolyn Kormann made me want to swim every pool in Toronto in a day (though it'd definitely take more than a day...Toronto has 58 outdoor-run pools!)

"As I marked the locations of Manhattan’s pools on a map, a constellation emerged: the people’s moat, a secret waterway, a liquid realm. Among the honking taxis, flashing lights, and fretful pedestrians, I would swim." Read the whole article here!