Toronto pools are opening this weekend (with online registration opening tomorrow morning at 8am!) and I will be chatting all things swimming with CBC's Jason D'Souza this afternoon!
The pools are OPEN! I repeat THE POOLS ARE OPEN (okay, some of them!). I really wasn't sure if they would be this summer given the PANDEMIC and all, but they are open and that is wonderful for so many reasons.
BUT the City of Toronto site doesn't have a lot of information about HOW each pool works (and yes, each pool seems to have different processes and procedures). I believe that this is an equity issue and have flagged it a number of times with the city, but nothing seems to be changing (a lot of pools still say "Closed due to COVID"), but instead of raging about it, I figured we could work together like we did last year and make a crowd-sourced user guide to Toronto pools so that more people are able to access this amazing resource.
PLEASE send along info as you find it over Twitter: @lindsayzv or at IG: @swimmingholeswehaveknown_ And PLEASE pass this along! Info about timing/procedures, capacity are all helpful.
First things first: ALL OUTDOOR POOLS ARE FREE. And most are doing a 45-minute swim/15-minute clean schedule. Most pools are doing a 11-11:45am length swim and a 12-8pm leisure swim, with some exceptions. Also, NO toys/noodles/flutterboards allowed. Lifejackets/PFDs are permitted (but I think have to be brought in).
Also, this information is crowd-sourced and is subject to change. I recommend calling the specific pool if you have any questions. Also, it seems from people who have been swimming that the numbers of people allowed in varies pool-to-pool and day-to-day. I'm not sure why. Also, sign ins have been taking a while, so I'd suggest showing up in your suit (and maybe packing a book) if you can!
A list of all of Toronto's outdoor pools (addresses and phone numbers): HERE!
Notes from the City: All visitors to outdoor pools will be asked to sign-in with their first name and an email or phone number to facilitate Toronto Public Health contact tracing, should it be required. Outdoor pools will operate from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, 11 a.m. – 12 noon lane swim, 12 – 8 p.m. leisure swim. More info here!
Update: Please wear a mask to all facilities, or you might not be admitted.
Alex Duff Pool (at Christie Pits):
- universal change room
- marked and distanced queue spot for each person/family to stand in (or put your bag in and go find some shade!)
- if you don't get in, you have to wait until the next "intake"
- staff in PPE as COVID screening questions, take contact info and spritz hands
- bring belongings onto deck (no lockers!)
- leisure swim capacity: 40 (approx 20 people in the large pool, 10 in shade pool, 10 in deep pool)
- leisure swim: every hour (on the hour) from 12-8pm
- slide and diving board closed
- at the end of 45 minutes, whistle in blown and everyone leave through emergency exit
- NOTE: NO length swim
Blantyre Pool
- leisure swim capacity: 18
- no washrooms
- enter through change rooms
Donald D. Summerville Olympic Pool
- really not sure if it's open or not this year. The website says it's close for deck repairs, but it also has swim hours available. Have not been able to reach anyone via phone.
- rumour has it it *might* open July 6th
Fairbank Memorial Pool
- length swim capacity: 9 (width swim)
- leisure swim capacity: 65
- length swim: 11-11:45am
- leisure swim: 12:15-1, 1:30-2:15, 2:45-3:30, 4-4:45, 5:15-6, 6:30-7:30
- there are two pools - one wading pool and a standard pool divided into three sections (shallow/medium/deep)
- main entrance not in use
- big gate along side for entrance and exits
- universal change room and washroom available
Glen Long Pool:
- length swim: 11-11:45am
- leisure swim: every hour (on the hour) from 12-8pm
Giovanni Caboto:
- universal change rooms
- 50m
- length swim capacity: 7
- leisure swim capacity: 100
- length swim: 11am-12pm, two 30-minute blocks: 7 swimmers per half hour block
- leisure entry times: 12, 1:30, 3, 4:30, 6, 7:30-8pm
- leisure swim: broken into blocks of time - 15 minute shower/entry time for patrons, 45-minute swim time, then they clear the pool and close for 30 minutes for cleaning.
Greenwood Park Pool:
- wear your suit
- leisure swim: every hour (on the hour) from 12-8pm
- leisure swim capacity: 75
- when they close every 45 minutes, everyone leaves and lines back up (with social distancing) to go back in.
- no info yet re: length swim1
High Park Pool:
- no universal change room
- go through regular entrance
- no showers
- length swim capacity: 7
- leisure swim capacity: 100
- length swim: 11-11:45am / 7:30-8pm
- leisure swim: 12-12:45pm / 1:30-2:15pm / 3-3:45pm / 4:30-5:15 / 6-6:45
- note: the water is often *very* cold as the pool's not heated!
Lambton Kingsway Park Pool:
- enter through the emergency fence
- arrive ready to swim and limit time in change rooms (gendered, with a family change room)
- length swim capacity: 6 (Note: people start lining up for 11am length swim at 10am)
- leisure swim capacity: 25
- length swim split into two 30-minute blocks: 11-11:30 and 11:30-12
- leisure swim: every hour (on the hour) from 12-8pm
- no spectators on deck
- no flutterboards or toys permitted
- can bring lifejacket if needed
Monarch Park Pool
- length swim: 11am-12pm, two 30-minute blocks
- length swim capacity: 7
- leisure swim capacity: 75
- leisure swim: every hour (on the hour) from 12-8pm
- enter through the change rooms
- exit through emergency gate if changing isn't required.
- slide is closed
- change room is limited to 6 groups at a time (they recommend swimmers come in their suits)
Ourland Pool
- wear your suit
- length swim capacity: 6
- leisure swim: 25
- length swim: 11am-12pm (no word if it is split into two)
- leisure swim: every hour (on the hour) from 12-8pm
- NOTE: pool closes at 4pm on Sundays
Parklawn Pool:
- length swim capacity: 6
- leisure swim capacity: 25
- lane swim timing: 2 half hour slots: 11-11:30 / 11:30-12
- leisure swim: every hour (on the hour) from 12-8pm
- come in bathing suit, no change rooms
- line up at exit gate
- exit at other exit on the far side of the pool (near the bottom of the hill)
Riverdale Park East Pool:
- length swim capacity: 6
- leisure swim capacity: 75
- length swim timing: 2 half hour slots: 11-11:30 / 11:30-12
*NOTE: rumour has it, people start lining up at 8am for length swim
- leisure swim: every hour (on the hour) from 12-8pm
Smythe Park Pool:
- markings spray painted for physical distancing in line up (though maybe not a full 6' according to one swimming correspondent)
- lane swim capacity: 6
- leisure swim capacity: 100
- lane swim timing: 2 half hour slots: 11-11:30 / 11:30-12 and 7:15-8pm
- leisure swim timing: 12-12:45pm / 1:30-2:15pm / 3-3:45pm / 4:30-5:15 / 6-6:45
- Note: This 50m pool is AMAZING, but also notorious for having technical issue and the phone number never seems to work: 416-394-2741
Sunnyside Pool:
- lane swim: as of July 6: 10:45-11:15am / 11:15-11:45 / 7:15-7:45pm / 7:45-8:15pm
- leisure swim: 12-7pm
- length swim capacity: 40
- leisure swim capacity: 120
- every other washroom stall is open, every other sink is open, no showers
- enter through (gendered) change rooms
Wedgewood Pool
- lane swim times: 11-12, (but unconfirmed if it's split into two)
- leisure swim: every hour (on the hour) from 12-8pm
- lane swim capacity: 8
- leisure swim capacity: 25
- no change rooms
Westmount Park Pool
- lane swim times: unconfirmed
- leisure swim: every hour (on the hour) from 12-8pm
- lane swim capacity: 6
- leisure swim capacity: 24
- one universal change room
- bathrooms: 2/3 are available, with one toilet stall closed between the two
- note: their answering machine provides outdated information
It has been 79 days since my last swim—easily the longest I've ever gone for without a swim. I am following the guidelines of our Chief Medical Officers and socially distancing—it is important, so important, perhaps the most important thing I can do. And (not but), I miss swimming. I miss a whole bunch of things—being able to work without getting snacks/finding lost stuffies for small children, seeing friends, hugging people, drinking a coffee in a coffee shop window, the ease of Before Times, but what I miss most is swimming.
I miss the headspace it affords me, the non-thinking thinking that happens over the course of lap after lap. I miss the exhaustion in my body. I miss the weightlessness of the water. I miss smell of chlorine on my skin. I miss the absence of pain in my back. I miss the meditation of it all. I've missed it so much I haven't even been able to think about it. I buried my suit, my goggles, my cap at the very back of my closet. I wouldn't let myself entertain the possibility of pools opening up for the summer. I could barely even read the two swimming picture books my kids love so much.
Then late last night, I got a text from a friend with a backyard pool saying her pool was open, and that she'd disinfect the key and hide for me if I wanted to come by for a swim. Buoyed by the research about COVID not being spread through swimming pools, I set my alarm for 5:45 and drove west to the suburbs. Armed with my bottle of 70% alcohol spray, with my bathing suit under my track pants, I tiptoed into her backyard, sprayed and unlocked the gate around the pool AND WENT FOR MY FIRST SWIM IN 79 DAYS!
Eight strokes to the wall and eight strokes back, over and over and over and over. I floated on my back in the centre of the pool and watched the sun creep over the neighbour's hedge. I kicked, I splashed, I treaded water. I pushed hard off the wall and glided to the other side. A cardinal perched on the tree above the water for my entire swim, my little red lifeguard.
Usually when I swim, my mind turns things over and sorts out writing dilemmas, and processes things I didn't even know needed processing, but all I did for the entire 45 minutes was think I LOVE THIS I'M SO HAPPY I LOVE THIS I'M SO HAPPY I LOVE THIS I'M SO HAPPY on loop.
It was a positively glorious morning. The best I've had in, well, probably 79 days. What an extraordinary gift.
After last year's cold, thunderstorm-y and small baby-filled summer, I've decided to stuff two summer's worth of fun into one. I don't think I've slept since mid-June, but I kind of don't care. It's all fun all the time full steam ahead until the pools close, (and even then, I'm not sure it'll stop!)
And so, in the spirit of ALL SUMMER ALL THE TIME, on Friday we packed a picnic, and a pile of towels and drove up through Guelph to the Elora Quarry. (I realized on the drive up that the last quarry I swam at was 8 (!) years ago in Nebraska!)
The 1.5h drive is so southern Ontario – the sprawling lanes of the 401, then moving on to small highways and fields of what might be wheat, and small towns and smaller towns, and roadside signs for eggs and strawberries. You have to drive through the adorable little town of Elora, but we didn't stop – there was a quarry to get to!
We pulled in with a screaming baby (not ideal), but I got to nurse her in the parking lot with a view of the quarry (totally ideal!). The lot is perched at the top of the quarry, with 40 foot rock faces plunging down to the almost-Lake Louise green water below.
The walk down to the water is beautiful – all trees and more trees, shading the walk (Apparently there is a hiking loop around the water).
And then just like that, the trees end and give way to a beach. It's not a huge beach, and there is very little shade, but it's a beach! And there is water! And we met up with our pal and her kiddos and it was so perfectly summer, I still have to pinch myself.
We got there at 11:30am and the beach was already starting to fill up. We spread out our towels and picnic blankets, and changed right there (though there are changerooms, bathrooms, too, but I was too lazy to walk back, and put my patented went-to-dance-school-quick-change skills to work).
There's a little roped off shallow end off the beach that is perfect for little kiddos. It's pretty rocky though (it is a quarry after all!) and I know my 3.5-year-old would've wanted water shoes if he had been with us.
On the far side of the rope, it's still pretty shallow for a few more feet and then it just drops off.
We played with the kids in the shallows for a while (marvelling at our baby's deep insatiable love of water!), and then I took off for a swim around the quarry, dodging a flotilla of blow-up unicorns and swans and hippos and flamingos. It's not big – it maaaaaybe took 10 minutes to swim the circumference, but it's so lovely. The water is thick and green in the sun, and there are weeds along the very edges, but not in the middle. Doing a back float right in the centre, with the rock faces towering above is magical.
I could've floated in the centre of that quarry all day.
After we swam and splashed and splashed and floated, we picnicked, (because OF COURSE WE DID!) and I'm not sure there's anything more delicious than post-swim farmer's market cherries and handfuls on handfuls of popcorn, even with handfuls of sand mixed in!
I didn't ever want to leave, but baby naps and daycare pickups, etc etc, and so we hit the road...
Stops we couldn't make because the overtired baby was finally asleep, but I wish we had:
- there's a side of the road flower stand on the 86 near Ariss – bring change/small bills!
- there's a chip truck right across from the parking lot at the Quarry. I will dream of those too salty chips until I can actually try them
- ice cream in Elora. Dang sleeping baby...
Practical details:
*The maximum capacity is 1,300 which seems IMPOSSIBLE, but there you have it. It sounds from the website like that happens sometimes, so go early if you can. It's open from M-F from 11am-8pm and on the weekends from 10am-8pm.
*It's open till Labour Day (though I've been warned it gets a little funky come mid-August).
*The park fees are here.
*We took our own PFDs, but apparently they have a lifeguard loaner program with a "small refundable deposit" - ask at the gatehouse when you park!
*No booze or dogs!
*Here's the official site
*Also, there's tubing down the Elora Gorge which everyone raves about, so if that's your jam, here's how to get there!
I showed up at Sunnyside for a lunch time dip, only to find it closed (whhhhhhy do I go without checking?!) but I was already there, with a suit and towel, and Claire was with our beloved caregiver, so for the first time since 2010, I hopped in the lake and swam! It was chilly but lovely, and I screamed at a very big fish, and the lifeguard escorted me with a rowboat and I felt like Marilyn Bell, sans pablum and eels.
These full, closed pools are breaking my turquoise blue heart!
Glory be! It's here! It's actually here - the first outdoor pool swim of the year. I've been waiting for this day since the day after Labour Day last year and after biking by an empty Sunnyside Pool for moooooonths, it was full and the sun shone and then it was Saturday at 10am and I got to swim!
Last year's first swim of the season was a wretched disappointment. It seems funny now, how hard it was to find a window to leave the house with a 2-month-old, how meticulous I was about packing and how thrilled I was about biking down to my happy place, only to find out someone had pooped in the pool, followed by a thunderstorm. Okay, maybe it's still a little early to be entirely funny...
But this year is not last year! The baby is 14 months old and needing me less and less, and my plan was to swim first thing in the morning so there was no chance of poop getting in the way of my swim. The atmosphere in the change room is usually fairly perfunctory, but everyone was positively jubilant.
I was the fifth one in the clear, turquoise blue pool and it was pure heaven. I realized swimming length after length (or, well, width after width), that the first Sunnyside swim of the year is a combination of New Year's and the start of the school year. I can't help but remember all of the first swims that came before, reflecting on where I was then, who I was then, and where and who I am now. It's like all those years of Lindsay are swimming at the same time.
I will admit that Saturday wasn't the warmest and at the 45 minute mark, I couldn't feel my hands, but then came the best part: sitting on the deck, watching the wonder that is a public pool filling up - all of the different ways to swim, all of the different bodies, the different suits, the riot of beach towels. And because it was the most glorious swim in the history of swims, I then met a trio of fellow swimmers who were wonderful company (and because Toronto is a small town, we of course had heaps of friends in common) and I left the deck with an invitation to Monday night bocce ball. Man, I love this city!
Kerry Clare sums it up perfectly: "I love public pools, where everybody just shows up on hot days. I love all the bodies, the splashing, the obnoxious people, the towels spread out on the deck, the way the water cools you down just like that, and how my children have turned into little fish. The swimming pool is everything I love about living the city." (You can read the full post here - it's wonderful and full of all things summery!)
This weekend must've been charmed because I got to swim on Sunday as well - a much warmer swim and I had to tear myself out of the water and bike home to my family where I convinced them all to put on suits and sit in the tiny wading pool in the backyard...I will make swimmers of them yet!
To Summer 2018 and all the swim fun ahead!
Before heading to Argentina this winter (their summer!), a friend who had spent the last year there warned me that pools aren’t easy to find. She scoured the neighbourhood we were staying in and found a few – most in hotels, but a few others and I went down with a suitcase full of bathing suits, all set to swim on the regular.
Of course, that didn’t happen. I swam at a palace and it was
glorious, and then the baby got sick and I got sick and my pool hunt went on
hiatus. And then when I dove back in (though not literally, sob), I was
striking out left right and centre. Nearby hotel pools did not
have day passes, not even outrageously expensive day passes and getting a room
at a hotel within walking distance of our flat seemed ridiculous. There was a
pool in the basement of the university’s law department – a huge, imposing
building with a million columns, and another at a techno-heavy gym on the same
street as one of our favourite parks, but my Spanish was terrible and figuring
out schedules and passes was daunting. Despite the blazing heat and the 3
bathing suit stores on every block, there were no public pools, or splash pads
to be found.
BUT, there was Parque Norte – a 30-hectare water park with a
bajillion pools just a short cab ride away. It was my swimming solace. So, one
morning, we sunscreened up and packed an epic picnic and took a cab over…only
to discover it was closed for the season. END OF THE SEASON?! IT WAS 35
DEGREES! But it turns out summer ends at the end of February there, and it was the first week of March. Also, it turns out Argentinian websites are notoriously out of date/not
updated. It was a pool fail of epic proportions and my fella had to flag down a
cab on the side of a highway to get home.
There was one teeny little pool on a rooftop in the swanky
Palermo neighbourhood I got to dip into briefly, and a short dip in Uruguay and after consulting with my Argentinian Instagram pals, we decided it was time to head to the ocean.
We drove for 5 hours past fields and fields of cows – it
felt like we were in the middle of Saskatchewan, with the odd roadside parilla
and queso-selling farm stand. The
ocean seemed impossible far away. But we kept on and drove through a thick pine
forest. It felt like those cottage roads, where the sun is suddenly filtered
through trees, dappling the dirt road. We drove until the dirt road
gave way to sand and there we were, at our hotel for the weekend. The air went
from smelling like pine to smelling like salt.
“You have to be patient, Mommy,” my 3-year-old kept
insisting as my fella and the hotel employee traded Google translated
sentences.
The sun was already on its way down and I was grateful I had
packed a bag with just bathing suits and towels. We grabbed the key to our room
and grabbed the bag and headed for the beach, just steps from our door.
The Atlantic was loud and much rougher than I had imagined.
This was not a swimming ocean. In true LZV form, I got in to my knees, the undertow pulling
at my legs, and bailed. I took a break, watched the wind whip my baby’s wispy
hair, and then went back in and dove through the waves. The water was warm, the
air was cold and it was perfect.
That night, we walked home from dinner along the sandy road,
and down to the beach. We held our babies under the Milky Way and listened to
the crashing waves and showed the kids Mars, and marvelled at this glorious life
we’ve made, our great luck, our great fortune.
The next morning, I woke up early, before the baby even. I
could’ve settled in for another hour of sleep, but the sun was rising over the
ocean and I could see it from our bedroom window, so I flung the curtains open
and Adam made me coffee to take with me to the beach. It was far too rough to
swim, and the water was filled with surfers. So many surfers in fact that I felt like I was living in that
Keanu Reeves movie with the surfing bank robbers.
I’m used to calm water and fixed shorelines – northern
Ontario lakes. The unpredictability of the ocean terrifies me, the churning
white, the relentlessness of the waves.
We spent the day on the beach, and though I couldn’t
swim-swim, it didn’t much matter. We made sand castles and collected shells and
ran in and out of the water, my hair thick with salt. Both kiddos stood in the ocean for the first time and I beamed so hard my face hurt.
There was an epic storm that night, lightning, thunder,
rain, the works and when we woke the next morning, the waves were so ferocious,
there weren’t even any surfers in the water. The wind whipped so fast I was
afraid it’d knock the 3-year-old over completely and we drove home without
going for one final dip.
I didn’t see water again until I got home, slipping back
into the centre lane of the pool I think of as “mine”. It’s boring and
predictable and I’m already plotting my next ocean visit, but it’s also lovely
and predictable and I’ve missed the muted, meditation of length after length
after length.
The feeling I used to have moments before a first date is
the same feeling I get before I swim in a new body of water – a trill in my
sternum, tiny bubbles floating inside my arms. I get nervous and chatty and
fidgety. My whole face aches from smiling, beaming.
I wasn’t planning on swimming in Uruguay. I wasn’t even
planning on BEING in Uruguay, but I was in Buenos Aires for a month with my family and Colonia, Uruguay is an hour-long boat ride away, and so, we packed a
picnic and a lot of sunscreen and headed across the strangely purple Rio de la
Plata for an afternoon.
I almost didn’t swim in the river – I forgot a suit, and a
towel and we didn’t have much time before we’d have to head back to the
hovercraft*. And the water was a thick, muddy purple that was a bit suspect (Wikipedia
has since assured me it’s just silty and shallow, hence the purplish grey
colour). But it was hot, so, so hot and other people were swimming, so, I
stripped down and half-skinny dipped in the world’s widest river on a sunny
afternoon in March.
I also learned that muslin baby blankets are PERFECT
substitute towels.
Fun facts I’ve learned since: The Rio de la Plata is home to
a rare breed of dolphin that swims in both salt and fresh water. It is NOT home
to alligators, thank god, a fact that didn’t cross my mind until my sister
texted me, horrified.
*It was technically a hovercraft, which sounds amazing, and
extra amazing for any Paw Patrol fans out there, but was really just a huge
ferry…
Today, I went swimming in an Argentinian palace. I'm still pinching myself and if my hair wasn't still wet, I might think it was just the most beautiful daydream.
But I did. I swam in a beautiful old palace, the Palacio Duhau, Park Hyatt Buenos Aires—just blocks from our apartment.
I'd been in Argentina for a week already—a glorious week of picnics, coffee, steak, malbec, gold street lamps and the bluest skies. But no swimming and I was starting to dry up. A friend who spent last year in BA warned me that swimming isn't easy here, pools are hard to find, and even harder to get into. (Though there are bathing suit stores on every block...!)
But then this morning, I ducked under some palm trees and walked through the glorious, imposing gates of the Park Hyatt. It's an enormous indoor pool with lights that shift depending on the time of day—from sunrise to after sunset. Most hotel pools are so tiny and dinky, made for splashing, not swimming, but this is a proper POOL. I watched a family of kids invent a pool noodle tag-like game and then swam length after length next to a fellow swimmer (chatting about swimming in my terrible Spanish!) I swam my heart out for a full hour before retreating to the hot tub AND sauna. It was positively glorious.
(Had to sweat it out in the sauna in honour of Rhya, our ultimate sauna fan)
The pool at the Four Seasons Buenos Aires (photo from the Four Seasons BA Instagram)
I love swimming (but you already knew that). And the only think I love more than swimming is travel-swimming! New pools! New lakes! New oceans!
In four (!) days, I'm going to be packing up my suit and my little family and heading to Argentina for full-on summer and a tour of as many Buenos Aires pools as I can manage!
Fellow Swimming Holes swimmer, Laura has already ventured to Argentina with this glorious meditation on Patagonia blue and a pool-side fairytale in Mendoza, and I've gotten some incredible pool tips from new swimming Instagram and Twitter pals. I promise to take a million pictures and share all of the joy that is BA-swimming! I've also got a bunch of Love Lettering Project envelopes packed, because I have a feeling a bunch of these pools are worthy of big epic love...
On the very top of my list is the outdoor pool at the Four Seasons BA - the photo at the top. Please note: I will probably die from joy if I get a dip in!
And then there's this rooftop beaut at the PanAmericano Hotel:
And this 30 HECTARE (!) pool extravaganza. THIRTY HECTARES OF SWIMMING! I can't wait!
The Park Hyatt pool looks promising and there's an Olympic-sized pool just a bit outside of the city that I might try to venture to! We are also planning to find the ocean at some point too, because, well, I am part-mermaid and I need me some salt water.
I've got a lot to do in the next few days, but I just keep watching the Olympics and staring at photos of Argentinian pools. The only things I have packed so far are airmail envelopes, a picnic blanket and goggles, but that's all I need, right?!
P.S.: if you have any other must-swim BA pools, let me know!
I love the clean slate of a new year – the still water/pool to yourself potential of it all. And I make resolutions every year. Last year, I had a hunker-down-and-get-through-it year. Not to say there wasn't joy and goodness, there was heaps of both, but I was pregnant to kick it off and having a hard pregnancy and then I was in newborn-land and I learned from the first time around that hunkering down is key (for me!). But sometime in December, not long after I found a new pool, I realized I had turned a corner. The baby needed me less and I needed me more and so, my resolution for 2018 is to fill myself up – reading, hanging with my favourite people as often as I can, wonderful meals, writing, travelling (big adventures ahead!), not working all the time, and of course, swimming.
I realized in writing out my highlights of 2017 that many were swimming related (unsurprising!) and also that most of my other highlights were tangentially related to swimming. I came up with titles for important projects, solved Love Lettering Project logistics and figured out key components for the novel I'm working on. Over the holidays, I even came up with the premise for a kids' book I've since written in the pool, and that's to say nothing of the personal stuff my brain sorts out while I'm doing length after length of front crawl. Swimming is like my brain's coin sorter, where you pour a bunch of change in the top of a machine and it shakes and sorts it all until all the dimes are separate from the nickels, separate from the quarters and realize you've had $53.51 in change sitting in a mason jar in your front hall all this time.
And so my resolution is to swim. As often as I can. For as long as I can. But also that the length of time doesn't matter so much as the getting in the water. I've even started getting a babysitter to watch my baby just so I can swim.
Even though I split my bathing cap on the first swim of the year (and have decided to see it as more time to get a haircut than as an inauspicious start to the year!), my first swim of the year was a glorious hour-long swim while a snowstorm raged outside. And eight days in, I've already had a few solid 2018 swims so far with another on its way in mere minutes.
To swimming, and all the goodness it brings...
(Clockwise from top left: Lisa Congdon's The Joy of Swimming, Lisa Golightly's swimmer, Team Mermaid's caps and Minnow Bather's Guinevere Maillot in Lilies in Twilight suits). Photos from makers' IG accountsAll I want for Christmas is a good solid swim. Maybe an hour or so in a quiet pool. Santa? Can you hear me? I've been pretty good this year, minus the few tantrums I threw when the pool was unexpectedly closed (ahem).
In case you have a swimmer on your Christmas list, my fellow swimmers, Rhya and Laura, and I have some swimmerly suggestions (please note: none of these are affiliate links nor have been sponsored in any way)!
* Swimming books: I'd recommend Gillian Best's The Last Wave (god, I loved it!) and Turning by Jessica J. Lee (I reviewed it here!), Lisa Congdon's The Joy of Swimming, or if you're in the UK, Watermarks: Writing by Lido Lovers and Wild Swimmers (full disclosure, I have a piece in this amazing watery collection!)
* A fancy suit, perhaps one from the Canadian-made Minnow Bathers - lordy they're beautiful suits.
* New goggles (because Kerry Clare reminded me this week non-mouldy, fresh swimmin' specs are a glorious thing indeed!)
* A new bathing cap: perhaps a long-hair swim cap for the large ponytailed swimmer in your life, or a Team Mermaids cupcake-covered cap
* A Turkish towel: These are beautiful!
* Wireless swim headphones: This is Rhya's ultimate dream
* Cute flip flops
* A swim bag
* A flutter board or a pull buoy
* Zippered pouches
* Mini shampoos and conditioner, maybe even some moisturizer to help combat the post-chlorine itch
* Swim art (and I'd add Lisa Golightly's work to the mix! My sis gave me this print last year and it continues to blow my mind with its beauty and this gem is hanging in my daughter's room).
* This one's a big extravagant, but pret-ty next level for a swimmer in your life: The best gift I've ever received was a weekend in a hotel (that had a pool, obvs). I starfish-slept in the enormous king-sized bed and swam at least twice a day, and ordered room service, and it is still one of the next three days I've ever spent.
* And maybe the best gift of all: The gift of water therapy for a patient at Sick Kids' Hospital
P.S.: The UK Team Mermaid crew has a great swimmer's gift list here, too!
I have re-found the joy in swimming. I didn't even realize I had lost it until I found it again, but here I am, swimming with a ridiculous amount of joy – like summer levels of swim-joy. I have caught myself fully smiling mid-swim. It is glorious.
There was definitely heaps of swimming joy this summer. So many outdoor dips, but after the outdoor pools closed for the season, things started to go down hill. The pool near my home is only open for length swim for an hour on Saturdays and Sundays, so getting to the pool with a still-schedule-less baby and a toddler who finished swimming lessons at a different pool just minutes before length swim started was proving to be impossible. Combine the stress of just getting to the pool (while leaving often crying children to have lunch and be put down for naps), with lukewarm showers, often-sleeping-in-the-guard-chair lifeguards (and supervisors that didn't give a shit), and sexual harassment that was poorly dealt with by the City (and it took MONTHS afterward of me insisting on action), swimming was something I did, but there wasn't a lot of joy. It was a box to be checked off so that I could make it through the week.
But after one too many missed swims, and being stick in a months-long teething purgatory (both kids teething AT THE SAME TIME, WTF?!) and constantly feeling anxious that the man who had sexually harassed me would be there, I broke down.
I needed to swim, for my mental health even more than my physical health. And then I saw an Instagram post from a triathlete pal of a gorgeous, empty pool. WHERE IS THAT AND HOW CAN I SWIM THERE? I wrote to her. It was at a gym that opened up nearby and the pool was almost always empty, she told me.
And so, I went by later that day to see it for myself. A trainer took me on a tour of the gym, or tried to. He wanted to show me muscle-building machines and the cardio room and the basketball court and I was all, "Don't care. Never gonna use them. Where's the pool?" There there it was, a turquoise beacon of beauty. (That by some miracle is even cheaper than swimming at my former pool - !)
I've been swimming non-stop since. A few weeks ago my fella was sick and stuck working at home and though I would never wish him to be sick, it meant there was a warm body in the house during the baby's naps. That week I swam FIVE TIMES.
I know it sounds like hyperbole, but it's actually been life-changing – to be able to swim whenever I can AND feel safe. I am a better writer and a better mother and a better person to be around. I am so much happier. I do miss my fast lane friends, but having a lane, and sometimes even pool to myself is such luxury.
I have been swimming. Not nearly as often as I’d like -- the 12-12:55pm windows are so hard to squeeze in with a baby and childcare, etc, but weekends are for swimming and on weekends, I swim.
The trouble with only having two days to swim means it’s hard to justify skipping a swim, even if getting into the water is the very last thing I want to do. (Sleep, I’d always rather sleep!)
Twitter and Instagram have connected me to some amazing swimmers, many in the UK (it's how I learned the word lido!!) and these women are no exception. Check out their London pool map and their open water swim map around London, and their swim cake study! It's enough to make me want to throw my suit in a bag and book a flight asap!
And thanks to a package in the post, Laura, Rhya and I get to be the Torontonian contingent of Team Mermaids! Purple caps abound!
It's been a strange summer for swimming – so many thunderstorms, and chilly days (not a single Extreme Heat Alert to keep the pools open till midnight this year!). There were foulings (the only good part of that was the delicious cocktail created to commemorate it!), thunderstorm-thwarted swims, and small windows between feeding my baby. The (only?) good part about the frigid fall temperatures was that I often got a full lane to myself for much of August.
I did succeed in writing about swimming every single day (!) the outdoor pools were open this summer, which made even the swim-less days manageable, and I swam a lot this last month – gracious friends and family watching my baby while I got a swim in. I even read on the deck twice – not usually a rare occurrence in the summers but with small windows (babies!) and frigid temperatures (brrrr!).
I watched four Harvards dive and split off and re-find each other during my penultimate swim at Sunnyside, and thought a lot about my Papa Doug who used to fly Harvards and my very last swim of the season was pretty anticlimactic, a cold, fast swim under a grey sky. Definitely a whisper, not a bang.
But amidst the chilly, utilitarian swims, there were some stand out gems this summer:
1). After a long swimming drought, I got this text from my brother-in-law:
And so, he wore my 4.5-month-old baby and pushed his 4.5-month-old baby in a stroller up and down the boardwalk and my sister and I got to swim together. We had the fast lane to ourselves and the sun shone and it was glorious. Truly one of the best swims of the summer.
2). A Sunnyside swim where, mid-swim, a Great Blue heron flew over the pool, its neck folded over itself, its wings enormous, reaching. It was spectacular.
3). Another Sunnyside dip close to the end of August in which the air above the pool was filled with the darting, meandering flights of monarch butterflies. I lost track after I hit 30!
4). The deep end dip and interlock brick deck hang I wrote about here. I'm still thinking about that 1980s oasis of a pool and can't wait to make it back next summer for the 50m length swim.
Even with the chilly swims and the numb fingers, I already miss swimming outside. My indoor bag is packed – farewell, sunscreen, sunglasses and bikini. I already can't wait for next summer...
There is only one week of outdoor pool swimming left in Toronto (gasp! sob!) but I have found a brilliant gem of a pool in which to spend the next seven days: Smythe Park Pool.
My winter fast lane pal tipped me off about this quiet, west end 50m pool, but it took me until now to check it out. Pro-tip: Don't listen to Google maps, you have to enter in off of Scarlett Rd, then take the winding road in. It'll feel like you're in the middle of nowhere, but it's coming, I promise.
And just like that, it appears in all of its chlorinated glory. It is 50m of perfect turquoise chaos, the shallow end packed with frozen tag and cannon balls, the deep end nearly empty, a tinny radio set out near the staff room blasting "Karma Chameleon." I felt like I had time-warped back to the mid-80s, where I idolized my swim teachers and learned to stride jump in the deep end. The sun presses hot against the HUGE, expansive interlock brick deck (perhaps the most generous deck I've seen in any City of Toronto pool!)
There's a length swim from 7-7:55 every evening – 50 whole metres of swimming before turning around – but a baby + a toddler + bedtime make that impossible this year. (NEXT SUMMER!!)
And, if that wasn't enough, next to the 50m pool is a shallow kiddie pool, and beside all of it, is a playground AND a splash pad.
Note: there aren't any lockers, and you have to leave your bag outside the deck. There did seem to be a staffed coat check-esque area, but no one was working there when I was swimming...
Hours and exact location here!
P.S.: Shawn Micallef's brilliant ode to summer swimming in Toronto. Get thee to the water!!
I swam after dinner in a corridor of sunlight.
The lake was black, but not forboding, and the loons had disappeared – two paddled beyond the point and the other flew to join them, its solid bones making it impossible to get airborne until the thwack of feathers on water stopped and suddenly it was possible, so I didn't have to worry about them diving under me (yes, that is my lake swimming fear!)
The top layer of the water was bright with sun, my arms gold-green. One-two-three-breath, with a view of the trees on the far side of the lake. I swam for five, six, seven cottages, counting the docks and the tethered boats.
When I turned around, the sun was what traffic reporters warn highway commuters about this time of year – the sun low and directly in my eyes, a blinding light.
I swam without knowing where I was swimming, and kept on until the dock appeared, with the docktails and the happy hour (the happiest hour, really).
It took me forever to warm up afterwards and I wore all the clothes I packed...but it was the most glorious lake swim of the summer.
I don’t understand the sea. Not one bit. I grew up in my
neighbourhood pool, and in Ontario lakes, and the thought of a shifting shoreline, not
to mention undertows, is disorienting, terrifying even. I also can’t read a
tide table to save my life. When I hiked the West Coast Trail at 18, I
got caught not once, not twice, but three times on the beach with the tides
coming in, scrambling up slippery ladders, soaked to my knees.
But if there’s anyone who could convince me of sea swimming,
it’s Canadian-born, Bristol-based author Gillian Best. In her debut novel, The Last Wave, Martha, a devoted ocean swimmer who wears the second skin of her
bathing suit tan for most of her life, never once steps foot in a pool. “The
sea is alive, expansive; a pool is dead and confining. The sea is freedom.
There is nothing in a pool: no current, no tide, no waves, and most of all, no
history,” Best writes.
In the book, Martha swims to escape just about
everything—the drudgery of motherhood, the mind numbingly boring tasks of being
a housewife and is so well crafted, when I spoke to Best this week, I had to
keep myself from asking how Martha was doing.
Best laughed. “She’s like an imaginary friend to me, too,”
she says. “She’s good, she’s doing well.”
Martha doesn’t just swim in the sea, she crosses the English
Channel nine (!) times (with one failed attempt). The book traces her swimming
journey from 1947 until the present day and includes her Channel swims,
estrangement, dementia and a devastating cancer diagnosis.
Best writes: “Gliding through the water almost completely
submerged had always been a retreat to a different world for me. Swimming front
crawl allowed me to focus inward, blocking everything else out—and the absolute
quiet it afforded was unique. No other solitude—not going to the library, not
sitting on a bench by myself—allowed my mind to wander so freely, roaming the
wilds of my fantasies and the hundreds of other lives I imagined for myself.”
Swimming has also provided sanctuary for Best, the sea omnipresent
in her life as well. As a 12-year-old, she spent time visiting San Francisco
with her father. “I was always the first one in the ocean and the last one
dragged out,” she says. She would collect small bottles of seawater and take
them back to land-locked Waterloo with her so she could smell the briny sea
during the “grim” Ontario winters and “be transported.”
She believed for years she’d be a professional surfer – something
she laughs about now – but realized that it wasn’t surfing she was obsessed
with, but the ocean. “It’s a holy experience, how people relate to water,” she
says.
After years of swimming competitively, and lifeguarding and
teaching swimming, Best moved to Toronto for university and was diagnosed with painful
arthritis, a type in which, she describes, her spine and hips are trying to
fuse. She began swimming again and says it has saved her time and time again.
“I can be limping and hobbling on land, but as soon as I’m in the water, I can
move again.”
“For me, water is physical freedom,” she says.
Though Best wrote about the English Channel, and ocean
swimming and the power and fortitude of the sea, she admits she’s a pool
swimmer herself.
“When I was living in London, I used to swim at London
Fields Lido,” she says, a 50m outdoor pool in east London. It’s heated, year
round and Best tells me about swimming in the snow on the few snowy days in
London. (Check out these amazing photos from The Guardian!)
“I prefer the wonderful incongruity of a pool in downtown
London to Hampstead Heath or the Pond,” she says.
And because I ask every swimmer I met, I asked her if she
has any other favourite swimming holes:
1). Her brother’s secret swimming hole in Guelph that he takes
her to every time she’s home for a visit (I press for details, but she says she
has no directional sense so this one remains a secret!)
2). The Hart House Pool at the University of Toronto: “It’s just
so beautiful,” she says.
3). The 25m outdoor pool in her mom’s neighbourhood in Waterloo.
“I went for a swim the day I arrived from the UK,” she says. “And it’ll be the
last thing I do when I leave, on my way to the airport."
A swimming kindred spirit if I’ve ever known one.
~
Best will be launching the book in Toronto or Waterloo next
week (swimwear option!):
Toronto: Monday, August 14 at 7pm at Glad Day Bookshop (499
Church St).
Free event; everyone is welcome.
Waterloo: Tuesday, August 15th at 7pm at Wordsworth Books (96
King Street South
