Loving every freezing minute of her swim
Toronto island resident takes a daily winter dip in icy Lake Ontario
According to the experts, we should all try to develop an attitude of gratitude during this pandemic. So here’s mine: COVID-19 has made me grateful that I’m a Psychrolute.
The word comes from the Latin psychrolutes, meaning “to bathe in cold water.” The word probably entered the language in the early 19th century, when a group of Englishmen (yes, they were all men) formed an organization, the Society of Psychrolutes, to promote the practice of year-round outdoor swimming.
Many details about the society have been lost to history — perhaps because frozen hands made it difficult to record the minutes of meetings. The one piece of knowledge that has come down to us says that membership required a commitment to “the daily practice of bathing out of doors from November to March.”
One of the early presidents of the Society of Psychrolutes was one Sir Lancelot Shadwell (no, I’m not making this up), a prominent barrister who was said to be “in the habit of bathing every day, whatever the weather, in one of the creeks of the Thames.”
For myself, I’m doing my part to keep this tradition alive. I’m a swimmer and I like it cold. Really cold. I swim in water that’s on the verge of freezing cold.
Why? I wish I knew because it’s a question I get asked a lot. The only answer I can come up with is very simple: because it makes me feel good. I’ve always had a high tolerance for cold, which I’m pretty sure is partly genetic. In the dead of winter my father used to go out hatless, with the front of his coat unbuttoned. “How can you stand it?” people would ask him. Now people ask me the same thing about my swimming.
My own jones for cold water really kicked in when I was in my early 50s. For me, menopause wasn’t intermittent hot “flashes.” It was unrelenting waves of heat. I was always hot and my only relief came from jumping in Lake Ontario several times a day — which wasn’t difficult since I’m lucky enough to live on Toronto Island.
Over time, as the season turned and Lake Ontario water emperatures dropped, I just kept on swimming as late into the fall as I could — that is, until the lake was so frozen that I couldn’t get to open water. At that point, I would switch to swimming in an indoor pool, at the Y or one of the city recreation centres.
Several years ago, a mild winter resulted in minimal ice buildup on Ward’s Island Beach and I managed to keep swimming right into the spring, a feat that got me a fair bit of attention on CBC and other media outlets. Andy Warhol said that everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame and that 365-day swim was mine.
But now, with the pandemic, everything has changed. All the indoor pools in Toronto shut down back in March and they’re pretty certain to remain off limits right through the winter. This is something we swimmers could never have imagined happening. Except that it did happen back in the 1940s and ’50s with the polio epidemic, a time most of us aren’t old enough to remember.
There are countries like Russia, Iceland and Ireland where swimming year-round is fairly common. But when I first got into this odd pastime, I didn’t have a whole lot of company. That has changed over the past decade, with the emergence of organizations like Britain’s Outdoor Swimming Society and a growing number of open water swimming groups on Facebook.
For the past few years, there’s even been an annual Winter Swim Festival in Vermont, where organizers cut a twolane, 25-metre “pool” out of the ice in Lake Memphremagog, which straddles the border with
bec.
It’s a strictly no-wetsuit event and draws dozens of participants: strong, middle-aged swimmers of a somewhat, er, portly bearing. Because it’s no surprise that certain bodies — ones with more fat — are better equipped to handle the cold.
The festival has the feel of a summer camp, but in belowzero temperatures. There’s great camaraderie among the swimmers, who cheer on and encourage one another, plus a lot of talk about overcoming obstacles and testing your limits. I’ve participated twice and each time I’ve managed to win a medal for LTIW (Longest Time in the Water), basically a kinder, gentler way of saying “slowest.” Sadly, the organizers recently announced that the 2021 festiav v these days, be cancelled.
Yet, in the throes of this worldwide pandemic, something remarkable is happening in the swimming universe. Suddenly, everybody wants to swim outside. In the cold!
Since the early days of COVID-19 lockdown, retailers of wetsuits and other cold-water gear report big growth in sales, and Facebook groups like Canadian Cold Water Swimming are seeing a surge of new members. The phenomenon has spread across the country, with groups who gather regularly at Toronto’s Cherry Beach, Okanagan Lake in British Columbia, Halifax’s Chocolate Lake, even cutting ice holes in the Yukon. Quite a few of these swimmers wear full wetsuits, while others (myself included) prefer to, in psychrolute parlance, “go skins.”
Admittedly, there are other ways to get your cold fix, like the followers of Dutch “Iceman” Wim Hof, who post photos of themselves sitting in chest freezers full of ice cubes. But that’s not my cup of (iced) tea; when I’m in cold water I need to move.
It amazes me that, as I stare down old age, I’ve finally found something I can do that few other people can. Me, the ultimate un-athlete! I sometimes joke that I do it so I can cryogenically freeze my body before dying. But I do think it keeps me younger.
And research is confirming a whole range of health benefits: It boosts the immune system, relieves depression (I speak from experience), possibly even staves off dementia. It’s hard getting in but, with the release of all those endorphins, you feel fantastic afterward.
Cold water swimming is the only physical activity that I am, by some miracle, innately good at. I’m not really brave or tough, but I do enjoy that people think I am.
The long-range forecast for southern Ontario suggests we could have a winter with abovenormal temps. In that case, I’ll keep swimming for as long as I can. Some days it will just be for a quick dip.
But there will be other days when the sun is strong, the wind is down, the water is calm and I’ll go for a real (but not too long) swim.
So to those who are desperately missing their pool laps, I say: Come on in, the water’s … well, let’s call it bracing.