LOVELY DAY FOR A SWIM
Brave souls take to beaches for annual polar bear dips to ring in the new year.
Call it a baptism by freezing.
More than1,000 GTA dippers braved the waves New Year’s Day to wash away the grime of the bygone year and ring in 2016 — not with a bang, but a shiver.
Decked out in swimsuits and Frozen costumes at -4 C on the shores of Lake Ontario, 800-plus waders in Oakville raised more than $130,000 for World Vision Canada clean water projects in Rwanda.
Gaye Courage unwittingly launched the event from her backyard 30 years ago, when she urged her sons to get “the heck off the couch” on New Year’s Day 1985.
“The boys were lying around on the chesterfield. They had cobwebs in their head from the night before, and I suggested that they jump in the lake,” said Courage, who invoked the Scandinavian tradition of a cleansing plunge to prod her hungover offspring.
“We said OK, we’ll do it, as long as you do it with us,” said Trent Courage, who was 18 at the time. “So I did,” Gaye said. What started with fewer than a dozen family members and friends grew into an annual, community-wide rite of passage to the next year.
“People we didn’t even know started to show up in the backyard,” recalled Trent, prompting a move from their waterfront property to Oakville’s Coronation Park in the early 1990s.
World Vision got involved in 1995. The annual Courage Polar Bear Dip — apparently the largest such event for charity in the country — has made a splash, raising a total of $1.4 million over 31years for the nonprofit.
“It’s a warm feeling, because I know that all of these people are interested in our cause,” said Gaye — who still does the dip in her 70s — of the participants, volunteers and 5,000 spectators on hand. “Water is life.”
“As miserable as I look right now, there’s no better way to start off the new year. It’s such a cool family tradition, honestly,” said a shivering Jenna Courage, Gaye’s 20-year-old granddaughter on her 10th annual submersion around 2:30 p.m. Friday.
“It’s kind of crazy, but it’s spontaneous, it’s fun and, in the end, it’s bringing clean water to over 8,000 people in Rwanda.”
There are definitely older dips in Canada — Vancouverites have been diving into English Bay since1920 for the annual Polar Bear Swim.
Toronto’s event, which has been held since 2005, went down at Sunnyside Park earlier on Friday, with hundreds of dippers hoping to raise $65,000 for Habitat for Humanity.
Oakville Fire Department Capt. Chuck Lewis said the worst that’s come of the event is a twisted ankle on the beach. With warming tents and a towel holder for each dipper, hypothermia hasn’t been an issue.
This year, the waters were downright balmy.
“I mean, they’ve had bulldozers in here to move ice before,” Lewis said.
For Brian Betsworth, a father who’s been plunging for the past 15 years, the event’s costume contest, live music and refreshments make the dip “just icing on the cake.”
“I feel like it’s a baptismal dip,” offered Matthew Laventzis, a 33-yearold born and raised in the area and now bringing his Florida girlfriend Andrea Hopkins for the first time. “It cleans the slate,” he said.