Swimming Lessons

The Schumacher Pool before the walls went up.

My first swimming lessons were held at the Schumacher pool, the only pool we had in Timmins at the time. It had once been an open-air pool that had been covered years later with a metal shell, good enough for shelter from rain, but not good enough to insulate us from the dead of winter, so we only had lessons in the summer.

Judy Miller was always at the cash when we climbed the stairs at the entrance. I was scared of her at first, a big lady with fiery red hair and the temper to match, always a little shrill and cross (she was actually only raising her voice to be heard through the glass, but I didn’t know that, then), but as the years passed I grew to love her. We all did. She became our mother hen.

Anyway, back to the pool: It was a deep pool, with only a very small area beyond the buoy line where one could stand up, whatever one’s age. As only Novice was held in the shallow area, we were expected to be able to swim the width of the pool by the time we began Beginners, quite a leap of skill from Novice to Beginners. We had better be able to, as no one our age could touch the bottom anywhere where Beginners was taught. As you might expect, there was a lot of hanging off the water spout pipe along the edge. Swimming one width was not enough, though. We were also expected to swim at least two, as we were expected to return to where we began, after all. Back to where the class was held. And we were expected to repeat that, too, making the expected laps four and not two.

I was not a particularly strong swimmer then, not like the fish I was to become. So, those laps were exhausting.

Point in case: I was swimming widths, getting more tired with each in turn; then on the fourth, I got half way across and found that I could barely lift my arms above water. Then I couldn’t. I slipped below the surface, crawled up for air, and then slipped under further still the next time, then barely back up again to gasp for air. Not surprisingly, I was rather panicked.

There was hope on the horizon, so to speak. With each surfaced gasp for air, I first saw the instructor being flagged down by a fellow swimmer, then the instructor diving into the pool in my direction. It was a clean dive. A rapid dive. A dive I could never pull off, not then, anyways.

He’s coming, I thought. I’m saved. I’m not going to drown.

He reached me in only a few strokes. He took hold of me, lifted me to the surface, and then hauled me back to the edge. All in all, it was much the same sort of experience as when I was trapped in the inner tube at Rancourt.

I shook for some time after that. But I always shivered back then. The water was cold and I was a skinny kid with precious little thermal protection. But I was probably in shock, too. I was embarrassed, too. No one else had to be rescued, after all.

“What happened,” they asked.

“I just got tired,” I said. “I couldn’t make it across.” What else was there to say?

I wasn’t the only one panicked. My mother almost broke the glass of the observation deck when she saw me struggling to stay on top of the water and failing. She hammered it, yelling, “Hey!” repeatedly, trying in vain to get the instructor’s attention. She didn’t, though. Not on deck, anyways. She most assuredly got the attention of everyone on the observation deck, though.

Rest assured, I became a strong swimmer as the years passed, becoming a lifeguard and instructor myself.