The Red-Hot GUIDE TO STAYING COOL THIS Summer

POOL FLOATS. POPSICLE MOULDS. SUNSCREEN PICKS AND BARBECUE TIPS. WE’VE GOT EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KEEP YOUR CHILL.

- Danielle Groen

GO JUMP IN A LAKE. YES, EVEN THAT LAKE.

How I learned to love swimming in Lake Ontario.

AT EXACTLY 11:07 P.M. on September 8, 1954, a 16-year-old named Marilyn Bell took off from a log retaining wall in Youngstown, New York, and started swimming home to Toronto. The water was a chilly 21°C. The waves were 15 feet high. Eels bit her stomach and legs in the darkness; she fought them off with her fists. By dawn, she had covered more than 20 kilometres. By 5 p.m., she had about six to go. Pink flares cracked over the Canadian National Exhibition to guide her in, but the current kept pushing her west. Finally, a full 21 hours and 64 kilometres after leaving New York, Bell touched the concrete breakwater just off Toronto and entered the history books, becoming the first person to swim across Lake Ontario.

It was a big moment for Canada and the tenacity of teenage girls. It was also a big moment for swimming in Lake Ontario, which lost a whole lot of its lustre by the time I was Bell’s age, not quite half a century later. Although Toronto has done heroic work since the 1970s to stop sewage overflow from reaching the water, and although our beaches are among the world’s cleanest, locals have held onto a nagging suspicion that something filthy lurks in the lake. It’s why, as an adult, despite living a quick walk from the shoreline, I stuck to the same outdoor city pools I grew up swimming in. My favourite remains the Sunnyside/Gus Ryder pool, a round-edged giant named after—who else?—Marilyn Bell’s male coach. (Okay, in fairness, he also taught thousands of kids to swim.)