SWIMMING LESSONS....

Come summer time one year, maybe around 1967, I guess they thought it was a good thing we all took swimming lessons. I was in Intermediates back then, and so there we were, all us boys from our dorm and our supervisor, Jim Lundy, down at the docks after school teaching us all how to swim. Mr. Lundy taught us the different kinds of strokes, backwards and forwards, lying on your back in the water to conserve your strength, and what do you do if you get a cramp.

We each had to know how to dive. He had each of us dive off the side of the dock and into the water. We also practiced holding our breath under water long as we could. We even had a bit of a contest to see who could dive the furthest before coming up for air.

It was a lot of fun, you get to go swimming every day after school, and before supper. Also on weekends. We learned some very valuable water survival lessons. Not everything at residential school was classroom stuff. They taught us a lot of other stuff besides just school.

Then one day, I realized just how important it was to know how to swim. We were all down at the docks and everybody was swimming. I heard a commotion toward the shore. I was on the dock when I heard somebody shouting, and then Mr. Lundy went running by a group of us sitting on the dock with our feet dangling over the side and in the water.

He hollered for us to clear the way, then dove straight in the water soon as he got by us, with all his clothes on! And swimming hard as he could toward the shore! It looks like the Gunanoot boy, he must’ve been walking along the shore and stepped into a big hole just below the water. You can’t see it, but everybody in the whole wide school knows there’s a big hole in the ground just a bit from shore there. I guess he stepped into it, and now there he is, he keeps going under, and coming back to the surface, and there’s Mr. Lundy swimming as hard as he could, fast as he could.

And all us kids, just standing there, holding our breath….on the dock!

It seemed like a lifetime. Finally Mr. Lundy reached him, and jumped into that pit and grabbed the kid soon as he came back up, and pulled him onto the shore. That was so awesome the way he saved that boy from drowning! Good thing Mr. Lundy was there that day.

Photo courtesy of Jim Callanan, edited by Verne Solonas