We never bought this swimming pool: it was already at the back of the land, in a semi-shaded corner, when we visited this house which was to become our home, almost 15 years ago.
We visited it in the middle of winter, in February. An old farmhouse on the banks of the Rivière des Prairies, in Montreal North.
After the broker tour, my girlfriend and I went for a walk on the linear park that runs along the river. It was frozen. Ice fishermen sat here and there, chatting in small groups as they waited for a rod to point down.
I remember thinking, at that moment, in front of this almost picturesque scene, that this was where I would like to live.
That year, we were able to enjoy the swimming pool only five months later, after having watched the various start-up videos on the Club Piscine website several times.
Before we had children, we only went swimming a few times a summer, and never before June. The pool, which is above ground and partly under the branches, doesn’t warm up quickly. But when the children arrived, as soon as the spring sun was felt, they asked for it.
Since then, we also swim in May; 68 °F (20 °C), when you have never known a heated pool, it is not so bad. It is like jumping in the lake when we go to visit my mother, near Magog. It is invigorating.
Fatal record
Monday, July 22, 2024 was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth. A few days later, the pool thermometer read 86°F (30°C), also a record for our old pool with the discolored liner. Except the water had turned green.
“The settings are not good at all!” my girlfriend tells me. She adds: “Shit! We’re short of algaecide. Go buy some quickly! We’re having friends over tomorrow!”
Six hours after pouring out nearly three-quarters of the bottle of algaecide and other products, we finally go swimming. We are in hot water. Very hot. It is far from the cool water of the lakes of Quebec.
After a few minutes, I get out of the pool, a little disgusted by this swim that is closer to a spa than an invigorating lake. I think of the fable of the frog:
“If you suddenly plunge a frog into hot water, it will jump out; whereas if you plunge it into cold water and bring the water to the boil very gradually, the frog will get used to the temperature and end up scalded.”
I went to take a shower under cold water, to cool down and also to rinse off the algaecide, chlorine, PH Minus, stabilizer and “Clear Blue” residue that we had thrown into the pool a few hours earlier.
Thaw
Under the refreshing water, I remember the visit of my mother who, a month earlier, had come to see us to enjoy the swimming pool: never had the beaches of Lake Memphremagog been closed so early in the season (less than a week after their official opening!) because of the presence of blue-green algae.
“The warmer a body of water is, the more blue-green algae proliferate,” an article on the subject informed us. However, June 2024 was the hottest month ever recorded, crushing the previous record… which dated from June 2023.
I look out the window, toward the stream, and I also think back to the circumstances under which we bought the house: how many years had it been since I had seen ice fishermen teasing fish? When was the last time the river had frozen over completely? Five years? Six years? More? I am no longer sure.
What I am increasingly certain of, however, is that it is not only Quebec that is populated by frogs ; all humanity bathes in hot water, very hot. Almost boiling.