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Out of all the traditions to mark the coming of the New Year none seems to be more whimsical or nonsensical than the teeth-chattering, bone-chilling rite known as the polar bear swim.
The origins of this zany event are lost in the mist of frozen lakes and icy waters but I'm guessing that, somewhere in the original story, alcohol plays a role – either the drinking of, or the recovery from. However it started, this strange custom has spread across Canada.
Over the years, as a young reporter working in newsrooms across the country, I saw many crowds of partially clad people get cold and wet on New Year's Day. No matter where I was working, there was sameness to it: a bunch of partiers, some in costumes, whooping it up as they ran into the water and immediately ran out again.
Everyone always made a great show of how cold it was and how brave you had to be to do it. Just how cold and how brave depends on where in this country you take the plunge. In Vancouver, for instance, the water temperature never changes more than about four degrees from January to August.
As a reporter, I confess I was finding it all pretty routine until I was assigned to cover one polar swim in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. It was a swim, albeit more of a plunge, unlike any I had ever seen. A whole new polar bear paradigm if you will, and the memory of it makes me shiver still.
It was in a place called Zwicker Lake, about an hour west of Halifax. That year, a crowd of truly brave men and women wanted to earn their membership in the Zwicker Lake Polar Bear Club.
When I arrived with my TV news crew, we were ushered into a bar, which I thought was a good start. All around us, there were people knocking back rum and beer and other refreshments.
While they laughed, drank and sang songs with lyrics that no one seemed to know, we went down to the water to set up for the shoot. I didn't see the site at first and asked our guide, "Where is the water?"
"You're walking on it, laddie," he said in a brogue thicker than the soles of my father's boots.
We were led across a frozen lake where townsfolk had used a crane to pull the ice out, making a hole the size of a small swimming pool. But it was so cold, the hole kept freezing over and they ended up using a chainsaw. There were still chunks of ice floating on the surface but a diver in a dry suit was doing his best to clear them out.
The lake ice was about two feet thick, and a single aluminum ladder extended two feet out of the hole. I did the math and guessed that the ladder was a 10-footer, which meant the depth of the water here was at least five or six feet.
Sure, what could go wrong?
Then I heard the bagpipes and the crunching of frozen snow. A parade of about 30 stalwarts were led down a path behind the bar by a piper who had obviously found it too cold to wear a kilt. The swimmers were wearing parkas over their bathing suits, a wise precaution in below-zero weather. Friends, family and those who had come to gawk followed behind.
These brave and arguably demented souls encircled the cold water hole in a line that was two people deep in places. There would be no easy way in for this bunch. No sticking in the big toe then running out again, like I'd seen at other swims. This was do-and/or-die time and they knew it.
As they dropped their parkas, kicked off their boots and stood on the ice with bare feet, they all had that look of solemn resolve. It was like that expression you get when you realize it's too late to duck a punch headed for the bridge of your nose. You know there is going to be pain. You just don't know how much.
But hey, what could go wrong?
The whistle blew and everyone jumped, slipped or fell in. Normally, when I use the phrase "then all hell broke loose," I consider it hyperbolic. But, in this case, I would argue it was an understatement. For those of us watching, it was a jaw-dropping, pearl-clutching shocker.
As those near-naked bodies hit the freezing water, the frosty air was filled with screams of panic – not just because they had never been so cold in their lives or their hearts had been shocked or their lungs contracted, these folk were screaming because they realized that there was only one ladder.
Oh yeah, that's what could go wrong.
Swimmers were fighting to get on that ladder, which, of course, no one had thought to tie and secure. Men, women but, thankfully, no children desperately thrashed about and turned blue as they tried frantically to get out of the watery deep freeze. When several people scrambled onto the ladder at one time, it fell backward and dunked them all over again. Some tried to launch themselves out of the water and onto the ice surface like terrified seals. Those who were successful scraped bare chests and knees on the jagged ice. Others raised their arms and pleaded to clothed and wiser companions, who obligingly tried to drag them out, although they also scraped skin in the process.
It was polar bear pandemonium. I never saw anything like it again in my career or lifetime. The thought of it makes me shiver to this day.
Paul Patterson lives in North Vancouver.