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By Susan
Hickman
 When
Richard
Taylor’s
body hits
water, he’s
in his
element. He
has the
rhythm. He
swims as
though he
can swim
beyond the
movement. In
his own
words, he’s
addicted to
water.
“Swimming
offers the
cheapest and
most
effective
relief from
stress,
depression
and
restlessness.
It buoys you
up with a
mysterious
physical
buzz,” says
Taylor, a
local writer
and English
instructor
at Carleton
University.
“Swimming is
my religion,
my
physiotherapy
and my
psychotherapy.”
Author of
House Inside
the Waves:
Domesticity,
Art, and the
Surfing Life,
a travel
memoir of
his year in
Australia,
Taylor is
currently in
the throes
of tapping
out a new
tome “about
swimming
with
writers,
painters,
actors,
politicians,
environmentalists
and other
romantics in
Canada, the
United
States,
Britain and
beyond”
called Water
and Desire.
“All my
books and
writing are
touched with
aquatic
themes,” he
admits.
“There is
probably no
one in
Canada who
has as much
aquatic
experience
on paper, or
in and out
of the water
as I do. For
decades I've
been
swimming and
surfing all
over the
world.” In
Water and
Desire,
Taylor
describes
swimming
with such
greats as
international
marathon
swimmer
Vicki Keith,
and in the
footsteps,
or rather
swimming
strokes, of
the likes of
Ernest
Hemingway in
Florida’s
Key West,
Scott and
Zelda
Fitzgerald
in the
French
Riviera and
Group of
Seven
painter Tom
Thomson.
But at
heart,
Taylor is an
open water
swimmer.
“If one
believes the
speculations
about man's
aquatic
phase of
evolution,
and if one
reflects
upon the
webbings
between
fingers and
toes, the
more or less
hairless,
streamlined
body, then
swimming
open water
doesn't seem
so
frivolous,”
wrote Taylor
in his 2004
article
Different
Strokes.
“It's a
healthy,
practical
mode of
transportation
that can
also be
erotic,
dangerous,
relaxing,
philosophical,
religious,
and
obsessive.
“Often, open
water
swimmers are
defiant
romantics,
free spirits
more at home
in water
than on
land.” But
when open
water is
closed for
the season,
Taylor hits
the pool.
He’s been
swimming
with Nepean
Masters Swim
Club at the
Walter Baker
Centre in
Barrhaven
since 1988.
Formed in
1977, the
club is the
largest
masters swim
club in
Ontario.
Some 250
members,
between the
ages of 18
and 75,
attracted to
the idea of
swimming for
fitness or
competition,
work out at
the 25-metre
Walter Baker
pool from
September to
early June.
A summer
maintenance
program
holds the
interest of
year-rounders,
who want to
keep fit
through
swimming.
“We have
great swim
coaches who
give us
workouts
each
session,”
Taylor
explains.
“We swim
about three
kilometres
three times
a week. Some
go into
competition,
others do it
just to keep
in shape and
to ward off
angst and
the stress
of living
outside of
water.”
While at
this time of
year Taylor
is swimming
the open
waters of
Ontario and
Quebec
cottage
country,
during the
fall and
winter he
churns out
his
gruelling
laps in the
pool and
competes at
provincial
and national
levels for
the
1,500-metre
freestyle
“to keep an
edge on.”
“That said,”
he adds,
“I'm a huge
promoter of
non-competitive
soul
swimming for
the average
swimmer,
especially
in open
water.”
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