Manitou Beach

No photo today, but another story in my collection of boyhood memories.

My world, as a child, was actually very small, but one of my very favourite places in that world was Manitou Beach. The sights, the smells, the memories, and the experiences of this unique place are as fresh in my mind as this mornings home made blueberry muffins. I loved everything about that salty place, my mom hated everything about what she called ‘that wretched hole’.
It all started during my dad’s childhood. His father would take his family there in summer and rent a cottage for a month, sometimes two, where the children would play in the parks and swim in the lake and in the pool. For him, the childhood memory was as good, if not better than mine, so, naturally, he wanted his own children, and his wife, to experience the joy of Manitou as he had. It was only a one hour drive from Lanigan. But to see and experience Manitou in the 50’s and 60’s was an exercise in disbelief and incredulity. Thinking back, I cannot blame my mother one bit for hating the place. Let me explain.

We were not sure of the history of the location, but after reading a weatherworn sign on the beach, we had a small understanding that this place had a history with Native Indians before the white man settled the prairies. They had apparently come to camp there and to take in the healing waters. Manitou Lake is a small body of water just north of Watrous Sask. It has a uniquely high mineral content and as a result, the buoyancy is similar to the Dead Sea and the mineral makeup of the water actually promoted healing of cuts, sores and a variety of skin conditions. As kids, all we knew was that it was very, very salty. After enjoying the waters, if one did not shower off thoroughly, the salt would dry on the skin and in the hair and leave a white crystalline residue. It was a particular problem in the hair as the hard water of the prairies was not the best with which to clean hair in the first place. Shampoo would only coagulate and make matters worse.
The town of Watrous was normal enough and is not much changed today. The little resort area of Manitou, beside the lake, had a touristy feel, and does today, but back then the tourists were mostly elderly and the resort atmosphere was mostly a left over from the turn of the century. I doubt there was a single structure in Manitou that had seen even $5 worth of upgrades in the last 50 years. As we drove in from the east, the first sign of anything unusual were the white salty marsh and mud flats. As we approached the residential area, there were old, dilapidated cottages on the beach, and more substantial homes across the road, but still in a state of disrepair. A little further on were the tacky little so called restaurants, fish and chip joints and whatever was on the menu for that day. You knew you had arrived when the largest structure of the village appeared on a rise across the road from the main beach. It was the public swimming pool. Next to it, separated by a side street, was a private spa. Both of these buildings were quite large and ornate, but had weathered badly and were in need of paint and repair, both inside and out. Perhaps they had at one time been white.
We would park the car on the street, on the beach side and immediately the smell of French Fries and vinegar would fill our nostrils, and activate our saliva glands, and of course, the whining and pleading for ‘chips’ would begin. No trip to Manitou was complete without a cardboard container of the greasy delicacies along with a good dousing of vinegar. It was the one thing my mother reluctantly admitted to enjoying. There was a ‘chip stand’ on the beach and also one in the pool, which opened to both the outside and the inside of the building. The pool ‘chip stand’ had the best chips, but only because they used the less aged frying fat.
I can only remember swimming in the lake one time. We did not like it because the water was cold and the stones on the beach hurt our shoe pampered feet. My only recollection was that it seemed cleaner and fresher than the pool and there was more room to splash and play. So, we would go through the ritual of trooping to the pool, getting our admission tickets, and trying one last time to talk mom into coming into the pool with us. We knew it was futile. She had made up her mind the very first time she laid eyes on the bacteria ridden place.
We would enter from the brightly sunlit outdoors, and squint our way to the dressing rooms. The only light in the chalet-like structure seemed to come from skylights planted high in the ceilings. The dressing rooms were abysmal in every sense of the word, and it was this more than anything that turned my mom’s stomach. After her first time, and I don’t even remember if she completed her first time, there was no doubt in her mind that we would die of horrible diseases if we touched anything in those cubicles. Even as a kid, I remember being disgusted, but it was something easily overlooked when the reward of a good swim was just around the corner. There was a labyrinth of hallways and corridors and much confusion regarding male and female quarters. On more than one occasion I caught an unsightly glimpse of white female flesh as I rushed down the wrong hallway. The floors were covered in hair, salt slime, and crushed, partly decomposed ‘chips’. When you found one of those cubby-holes in which to change, there was a wooden grate on the floor, soaked and never dried out, with many years accumulation of briny drippings from countless bodies. I was loathe to take my shoes and socks off and put my feet to the floor, but it had to be done. It was cold, clammy, and slimy. It took me only minutes and after stuffing my meagre belongings into an open unsecured locker, I raced back through the rabbit warren of hallways and found, at last, what I had come for.
The pool itself was divided into a cold and a warm section. The first few times we were there, I was relegated to the warm pool because I did not know how to swim. It was shallow and full of elderly people. It was a rectangular section of the main pool, cordoned off with concrete retaining walls, and on one of these walls was a bank of tall curved metal pipes, each with a spray nozzle at the high end, spewing out steamy hot water. The really old people sat under this perpetual hot shower and did not move, many of them indeed dead, or at least, so the rumour went. When the magical waters of the Manitou were heated, they not only took on additional healing powers, they stank to high heaven! The hot pool was definitely for sissies and I had to get out. It was too hot, boring and smelly, and watching the fun over the wall gave me motivation to want to learn to swim. A revelation came to me as I sat there, in the water, having suddenly to pee. The prospect of walking back through the labyrinth to a cold filthy washroom and standing in front of a stained urinal with a mat of curly hair on the floor, gave me the idea to just do it where I stood. Who would know. So, with a warm flood of guilty relief, I fouled a pool for the first time in my life. The amazing thing was that not one single person looked at me funny as if to say, “What on earth do you think you are doing!”
And that is when the revelation hit me. If I was able to pull that off, what about all these other people. The old folks rarely stepped out of the pool and yet I was sure that nature called them too. I connected that idea to the fact that the pool stank, and that it was actually very yellow! That was when I stepped out and never went back, to the warm pool. The thought came and left very quickly that my mom might actually be right.
So, I and my sister Gaye graduated to the big cold pool and with our dad supervising, we began our ‘swimming lesson’. The buoyancy was actually so strong that you could float with your shoulders and head completely out of the water. One had to be stricken with a rare affliction of paralysis in order to be incapable of swimming in those conditions. But, leave it to us. Because of the buoyancy, Gaye’s centre of gravity forced her upper body over, and her floating lower body came up. It was a sort of inverted float, head down and feet up. My dad let go of my hand and tried to rescue her, and as he did so, the same strange laws of physics took over my body and I did the same thing. Now he had two floundering rats, pulled up above the water, a grip on one arm of each kid. Did I mention the effects of salt water on the eyes and nose? It is severe to say the least. One of the two deadly sins at Manitou was in regards to the burning and stinging of the water in the eyes, nose and throat. What ever it took, do not get it in your eyes, nose, or throat. Ears were OK. Needless to say, we both had volumes of the salty brine in all our orifices and we were gasping for breath and were sure we were going to die. If my Mother’s prediction were ever to come true, it would be now, considering the gallons of the foul liquid we swallowed. I suppose we made quite a scene because dad got very disgusted and mom came running from the spectator’s gallery, ‘chips’ flying, to help revive her dearly beloved children. It was probably a first for Manitou, two near drownings in the span of a minute. Unheard of for a facility that had prided itself in never needing a lifeguard.
Our swimming for the day was over. We showered and joined mom and the babies in the sunshine outside and dad finished what he had come to achieve, a fun time in the cold pool.
Not much was said on the way home, except rumbling from my mother about never going back to ‘that place’. I remember having a bout of nausea from an overdose of grease and salt, aggravated by vinegar. I must give my dad credit for persistence because were back at Manitou a few weeks later.
With my bad experience behind me, I jumped in with both feet and with a little coaching from my friend, who’s family came with us this time, I caught on quite quickly and was very soon in the deep end, feeling quite confidant and comfortable. The trick was to stay upright. Sinking was not an issue. I tried not to glance over to where my mom was sitting in the spectator’s area, but did catch some severe motions out of the corner of my eye. Something about pointing to the shallow end. My dad gave me great encouragement and seemed to be proud of me, which was quite a change from the shame and embarrassment of last time. I watched him work the rings, a series of ropes hanging from the rafters with handholds on the ends, dangling 6 ft. above the water. The trick was to swing out and over the water, catching one ring after another until you reached the far side of the pool. He was always the best at it. I was most proud of him when he jumped off the high dive. He could not dive, but had no fear of jumping off the 10 ft. board and then the 20 ft. There was another board tucked high in the rafters, up where the skylights were, with a little home made sign that said 25 ft. I saw him climb up there one time and jump off. I was not that proud of him but only scared. I had only ever seen someone jump off that perch one time and it was a young kid. I think it really frightened him because he never even talked about it after.
Because the pool was so old, it needed some sort of maintenance in the winter months. The concrete pool was cracked and falling apart, and the method of repair was great gobs of tar which would seal the cracks and prevent the water from seeping into oblivion. When the tar warmed in the summer months, occasional pieces would float to the surface and the swimmers would collect them, lump them together, and throw them like balls. The staff and management did not like this at all. My friends and I did it all the time. I remember one time I found one and was just about to grab it when my buddy stopped me and told me what it really was. On closer inspection, I saw that he was right. I could not believe it until I remembered the time a few years back when I had relieved myself in the warm pool. Why not take it to its logical conclusion? Some people had no scruples. So we skirted around that area and continued to have fun. On the way home that night, I thought I would gross out my mom and sisters. I told them of the actual turd I had seen in the pool that day. My dad quickly interjected and explained about the tar business. He knew the goods but did not want to add fuel to my mom’s fire about diseases. And that is how the second deadly sin came to be. Never, under any circumstances, play with tar in the pool at Manitou.
Manitou Beach was not just about the water, but a swim was included with every trip. It was usually a Sunday afternoon social event and we would go with or meet friends for a picnic in the park after the swim. While the moms were setting up the picnic buffet, we kids would climb the steepest ravines we could find, getting dusty and dirty in the process. The lake was a runoff for the surrounding low hills and the little gullies made good picnic areas because of the shade the trees provided. There were wooden tables, BBQ pits, and horseshoe pits. It was at one of these events where I learned to throw horseshoes at a special area for kids where the pits were a little closer together. The shoes were very heavy and we could only throw them so far before they went totally out of control. I remember one of the kids needing a few stitches to his head when he caught a shoe just above his ear, running around not paying attention to all the flying horseshoes.
When all the food was laid out, we would stampede to the tables and with our ravenous appetites eat everything in site. There was almost always potato salad, jello salad, buns and cold cuts, or if it was not too dry, some adult would light a fire and we would have hot dogs. For dessert, there was home made cookies, chocolate cake, or watermelon. It was always a treat when several families would pool their resources and we could pick from a greater variety of foods. I still seemed to always gravitate to my mom’s cooking as she was the best there was. We would pile into the car after an exciting and very tiring day, and fall asleep before we were half way home.
My Dad discovered golf at Manitou. Where the land rose above the lake bed, on the road to Watrous, there was a 9 hole golf course set among a straggly stand of poplar and willow trees. The grass fairways were always parched and brown as there was no adequate supply of fresh water for irrigation. The ground was rock hard and when the ball was struck well, it rolled forever. The greens were actually browns. Again, because of a lack of water, grass greens were an impossibility, so the putting surface was a bed of oiled sand. A hemp 'welcome mat', with a rope tied to it, was dragged from the ball to the hole to make an even surface. Because the sand was oiled, it did not blow away in the constant wind and it made a much more cohesive and firm surface on which to putt.
My first golf experience was here, in the heat and dust of the Watrous Golf Course. A men’s set of golf clubs consisted of a driver, a 3 wood, a putter, and a 3, 5, 7, and 9 iron. My dad and his friends would play ahead of us and the sons would each get a 5 iron with which to drive, chip and putt. I played golf like that for a few years until I received my first full set as a reward for all the work I did in the store after school and Saturdays. I thought I had really ‘arrived’ when I swung that red plaid golf bag over my shoulder and strutted around the golf courses.
The Watrous course had a unique feature. The land had been chosen because it was too rocky for agriculture. In fact, the rocks were huge flat boulders that were just visible above the surface of the fairway. When a golf ball hit one of these, it would careen in any direction and take on an added dimension of acceleration. We never minded hitting our ball into the bushes or tall grass because this was an opportunity to find more to fill our bags. We always came out of the bushes with more than what we were looking for. My most memorable shot was a line drive toward a tall dead tree that was a natural hazard left deliberately in the fairway. I hit the tree square and hard. There was no bounce, and my ball seemed to just disappear. Upon close inspection, we noticed a small woodpecker hole near the top of the tree, and we could only assume that my ball had hit the hole square on and was lodged in the tree. I wondered how many more balls were up there. Golf at Watrous was the beginning of my life long love affair with the sport.
In 2001, I went back to Manitou with my wife, anxious to show her the fabled location of my boyhood adventures. We found it with no difficulty, but what was difficult for me was all the changes. I suppose very little stays the same as time progresses, but after just wanting to reinforce my memories, I discovered that Manitou had become quite a nice little place. The old Chalet Pool was no more, probably condemned and torn down years ago, and in its place, and further down the road was a new and very modern Spa and pool, part of a hotel/restaurant complex. It was pricey and looked like a destination resort. Of course we had to at least have a swim.
I was let down as we entered the change rooms. They were clean and fresh smelling, very well lit, and there was no access to the ladies change rooms from where I was. The floors were spotless and dry, the lockers modern and very secure. There was no lingering odour of French fries and vinegar and every surface was freshly painted or scrubbed. As I walked out to the pool area, I detected a faint aroma that brought back a flood of memories. It was that heated briny water, but minus the urine overtones. I was somewhat heartened to notice that there was still a hot and cold section, and the warmer water was indeed a little on the yellow side. My wife and I entered the water at the same time and I was excited to show her the buoyancy of the salt water. She had thought I had been exaggerating all these years, but now she saw for herself that you could indeed float with your head and shoulders clear out of the water.
The rings were gone, there was no diving board, there was no perch 25 ft. up in the rafters from which to make a death defying leap, and there was no spectator’s area from which my mom would be looking out for us. And fortunately, we didn't catch any diseases this time either because there were no chunks of tar floating just under the surface.