The first thing I noticed about the weight belt was that it was heavy. This observation didn't impress anyone in my vicinity, but it carried some gravity for me, accompanied as it was by instructions to strap the belt to my waist and plunge into Georgian Bay.
It was the first day of my four-day scuba certification course in Parry Sound, Ont., and I was realizing that "diving" would be much more than just snorkelling with some, dare I say, sexy tanks strapped to my back.
In fact, the weight belt accounts for only 11 of the 36 kilograms of equipment required to descend into the depths, most of which seems to have been designed with terrestrial immobility in mind. The seven-millimetre wetsuit is as supple as a suit of armour. The fins bring only one word to mind: clown. The mask cut off my peripheral vision (even before it fogged up and cut off my forward vision) and the tank of compressed air strapped to my back made me feel about as agile as a turtle. The phrase "fish out of water" came to mind with awkward poignancy.
But awkwardness gave way to grace after much grunting, crawling and falling delivered me into the water. I sank below the surface and took my first reassuring breath from the regulator.
Though the depth gauge registered only 3.6 metres, already the pressure seemed to close in and seal me off from the world above. All I could hear was the rhythm of my breathing as I drew air from the regulator. My field of vision didn't seem reduced so much as focused, with everything in it looking one-third closer and bigger thanks to the magnifying effects of water. I was suspended in a slow-motion realm where time slowed to a halt and gravity became someone else's problem.
The familiar world was only metres away, but the variously muted and amplified sensations here made everything I looked at, such as the beady-eyed crayfish, seem fascinating. It was then I realized that the three-quarters of our planet lying underwater is more than just wasted space, it's the next-to-final frontier -- and it's as accessible as it is foreign.
When scuba diving comes to mind it is usually with a Caribbean backdrop. Ontario's aquatic life is decidedly less glamorous, but it does include the zebra mussel, a mollusk that was introduced to North America in the late 1980s.
Though most people view the mussel as a scourge, scuba divers have some appreciation for its filtering capacities. The mussels are steadily improving visibility in the Great Lakes.
While the area's June to October season may not yet draw many divers from far afield, there are over a million scuba divers living within a day's drive of Southern Ontario's chilly waters. What separates scuba divers from landlubbers is a card that gives them lifelong certification to rent scuba gear in the most exotic places. The card is the end result of a course that usually costs between $400 and $500 in Canada. Different dive shops either pack it into four days or spread it out over two months.
Since virtually anyone can pass with a concerted effort, only one question remains: where to take the course? Cities are convenient, but not too exciting unless you get a kick out of the deep end of a chlorinated pool. The Caribbean is nice, but it's a long way to go to spend your time learning how to spit in a mask and walk like a duck.
The Diver's Nook in Parry Sound, a two-hour drive north of Toronto, offers a happy medium for would-be divers in Southern Ontario. The four-day courses are spread over two consecutive weekends, immersing you right from Day 1 in some of the best freshwater diving in the world. For me, the choice was clear.
Located at the centre of Georgian Bay's 30,000 islands, Parry Sound is surrounded by some of the most unique marine geography on this blue planet. The low-lying maze of pink and grey granite makes it as beautiful to the modern weekending eye as it was treacherous to wayward ships at the turn of the past century. The mariner's bad luck is the diver's good fortune. Half a dozen wrecks lie well preserved in the cool fresh water within easy boating distance of Parry Sound.
Despite the town's abundance of wrecks and proximity to Toronto, divers in Ontario have all but ignored Georgian Bay's eastern shore. Instead, most drive to Kingston at the east end of Lake Ontario or meander for four hours on two-lane highways to Tobermory, the more established diving destination on the western edge of Georgian Bay, at the tip of the Bruce Penninsula.
It's a fact that Bill Blakey has gotten used to while instructing students around the empty wrecks of Parry Sound over the past 30 years. He doesn't take anything away from Tobermory -- home to Fathom Five, Canada's first marine national park -- but he doesn't mind pointing out that the wrecks around Parry Sound are not as deep, crowded, or spread out as the ones at Tobermory. "Besides," he says, "we have what is probably the best wreck in Georgian Bay right out at Spruce Rocks." There are no spruce trees on Spruce Rocks. In fact, there's nothing but hard granite that got in the way of the S.S. Atlantic on a cold November night in 1903. The 45-metre steamship was loaded with lumber, hay and coal oil, a combination that proved less than ideal when a fire broke out while the ship was trying to ride out a gale. The 25 crew members escaped in lifeboats, but the floating firecracker ran aground and sank on the shoal's sloped western side. Ninety-nine years later, the stern of the ship rests in just 1.8 metres of water with the bow angling down to a depth of 12 metres.
The wreck is a 15-minute boat ride from town or nearby Snug Harbour and is a common destination for the course's concluding open-water dive. We anchor next to the shoal and squirm into our gear. Falling backward off the boat (just like they do in the movies), I hook up with my dive buddy and we swim toward the wreck. At these shallow depths, the sun streaks through the water, providing more than six metres of visibility. But six metres is still not enough to avoid the creepy sensation of having a ghost ship slowly materialize in front of you through an unfamiliar medium. It isn't the water seeping into my wetsuit that's giving me goose bumps.
The rudder appears first, lying on the bottom where it came to rest after being ripped from the Atlantic's stern. It's 10 centimetres thick and as wide as a double bed. Beside it, the propeller juts out from the remains of the stern, three of its four blades having been snapped off a century ago. The drive shaft extends up through the skeleton of the hull and joins with other heavy-duty machinery near the bathroom-sized boiler, which braver souls than I swim through.
After exploring the Atlantic's remains for 30 slow-motion minutes, we clamber aboard our boat and head west to the Pancake Islands for a picnic. Scuba picnics, a.k.a. "surface interval times," are purposefully leisurely affairs. Being dutiful students, we follow instructions to lounge around for an hour to let our bodies off-gas any excess nitrogen. Off-gassing isn't as rude as it sounds, and it's necessary to avoid fizzing up like a cranky Coca-Cola during the afternoon dive.
We spend the afternoon at the final resting place of the Jane McLeod, a 35.5-metre schooner that foundered on the shores of McLeod Island in November of 1890, stranding her five crew members on the nearly barren island for five days. The ship was pounded flat by the surf, but has settled on the bottom in six to 7.5 metres of water in a pattern that clearly shows the classic schooner's lines.
I've been in more museums than I'd like to admit, but none have given a sense of history the way the broken timbers of the Jane McLeod do. They speak of a time when the surrounding islands were considered godforsaken obstacles rather than vacation paradises, when the Jane McLeod harnessed stiff west winds to bring her cargo of hay and oats into horse-powered lumber towns such as Parry Sound.
Such are the secrets that are hidden from most people. It is all too easy to look at a map and see only the land, ignoring the water and everything that lies beneath. On the other hand, it's also easy to take the plunge. For those who can breathe underwater, the surface is a blanket invitation to a whole new realm of discovery. The Diver's Nook: 55 Bowes St., Parry Sound; phone: (705) 746-9757; Web: /Dive. G and S Watersports: 8 Bay St. South, Tobermory; phone: (519) 596-2200; Web: . Northern Tech Diver: 4052 Bath Road, Kingston; phone: (888) 895-4647; Web: . Guidebooks: The Great Lakes Diving Guide or Dive Ontario , both by Cris Kohl.
Ian Merringer is a contributing editor at Explore magazine.