The Sudbury Artistic Swimming Club (formerly Sudbury Synchro) had grown quite fond of the Olympic Gold Pool at Laurentian University.

With depth and width to spare, the deep end of the pool was pretty much an ideal setting for training purposes for this crew. And while those that are involved, post-Covid, have more than made the best of their new home at R.G Dow (Pool), it bears reminding that things could have been worse.

The start of the sport, to the best of anyone’s knowledge that I am aware of, on a local level occurs in and around the late sixties / early seventies, with the Sudbury Y Otters formed in the venue that was the old Sudbury YMCA setting on Lloyd Street.

“It was an awful old building and the pool was terrible, but there was something about that place,” said Jenni Calford-Binks with a smile. “We used to call it (the pool) the “bathtub”, because it was so small and warm – but the food there was really good,” she added with a laugh.

And when the roof to the pool which was housed below the gymnasium floor gave way during a fire (late seventies perhaps), the club shifted their practices to what was then the Holiday Inn pool (now Radisson Hotel) in the City Centre.

Over time, it’s funny how the nostalgia of both the physical locations and the entire experience of early synchronized swimming becomes far more romantic for those who take time to remember those days.

“The “Y” was my home away from home,” confessed Kathy Cameron, a long-time Sudbury teacher who was introduced to synchro at the age of seven and who lived next door to Calford-Binks (also now a teacher, ironically), bringing her onboard, some years later. “It wasn’t just the synchro. I was part of the leader corps and did John Island Camp.”

Talk of those earliest of days inevitably drifts back to the tandem of Gwen Whissell and Doreen Haferkamp, coaches for the Otters who later founded the Valley East Swanettes out of the Howard Armstrong Sports Complex.

“My mother was a nurse who worked with Doreen,” said Cameron. “Her daughter (Anne) and my older sister (also Anne) started synchro at about the same time.”

Given her comfort level in the water, Kathy was allowed to essentially tag-along.

“I remember putting my goggles on and playing off to the side and watching them underwater and thinking that I wanted to learn how to do this too,” she said.

As is the case with most fledgling sports, technical expertise takes some time to flourish.

For as much as the passion and time that Whissell and Haferkamp invested in the club was unquestioned, the learning curve to close the pure skill-set gap on parts of the province that enjoyed a decade or more of a head start on northern Ontario was slow moving.

“Doreen would get in the shallow end with the beginner swimmers and would move their bodies around,” said Calford-Binks. “She would explain them them how to do it because she couldn’t swim.”

That was certainly not the case for the New Sudbury youngster who could more than hold her own in a purely aquatic setting. “I had been in swimming lessons for years and had my bronze medallion and everything and I needed an outlet in swimming,” noted Calford-Binks, who never competed in swim racing prior to joining the Laurentian University team while completing her post-secondary studies.

“I wasn’t fast but I had perfect strokes,” she said. “I had learned flip turns through synchro; that was important. I was strong doing the egg-beater and I could hold my breath for a long time, so that worked well.

Her daughter (Emily) followed years of competing with a shift to coaching, with Calford-Binks witnessing the evolution of the sport first hand.

“Everything has sped up so much,” she said. “We used to hold the figures a lot longer. The sculling has all changed. We were taught to do it above your heads, so you couldn’t get the height.”

“Now, the sculling is done at the waist.”

Though her adulthood involvement with the sport of her youth was limited to a year or two of masters synchronized swimming (two boys and hockey would keep her busy), Kathy Cameron has shed more than a casual glance to the state of the sport on an elite level these days.

“The level if technical difficulty now is insane,” said Cameron. “Tossing somebody out of the water was unheard of when we competed.”

Thanks to some files that had been maintained by former Sudbury Star sports editor Norm Mayer, the ladies were treated to a lovely trip down memory lane, highlighted by a program from the second of the back to back Trillium Provincial Synchronized Swimming Championships that were hosted in Valley East in 1985 and 1986.

Somewhat interesting is the fact that the grand aggregate trophy in the first of those years was claimed by the Toronto Synchro Club, a squad that included one Carrie DeGuerre. A future member of the Canadian national team who competed at World Championships, DeGuerre would make her way up to Sudbury and enjoy some involvement with the local club in the early 2000s.

She would bring a much different perspective than those who so valiently broke the ice some 20-30 years earlier.

“I remember going to our first competitions and thinking: these pools are huge,” said Cameron. “Our little routine would literally be in a smal corner of the pool. We just had no idea.”

Knowledge would be layered on to more knowledge as the local club expanded. Athletes had come to know more intracate movements with every passing year – and groups of athletes had come to know all that the Laurentian pool could offer.

Chances are good that current members would dearly love to know that feeling again, hopefully one day soon.