In the Swim

The issue of mixed bathing had the people of Trois-Rivires (pop. 50,000) up in arms. The twelve-year-old city by-law was clear-cut. It forbade bathing with "one or a few persons of the opposite sex," decreed that "persons of the female sex must wear a bathing suit of opaque material . . . including a skirt which reaches close to the knees; they must also wear a suitable brassiere." In practice, most Trifluvians had ignored the by-law and its penalties (forty dollars or two months in jail). On the city council there was talk of doing away with the anachronistic ordinance.

Last fortnight, the Bishop of Trois-Rivieres, Monsignor Georges Leon Pelletier, let it be known that he viewed such talk with alarm. In a letter to the city council he came out against mixed bathing, warned that "promiscuity of the sexes in scanty costume [is] a menace to chastity and purity." The council took up the question and split four and four. Mayor J. Arthur Rousseau, who had toured Canadian swimming pools and been shocked at what he saw, announced that he stood with the bishop. Then everybody got into the argument.

Last week the Trois-Rivieres Junior Chamber of Commerce denounced the ban on mixed bathing. Le Nouvelliste, ardent supporter of the church, assailed "the thoughtlessness of demoniac youth." The Knights of Columbus, the Catholic Centre, the Saint Jean Baptiste Society and the Society of Nocturnal Adoration all rallied to the bishop, ignored the fact that when the Archbishop of Quebec, Monsignor Maurice Roy, was Bishop of Trois-Rivieres, he held that mixed bathing was none of the church's business.

In the face of all the pious opposition, the Trois-Rivieres aldermen decided that maybe the old by-law had better be enforced. That meant that, whatever their bathing costumes, boys & girls, men & wives, would swim alone--or else.

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