I have always loved being in the water. I have been lucky enough to get to be around water pretty much forever, growing up one of my grand-parents had a pool and me and my siblings got to spend a bunch of time there when we were younger swimming and playing in the water. It makes sense that I would eventually take that a step further into the underwater world and not stay contained to swimming on the surface.
My love of actually breathing underwater started many, many years ago in Aruba:
That was the beginning of me being hooked, but I did not know it yet. This was probably way back when I was 10 years old, and was before I could actually SCUBA dive.
I loved it, but honestly the experience definitely had some cons to it:
- A fish ‘nipped’ me
- I was constrained by that hose and didn’t want to get tangled by other people
- The water was salty (obviously its the ocean)
But despite being bitten by that one evil fish, which at the time was such a confusing experience, who knew fish had teeth and could bite??? Definitely not me when I was 10! But I knew I loved it and wanted more. My dad told me that when I was a little older we could try SCUBA diving, because he was certified and that we could try it out when we were on vacation some other time.
A few years later that dream came intro fruition! We were on a cruise in the Caribbean with a stop in Cozumel, Mexico, and we planned a dive as one of the shore excursions.
This was a super exciting experience!!! I got to go diving with my dad! I remember that we were sitting on the beach while they were getting everything loaded onto the boat, they got us all fitted for the gear and my dad ended up giving me a quick crash course in how everything worked, telling me to never hold my breath, swim up slowly, how to breath from the regulator and how to add and remove air to the BCD. Looking back on this, thats definitely not a good or safe way to learn the first time, but I was 11 so what did I know. We got on the boat and headed out to the dive, I don’t quite remember exactly what we saw on the dive, but I recall lots of fish and lion fish. I definitely Loved it, and I reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaly wanted to get certified!!!!
I ended up getting certified Back home in Ontario with Scuba2000 in September. That was an unbelievably different experience than diving in Mexico, the water here is dark, silty, and cold.
But I still loved it, maybe not the cold water and the wetsuit. I still only did a little bit of diving, maybe one a year while we were away on vacation. As a kid you don’t actually have a fantastic ability to pick up diving very easily and my parents mostly didn’t dive anymore so I didn’t have anyone to go with. Now that I think about it I don’t think I’ve ever actually dove with my mom before. Anyway, I was only able to manage to get about 1 dive a year for the next 10 years, it was very sad, but fear not I have made up for it.
Now fast-forward a bunch of years until I’m finishing up my Masters in 2022. I decided I am now and adult and I live in Ontario where we have lots and lots of water Im sure I can find somewhere to dive around here. But first, I wanted to do my advanced course, and luckily for I was back in Mexico for vacation! I did 2 days of diving and got my advanced open water and nitrox certifications, and more importantly reaffirmed my love of the water and settled my conviction to dive more at home.
It turns out there was an awesome quarry right near where I was living in Guelph that ran dives there pretty regularly and I was able to do a couple dives a week there. I found a couple groups of other divers that Im now friends with and dive with regularly around Ontario that all love the cold, fresh water diving that we have an abundance of here!
My diving has come a long way since I started, Ive now started doing some much more challenging dives like this one to an unexploded torpedo from WWII. This photo along with the one in on the page banner, and pretty much all other photos of me diving over the past few years have been taken by one of my awesome dive buddies, Kyle Hogg. This dive was about 1 hour and 6 min long, we went to 150 feet (45m), and the water temperature was a nice and chilly -0.5 degrees! This was a really fun technical dive that we did shortly after getting our TDI decompression procedures certifications when we were in Newfoundland with Ocean Quest.
I absolutely love diving and I have no intention of stopping any time soon, its amazing and the most relaxing thing I have found!