Despite a daytime high of -2 C — and a windchill making it feel like -8 C — Kingston, Ont., grandmother Gail McTague said New Year’s Eve was a perfect day for a dip in Lake Ontario.
This isn’t any regular old polar plunge, however.
McTague is part of a group called the Kingston Grandmother Connection, a local non-government organization dedicated to raising money to help grandmothers in Africa who’ve been left to raise their grandchildren after the parents succumbed to AIDS.
“AIDS is still raging in Africa and these older women in villages with very little support, they have to grow their own food. Many are looking after five, seven grandchildren,” McTague said ahead of her dip.
McTague became interested in the health benefits of polar plunging a few years back and looked to Wim Hof, a Dutch motivational speaker and practitioner of low temperatures exposure, for inspiration.
She then decided to combine her love of polar dips with the Kingston Grandmother Connection, a local arm of the Stepehen Lewis Foundation, established in 2006.
“The first year she was hoping to raise $500 and she raised $4,000,” said Deb Ruse, another member of the group. “The second year she raised a little over $5,000.”
Music played and the dozens of people who showed up to watch from the shore danced while the participants floated in the frigid water at the Portsmouth Olympic Harbour.
McTague and a handful of others who took the plunge, many from the Kingston Wim Hof group who joined in support, braved the water for just a touch over 10 minutes before retreating.
McTague said she holds her fundraising dips because she’s seen firsthand how devastating life can be for some people on the other side of the world.
“Canadians Feed The Children was taking a group to Uganda to visit their projects and I went on that in 2012 and it was just mind-boggling,” she said.
As for donation total from this year’s dip, the numbers are still being tallied but the event has already raised around $3,000.