Oakville’s annual New Years Day Polar Bear Dip happened at Coronation Park, which noticed 1000’s of individuals come out to boost cash for a terrific trigger
Does not taking a swim in Lake Ontario at close to freezing temperatures sound stress-free?
What a solution to start the brand new yr!
Oakville’s annual New Years Day Polar Bear Dip happened at Coronation Park earlier this week, on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, and noticed 1000’s of individuals come out to boost cash for trigger.
The occasion partnered with world reduction group World Imaginative and prescient Canada (as they’ve been doing for the final 30 years) and handed their purpose of $100,000 raised to assist present clear water for the folks of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A number of dippers described the expertise as “exhilarating and frigid” as they entered a Lake Ontario that was shut to three°C.
The origin of the dip started in 1986 when brothers Todd and Trent Braveness jumped into Lake Ontario on New Years Day had been dared by their mom Gaye, as a result of each boys weren’t feeling nice on the morning of Jan. 1 (which they are saying is possible because of the festivities that happened the evening earlier than.)
Their mom instructed they bounce within the lake to wake themselves up and it helped. Todd and Trent’s bounce into Lake Ontario become a yearly prevalence and started to develop their well-known dip yearly since then.
The Polar Bear Dip has now turn out to be a yearly Oakville custom, and a serious one for the Braveness household: it is the fortieth yr they have been doing this frigid swim.
“It is one thing I’ve carried out virtually my whole life,” mentioned Todd Braveness’s daughter Jenna. “It is one thing that my household and I’ve grown up doing so to me this exhibits neighborhood and household and having all people come collectively.”
10 years after the Dip started, the Braveness brothers partnered with World Visions Canada to assist increase cash for a terrific trigger.
All cash raised by the Polar Bear Dip for the reason that partnership goes straight to World Visions Canada and so they use it to assist present clear water to nation’s that want it.
