Poolside reads to inspire your summer book stack.
The Montreal pools are officially open!
Whether you’re reading poolside or cooling off on the sidelines, here are some books featuring Montreal swim spots (and some parks) for you to read in situ.
Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton (reprinted by Picador, 2025)
Piscine du Vieux Cégep de Montréal
During her studies at McGill University, Leanne Shapton spent time turning laps in the pool of the Vieux Cégep de Montréal. Today the art editor at the New York Review of Books, you’re likely to recognize Shapton’s lucid watercolours from the pages of books like Native Trees of Canada (Drawn & Quarterly, 2024). Beyond being a medium for her painting, it’s Shapton’s treatment of water in her memoir Swimming Studies that identifies her as a swimmer in addition to writer and illustrator.
Water is elemental, it’s what we’re made of, what we can’t live within or without. Trying to define what swimming means to me is like looking at a shell sitting in a few feet of clear, still water. There it is, in sharp focus, but once I reach for it, breaking the surface, the ripples refract the shell. It becomes five shells, twenty-five shells, some smaller, some larger, and I blindly feel for what I saw perfectly before trying to grasp it.
Sun of a Distant Land by David Bouchet, translated by Claire Rothman (Véhicule Press, 2017)
Parc Pélican
Bus or bike up rue Masson to discover Parc Pelican, a hidden gem off of the metro line. While the pool itself famously features in Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies (based on the play of the same name by Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wadji Mouawad, translated into English as Scorched by Linda Gaboriau for Playwrights Canada Press), the park also features heavily in David Bouchet’s Sun of a Distant Land, written from the perspective of a young boy whose family has recently immigrated from Senegal.
We went to Pélican Park, a big park not far from our home with a hill and a swimming pool. There were children there. Mère didn’t want us to go to the pool alone, even though there were lifeguards, so sometimes we asked her to come with us, on Saturdays when she had some time. She stayed at the poolside, keeping an eye on how we behaved, because the lifeguards kept an eye on the swimming. Swimming pools don’t charge money in Montreal, so my parents couldn’t refuse.
Les noyades secondaires by Maxime Raymond Bock (Le cheval d’août, 2017)
Piscine Jean-Drapeau, Piscine Rosemont, Piscine Gadbois
For those looking to read in French, the stories in Maxime Raymond Bock’s 2017 collection share the common waters of various Montreal pools: piscine Gadbois, la piscine de l’île Sainte-Hélène, piscine Rosemont, and of course the pictured piscine du parc Jean-Drapeau. If you want an introduction to Bock’s works in English, check out this interview with Mélissa Bull, editor at QC Fiction and translator of several of Bock’s works into English.
Je sentais mon pouls dans mon cuir chevelu. Je me suis assis sur un fauteuil, j’ai levé la tête pour dégager mon cou, et revu du fond de la piscine Rosemont la surface agitée par les vagues, un rectangle halogène où se stratifiaient les ombres et volaient des corps nus et gracieux qui s’enfonçaient lentement, un peu empêchés dans leurs mouvements par la résistance de l’eau, et qui descendaient jusqu’à moi avant de remonter inévitablement. C’était un de ces moments où les entraîneurs nous laissaient jouer plutôt que de nous faire suer comme à l’habitude.
My Neighbour’s Bikini by Jimmy Beaulieu, translated by Kerry Ann Cochrane (Conundrum Press, 2014)
Parc Laurier
A heat wave not unlike today’s causes a blackout in the Plateau. With the metro down, two neighbours head home on foot, and decide to spend the afternoon at the neighbourhood pool. A simple story told in pencil and grey wash, Jimmy Beaulieu’s My Neighbour’s Bikini is a feel-good and unpretentious meet-cute that captures the serendipity of Montreal summers.
From My Neighbour’s Bikini.
Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill (HarperCollins, 2006)
Piscine Schubert
Heather O’Neill’s debut novel spans all corners of Montreal, so it’s no surprise that wayward protagonist Baby frequently finds herself at the city’s pools. Some clues in the novel suggest the indoor pool piscine Schubert, though through Baby’s eyes the city’s topography is much less straightforward.
When we got to the pool, Theo refused to take his T-shirt off and just jumped in the water with it on. He did bombs off the side of the pool, trying to land on other people. He ripped this little kid’s goggles off his head and ran to the other side of the pool, laughing. He put them on while the kid cried and begged for them back. The little kid went and reported him to the lifeguard, who finally got down off his ladder and walked over to us.
Bonus: “Asana,” from the collection Black Tulips by Claire Rothman (Oberon Press, 1999)
Westmount YMCA
A short story you can read in the time it takes to dry off. Bodies of water appear across Claire Rothman’s fiction – the St. Lawrence, Lac Echo – but it’s the chlorinated waters of the Westmount Y in the short story “Asana” that put her 1999 collection Black Tulips on this list.
Daniel was still undressing so she slipped into the water. It was colder than she’d imagined, perhaps in contrast to the stifling air, and she stood for a while letting her lower body acclimatize. After a minute, she moistened her goggles with her tongue, slipped them over her bathing cap and submerged herself completely. The pool bottom was turquoise and every time she went under she felt she was entering an entirely new and alien, clean world.
Alexandra Sweny is associate publisher of the Montreal Review of Books. She likes baseball caps and mass market paperbacks.
Illustration by Sara Prune.