When I swim at Piscine Schubert, a public indoor pool in Montreal’s Plateau neighbourhood, I often think about the microscopic bits of everyone flying around in the water. I think about the mingling of sweat, spit and snot, diluted in a big blue wash of chlorine. I like to look at the week’s haul of hair ties collected on the pool floor, and squint at the dark red smear of (hopefully) rust down there, about two strokes before I need to turn in the shallow end. I like to listen to the noise of legs and arms slapping against the water, and think about the generations of people who might have heard those same sounds at this pool. I wonder who the first person was to step foot in the building when it was built as a public bathhouse back in 1931, who the first swimmer was to ...