SWEAT, FREEZE, RELAX

Piedmont’s Polar Bear’s Club offers a chance to chill in extreme temperatures

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Here’s an excellent way to pass Montreal’s frozen winter months: strip down to your skivvies and jump into a river that’s 10 degrees below freezing. Seriously.

Although what we’re talking about here isn’t the whole New Year’s Day polar-bear thing, wherein drunken Maritimers—or Mid-Westerners, or West-Coasters, or anyone plum foolish enough to do it—run into frigid waters to emerge seconds later, shocked stupid with diamond-hard nipples. No, there is an entirely civilized, proper and refined way to do it, and it’s barely an hour’s drive from Montreal.

The Polar Bear’s Club, located in scenic Piedmont just outside St-Sauveur, is more than a chance to freeze extremities and shrink your genitals. It’s a way to pamper yourself and feel, in the words of its affable, enthusiastic director Serge Roy, “relaxed, refreshed and with a good immune system.”

Basically, what happens at the Polar Bear’s Club is this: You sit in a sauna for 15 minutes, jump into the nearby creek or swimming pool, then relax either in a heated rest area or jacuzzi. Repeat. The usual stay at the club is between the two-and-a-half and three-hour mark.

Finnish charms

According to legend, the Polar Bear’s Club was created by a landowner named Charette who, during the 1940s, lived across the creek from an area dubbed Little Finland. “Everyone living on the other side was Finnish, and they all had private saunas,” says Roy. “In the ’30s and ’40s, while we were going to mass, these Finns were going to that sauna.” Charette, apparently something of a handyman, wound up building some of them before he decided to build his own and charge $2 per visit, the admittance fee being dropped in an old tobacco tin. After running the place for 40 years, he sold it in 1984 to its present proprietor Bob Larose, who added on significant extensions, like jacuzzis, steam saunas, a café and massotherapy rooms. The present long-term project is the construction of some 60 hotel rooms, as the club becomes ever more spa-like.

Roy believes that the health aspect to the club is essential. “What happens when you get really hot, after spending 15 minutes in a sauna, is the body thinks you’ve caught a cold,” he says. “So it releases this army of white blood cells. The heart rate adjusts, the blood vessels open up and your muscles relax. When you jump in the cold water, the heart rate increases, and the body releases endorphins when it encounters the thermal shock.”

If this all sounds rather dramatic, don’t worry: Roy says that in the 21 years Larose has run the club, there hasn’t been one case of cardiac arrest. However, he cautions that people with heart problems, who have had organ transplants or are pregnant should obviously avoid it. And first-timers definitely shouldn’t spend more than 15 minutes in a sauna.

Think of the benefits

The clientele, says Roy, includes athletes and health professionals, who enjoy the spa’s restorative powers. “I have one doctor who’s 82 and comes here every weekend,” he boasts. “These people understand the phenomenon of what’s happening to their bodies when they come here. I think if everyone came to the Polar Bear’s Club, we’d have a much healthier population—imagine the savings we’d make to the health care system!”

As evidence, he points to his two kids, ages seven and 11. “Neither of them have missed one day of school because of illness,” he says.

A day at the sauna and jacuzzi starts at $35. Children under 14 are not admitted. Aside from the saunas, the club offers 55-minute Swedish massages, pedicures, facials, exfoliation and algae, mud or chocolate baths.

For more information, directions and to make reservations, see www.polarbearsclub.ca or call 450-227-4616.