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A fine suburban pool. This one is in London, Ontario. It's beside the house I grew up in; I'm looking over my parent's backyard fence at this colourful scene just at the start of the 'golden hour'.

This was the second pool in our neighbourhood. It was installed in the early '70s. In 1977, a high school friend took me up in his Cessna and I took some aerial photos of the neighbourhood. Over half of the yards on our street had in-ground pools by then. That's a lot of pools in a very small area.

My folks were not seduced by the craze. "They require too much work, they're unsafe, they encourage people to play their radios outside," was my father's opinion. I didn't care that we didn't have a pool. I had my pick of pools to swim in at friend's houses all around the neighbourhood.

A few months after this photo was taken, my dad died peacefully at home after several years of illness.

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