The same probably happens to you too. I’ll be at a dive show or some dive-related event and people will ask me about memorable dives. I think what they expect to hear are the “Boy’s Own Paper” adventure stories about a bunch of us stacked up like cordwood in a very small cave entrance to decompress; or drifting in the Gulf Stream at 60 metres being tailed by sharks and waiting for a shipwreck to appear out of the gloom. And normally, that’s what they get. However, some memorable dives are simply not framed in anything like such an exotic setting. Some dives are memorable simply because they pack an unexpected surprise… or they excite someone else… or both.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to make a dive in Lake Rosseau at the site of the long-defunct Royal Muskoka Hotel. Lake Rosseau is one of the three big lakes in Muskoka about 18 kilometers long and eight wide. The southern end of the lake is about 200 kilometers north of Toronto and for more than 150 years, along with the rest of Muskoka, has been a vacation spot and cottage country for folks from the city… and much further afield.

The Royal Muskoka Hotel was opened at the turn of the 20th century and was billed as the grandest summer resort in all of Muskoka, with room for 350 guests. Among its amenities: electric lighting, hot and cold running water, a post office, telegraph office, bar, billiard room, bakeshop, newsstand, barber shop and beauty salon. On the grounds (a little more than 50 hectares) was a golf-course, bowling greens, tennis courts, riding stables, and walking trails. It was a get-away for the rich and famous. But 50 years after it opened, in the spring of 1952, it burned to the ground, and its remains were summarily pushed into the lake.

I’d contacted a buddy who runs the marina at the modern-day equivalent of the Royal Muskoka (a J.W. Marriott resort) on the lake. I needed to complete one last skills-dive for a student doing a course with me, and a quick dip in the lake seemed like an easy way to accomplish it. He suggested going to the shore just off the site of the Royal Muskoka. There is a wall there that drops off to 45 metres and it’s close to the J.W.’s dock. Perfect. As a newly-certified diver himself, he was excited by the prospect of what my student and I might find.

I was less excited. Having dived in the local lakes on and off for more than 20 years, I knew that the visibility in most of them – especially the big three – could be hugely affected by tannic water with a similar level of transparency to a cup of strong Earl Gray tea.

Well, I was wrong. Sure the water was the color of tea, but more like weak Darjeeling and perfectly acceptable so that, at depth, my student and I could see quite well… probably six metres or so. Certainly well enough to pick out lots of things that could have been relics from the Royal Muskoka, including a perfectly intact dessert plate: perhaps one of many laying at various points on the almost vertical wall.

My student completed her skills – timed staged decompression stops using breath cycles or drop in tank pressure and a knotted line on a DSMB rather than a depth gauge/bottom-timer: and surfacing with an unconscious diver from depth – and we celebrated her success by presenting our find — the perfectly intact plate — to our boat captain. He was ecstatic, and now wants to dive the area himself. I hope to make that happen sometime soon.

A memorable dive… because? Well, it’s cool to dive a spot that offers the chance of seeing and touching something historic, but more importantly, memorable because a new diver came away completely gob-smacked and excited about “local” diving without even getting his feet wet: although that’s not really true since the rain was coming down horizontally on the way back to the dock!