Introduction:

Foreword:

For nearly as long as man has been on this humble sphere of rock denoted as the appellative Earth, Mankind has hungered to conquer water like the fauna which he has witnessed traversing formidable aquatic obstacles with supreme natural grace. Early man resorted to mimicking, an aping, of what his protozoic cerebration had absorbed. Unfortunately for man, his physiology betrayed his keen skills of observation and pantomime. Unlike the canines and equines, man’s walking gate does not translated into a successful natative movement. Over the perilously long, arduous millennia, a certain system of set rules and façons had bloomed and was to be promulgated by father to son. For centuries, a typical a boy-child would be thrown into a river, lake, or other such grand repository of dihydrogen-monoxide to learn natation by instinct as the animals had done since the beginning of creation. Soon it was to be ascertained that a more prolonged and graduated approach would best be utilized to indoctrinate the grand body of paternal aquatic knowledge into the progeny of aquanauts.

Time progressed and the Occidental World rose to global and ecumenical supremacy. With this rise of the western didactic of pedagogy to global domination, swimming came into conformity with this ideological tautology of information dissemination. As the progressive fashion of pedagogy had grown to a hegemonic dominance, so to had the notion of progressive natational learning. Parish Councils soon established local curricula that reflected the local culture and aquatic conditions. One of the most important events to ever transpire in the history of aquatic pedagogy was the industrial revolution. With the advent of Watt’s steam-power system, factories bloomed like dandelions all across Britain from Norfolk to Sussex and Essex to Western Coast. It was soon learned many that of the plebeians that constituted the proletarian underclass needed to learn how to natate. Tanners would need to learn to traverse the vast caustic pits of skins without conforming to the aquatic physics of an unlearned Gloucestershire newsboy. Brewers would best need to apprehend that the addition of a “personal touch” to the recipe did not necessitate the ascension of a brew master to the eternal glory of God’s Heaven. In short, all professions and trades nearing liquids could now embrace the reality of horrific disfigurement over death by drowning.

It is to be observed that in the past 116 years that no important treatise on the art of natation has been written since Montagague A. Holbeim wrote his treatise on natation entitled “Swimming”. His approach was to be noted as quite English, whereas this treatise has the intended purpose to endow the audience with the knowledge of how to best navigate the waterways that distinguish the region known as British North America. It can be noted that this treatise is for the British North American, The North American Briton, and those who may subscribe to such an identity temporarily or for the purposes of commerce or simply pursuits of further natational glory.
The vast Geography of British North America poses many problems to those wishing to engage in the natational arts. The largest problem is that the only institution recognized within this grand expanse of terrain is an institution firmly established and rooted in the methodology of a purely British environment, where the largest threat to Britons is the large area of sea-found beaches and Doveresque cliffscapes.

The British North American Natural environment posses many threats to life that are not present in an otherwise completely occidental environment. Much of Europe is land locked or faces predictable aquatic environments provided by tame bodies of water. The vast rivers, lakes and glacial ponds that disfigure the land like the scars on a criminal’s visage, roar wildly like a ferocious tiger. These waters often run fast and violently. Wilder than their European cousins, these waters run untamed like the bison or the Saskatchewan Otter-Foxe. In springtime, the vast carpets of snow and ice that blanket the land for 11 months of the year melt swelling streams into deadly torrents. Traversing these swollen waters is a task that is best left only to the most legendary of aquanauts.