Bathing Beauties

Beth has a box full of old family photos she's going through - looks like hundreds of them. I've seen some and as most are from Winnipeg, they're of interest to me. I've been rooting around in my own stash, nowhere nearly as extensive as Beth's, and I found this one.

My Aunt Nita and my mother (with ringlets and a scowl) are in the foreground, my younger aunts in the back wearing those horrible knit bathing suits that stretched in the water. My grandmother probably knit the suits - I remember having one that you'd have to hold up with both hands once you got in the water.
It's hard to swim with no hands available... but it was either swim and lose the suit or hold the suit up.  They were horribly itchy too which is why the younger aunts don't look too happy.

I showed this photo to Richard and he inquired about the legs sticking out on the right of my mother and when he pointed them out, I realized my Uncle Louis was lounging behind the girls, his head in Nita's lap. What I really wondered about was the pile of overcoats off to the left and the brick wall in the background of the scene. Did they wear overcoats to this sandy area and set them in a big pile? Were these other people's coats? What about the briefcase on the bottom of the heap?