EXPLORE Most Read Articles on Cottage Life

IT’S WINTER. The lake is frozen—or, at least, it’s partially frozen. Under the ice, it’s dark. Mostly quiet. Inhospitable. And, down in the murky depths, the aquatic flora and fauna of cottage country are tackling the cold season the best they can. It’s a challenging environment. But probably not for the reasons that you’d think. In the summer, aquatic plants are photosynthesizing, providing oxygen to the lake’s inhabitants. But—as with deciduous trees and shrubs—many aquatic plants go dormant in the winter; with ice and snow blocking most sunlight, they can’t photosynthesize. This is a problem. “Once a waterbody freezes, there’s only a set amount of oxygen inside it,” says Jeff Hathaway, a herpetologist and the founder of Scales Nature Park in Oro-Medonte, Ont. “And everything, from the bacteria to the…

But that was before the irresistible force of your (possibly) gormless notion slammed into the immovable object of someone’s territorial instinct—and a corner of cottage country flipped from peace and quiet to peace bonds and litigation. Surprised? Don’t be. Court documents are filled with handshake agreements that end in obscene hand gestures, not to mention dueling roadblocks and allegations that Milo the dog trespasses to “do his business.” “We’re talking about cottages that people have made big sacrifices to purchase. They’ve put their heart and soul into maintaining them, often for their kids and grandkids,” says Meg Holden, an urban studies professor at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University whose research includes neighbour relations. With this level of emotional and financial investment, “there’s a key need for some level of control.” That’s…

BRYN TURNBULL’S EARLIEST memory of her family’s 1920s-era cottage on Georgian Bay, Ont., clad in rugged stone and charming blue panelling, actually predates their ownership of it. “It was stiflingly hot, and the interior was green and covered head-to-toe in frog tchotchkes,” she says. “I mean every available surface, every door stopper, and every piece of art.” Bryn’s maternal grandparents owned the cottage next door, where she spent her summer vacations as a young girl in the 1990s. When the neighbouring cottage went up for sale in 1998, Bryn’s parents bought it. “Gran and Grandpa’s cottage was a hub for our extended family for many years,” she says. “So when the chance to own the place next door came about, I think, to my parents, it felt right to stay…

Q: There appears to be a debate between our lake residents as to whether increased lake water levels are a good thing. In one camp, they like the higher water level. They believe less aquatic and perhaps invasive plants are present, and they prefer the overall aesthetic. Others argue that higher levels are eroding the shoreline; more trees and retaining walls are undermined and fall into the lake. Who is right?—Michel Bourque, Val-des-Lacs, Que. A: Nobody. Both high water levels and low water levels have pros and cons, says Meaghan McDonald, the lake planning/shoreline stewardship coordinator with the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority in Manotick, Ont. “And fluctuating water levels are a normal part of ecosystem functions.” It’s true that higher water levels could mean fewer plants, at least in the…

SEASKY COTTAGES, NAMED for the surrounding land that stretches from the Gulf of St. Lawrence all the way up a high mountain ridge, offer more than just panoramic views. Beyond the six-cottage compound’s coastal-chic interiors, and the sea and the sky that stretch for miles, lies the kismet story of how these modest residences—similar in style but unique in essence—came to exist on 150 rolling acres of Cape Breton, N.S., coastline. Stewart Applegath and Bell Fraser, the artsy owners of SeaSky, met at a painting class at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in the 1980s. Bell, a Nova Scotian, brought Stewart, a Torontonian, to visit her family in Cape Breton’s lush Margaree Valley for a weekend trip one winter. He was smitten—both with the woman and the…

IN SPRING AND summer, the natural world is thrumming with activity before we’ve even had a chance to reach for our morning coffee. In the animal kingdom, most early risers are crepuscular, which means they’re active at dawn and dusk. Others are uniquely matutinal and prefer daybreak hours for optimizing their ability to feed, forage, mate, and vocalize. Alas, as humans we’re out of sync with prime wildlife social hours. Though it might irk us when the insistent song of a robin jolts us awake before sunrise, it’s worth forcing ourselves out of bed and outdoors. Changing light levels at dawn elicit frenzied activity among animals and provide the most accessible time to watch wildlife drama unfold right in front of us. It might seem counterintuitive, but low-light conditions can…

Vote count The article in the Mar/Apr ’25 issue of Cottage Life (“Trouble in the Water”) is an accurate representation of the issues the cottagers on Muldrew Lake face in updating our lake plan. Except that there is one error regarding a motion at the August 2023 annual general meeting, at the time of the handover in presidency between Ted Alley and myself. The motion would have required that the lake plan was subjected to a vote by the association members before it was submitted to the town of Gravenhurst; you say that the motion was adopted at the tail end of a very long and drawn-out meeting. In fact, the motion was defeated at that meeting, as recorded in the meeting minutes. As such, the Muldrew Lakes Cottagers’ Association…

Chaise Lounge Try this fresh, dry, and lightly fruity drink on a steamy afternoon spent lounging on the dock. MAKES 8 DRINKS 1 cup chopped pineapple¾ cup lemon juice1 ½ cups gin¾ cup elderflower liqueur or cordialAngostura bittersPineapple wedges (for garnish)Raspberries (for garnish) Muddle pineapple with lemon juice in a cocktail shaker. Strain into an ice-filled pitcher—the bigger the cubes, the better. Add gin and elderflower liqueur and stir. Serve in ice-filled tumblers, garnished with a dash or two of bitters, a pineapple wedge, and a few raspberries. Swicy Marg The long overdue swicy—that’s sweet and spicy—trend gives this classic a piquant twist. MAKES 8 DRINKS 1 ½ cups blanco tequila (a.k.a. silver or plata tequila)1 cup fresh lime juice½ cup orange liqueur½ cup hot, spiced honey (or maple syrup)2…

ATTEND ENOUGH LAKE association meetings, and sooner or later, you’ll hear contradictory advice. One well-meaning speaker (in a fleece vest) wants to safeguard water quality, so idle the lawn mower, leave fallen trees and limbs, and maintain a diverse tangle of waterfront foliage. Cue the slide show of a cottage nestled in the woods, with loons gliding past the dock. Another equally well-meaning presenter (in a blue or tan uniform) touts advice from FireSmart, a program founded in 1993 that helps owners increase their property’s resilience to wildfire. Mow the lawn, pick up branches, thin surrounding evergreens. Click. Up comes a slide of a tidy yellow cabin on a manicured lawn, with trees that are well-spaced. After taking in a FireSmart presentation, Bracebridge, Ont., resident and Muskoka Watershed Council member…

Newsletter of note I loved reading the recent Weekender newsletter (“Life on an Island Cottage,” August ’24). We bought an island on Newboro Lake, Ont., over the phone during the pandemic. The people we bought it from never came back: there were clothes in the drawers that looked like they were from the 1960s and lots of other treasures. The basement was like a hardware store or lumber yard—it had everything you could possibly need! —Donna Purcell, Newboro Lake, Ont. Floating the boat The article “I’m Not a Cottage Owner, but I Have a Boat. Can I Legally Rent it Out?” (cottagelife.com) says that insurance is mandatory for any boat over 10 hp. I was unaware of this. Is it really true? —Tom Howell, via email Indeed it is! Here’s…

The search Kat Wong, a marketing director, always thought her first home would be in Toronto. She’d been saving up for a down payment since she graduated from university in 2012. When the pandemic hit, she was renting a one-bedroom apartment with her partner, Graeme Guthrie, who is a personal trainer, and she figured it was time to upgrade their space. Kat first thought about buying a larger condo (she’d front the down payment, and Graeme would pay housing costs). But she wasn’t happy with what she saw. “Places had $700–$800 per month condo fees,” she says. “And the den would be a room with a glass door.” By the summer of 2020, Kat had a new, fully remote job, and Graeme was taking some time off from training. This…

Level of concern Though I have never bought a cottage, I purchased an acre-and-a-half on a lake in Washington when I was 16. The next year, I built a 1,200 sq. ft. cabin that I used for a couple of decades before selling to one of my renters. A decade of sailing the B.C. coast followed. In the late ’90s, my wife and I built a cottage on her father’s island near Kingston, Ont., which we now own with other family members. “On the Road Again,” (Waterfront, Sept/Oct ’24) describes the rather onerous experience one family endured to find their dream cottage on Lake Nipissing, Ont. The house is only feet above water level in the photo. Being this close to the water is very risky. My in-laws’ place was…

Admit it, you cottagers who are tethered to the electricity grid: as much as you hate paying the utility bill, some of you secretly think cottagers who generate their own power are a bit eccentric, even downright weird. At worst, perhaps you think they’re apocalypse-any-minute-now preppers who look like Duck Dynasty extras and want to swap recipes for squirrel stew and tips for booby-trapping the property line. At best, they’re quirky tinkerers who go to bed early because both lightbulbs are flickering and they’re exhausted from a day of chopping wood and analyzing battery chemistry. In fact, almost everything about off-grid power generation is getting more efficient and more reliable—from the solar panels and the battery systems to the appliances that use the power. Maybe it’s time you reconsidered. Here’s…

AN INSECT EXPLOSION Last summer was one of the best summers at our cottage weather-wise in many, many years. We had very few blackflies, mosquitoes, deer flies, and horseflies, but an abundance of cluster flies. Any idea why?—PETER KUZIK, LACS-DES-SEIZE-ÎLES, QUE. If you’re thinking that the explosion of cluster flies caused a decrease in biting bugs, that’s not likely, say our experts. More likely: two different events led to the population anomalies you noticed. First, the low numbers of mosquitoes, blackflies, deer flies, and horseflies. This can happen if it’s a hot, dry summer. “And it was certainly hot and dry last summer in parts of the country,” says Pete Heule of the invertebrate zoology department at the Royal Alberta Museum. “In that situation, anybody who relies on wet, moist…

THE PROBLEM WITH cottage country? Too many drips. “Despite our best engineering, leaks still happen,” says Sean Peterson, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo. “Any sort of system or device we have, no matter what it is, eventually corrodes, wears down, or fails.” Don’t take it personally, it’s just physics. Peterson explains that high-pressure substances will always escape to low-pressure areas if they can. “Any pathway that emerges in the membrane separating the two provides a release,” Peterson says. Take a blow-up mattress, for example. When your cat—inevitably—claws a hole in it, the barrier containing the high-pressure air becomes compromised and the air just takes the path of least resistance out. Same goes for water escaping a pipe through a pinhole or blown connection.…

IT STARTED—AS many great adventures now do—with a flyover on Google Earth. As an avid surfer, Kamil Bialous might have been doing reconnaissance on a new surf break. But this time, his interest wasn’t in the water. He and his partner, Urszula Lipsztajn, had long been scouting for a plot on which to build a pied-à-terre (a pied-à-mer, really) near one of Canada’s premier surf destinations, Tofino, B.C. Something he hadn’t noticed before had caught his eye, and he’d peered closer at his screen. “What are these forested lots here?” Over their six years of looking, their search had spread out to Ucluelet. Tofino and Ucluelet sit at opposite ends of about 40 prime kilometres of Vancouver Island’s west coast, each town at the tips of a section shaped roughly…

Chock full of treasures I am devouring the Aug/Sept ’21 issue! I grew up on Redman Island, Ont., in Lake Rosseau’s Venetia group. The retro cottage featured in “The Monk, the Recluse, and a Message in a Bottle” is indeed something special—such a refreshing contrast to all the new lake homes being built. “A Snake in the Grass” was chilling but informative. We have several large fox snakes on our island. I’ve never seen a snake larger than a garter snake, so we are learning to live together. Thanks again for a wonderful issue.—Charlie Dalton, Lake Rosseau, Ont. Download this now Thank you for sharing the story “New Canadian App Detects and Tracks Forest Fires in Real Time” (cottagelife.com). We are currently on an evacuation alert due to a major…

We stand with the loons Thank you for putting the loon on the cover of the March/April ’23 issue and for sharing “Death of an Icon?” by documentary filmmaker Julia Nunes. CL is leading the way in opening what I hope will become a larger discussion on how we can protect the loon from disappearing on Canadian lakes. The article notes that declines in the loon population have been observed all over Canada, and the steepest decline is in the Atlantic provinces, where we have just finished a five-year project building a cottage in Nova Scotia. I believe the loons there have been markedly threatened by PWCs. These little machines are swamping loon babies and flooding nests. They are undoubtedly great fun for their human owners. But, if anywhere, they…

THE HAMMOCK IS THE ultimate symbol of slack time. When you’ve got nowhere to go and nothing to do, it is always there for you. Bring a book, bring a beer, bring nothing at all. The hammock, the chesterfield of chill, welcomes you as you are. It’s where the art of doing nothing reaches its pinnacle. Cameron and Celissa Vipond’s cottage doesn’t have a hammock—it has two. The cottage is a modest, 800 sq. ft. cedar build, and its hammocks lie in the shade just off the deck, strung to trees atop a cliff overlooking the serene bay on the east side of Christian Island. It’s one of about a dozen cottages along the cliff, their decks providing vistas of southern Georgian Bay. The cottages here are collectively known as…

Weather phenomena In your Winter ’19/’20 issue, you came up with “101 Ways to Love Winter at the Cottage.” We think we could add #102: ice feathers, one of the most delicate shows of nature you will ever see. We found them by accident while walking on the edge of the lake one frosty winter morning. At first, we thought they were sparrow feathers, but then we realized the entire lake was covered. We’ve lived here for 18 years and have only seen this once. —LINDA AND AL, LOWER BUCKHORN LAKE, ONT. Mother Nature Please tell Tim Tiner that I love his Nature Scrapbooks. Since June 2001, I have laminated and spiral bound several pages to make a little book for cottage guests to read while spending a few quiet…

“If you can build a shed, you can build this,” says architectural technologist Crystal Bueckert, who designed her “Laneshed,” an eight-by-twelve cabin on wheels, to be completely DIY. “The plans tell you what to do.” Though she devised it as a “backyard room,” Crystal saw a grander use for the structure—as a little bunkie to perch on her aunt’s waterfront lot, located in Thickwood Hills, Sask. “My aunt has half the lake to herself, so she likes having me around,” she says. Affordability was key to Crystal’s vision of the Laneshed; the base model costs $10,000. But she spent another $10,000 on a composting toilet, a kitchen, and solar panels, to create a fully self-sufficient escape. “Life here is simple. Especially because there’s no cell reception.” Start out strong “I…

A FEW YEARS AGO, someone broke into my family’s cabin. They came in through a window, and rifled through the fridge. They ate some butter and carried a litre of milk outside. They drank the milk and tossed the empty carton on the ground. Pfft. Not only did this person steal from us, they littered in the woods, which felt like an extra kick in the pants. Except, we later found out, from chatting with others on the lake, that the intruder was a young bear—it had been pulling the same fridge-opening, food-stealing stunts at other cottages. If you’ve been reading this magazine for a while, you know that bears—and other cottage-country wildlife—can learn all kinds of skills if doing so gets them what they want (usually food). Operant conditioning,…

Dogs drinking wine, chipmunks in strange places, and lazy afternoons on the dock. We asked for your best cottage photos for our annual contest and you delivered! Here are the seven shots that wowed us most, plus a few more that made us laugh insect acrobatics Michelle Ainslie, Ruth Lake, Ont. How they got the shot “You never know when you’ll get the perfect photo, or what little critter may cross your path,” says Michelle, who was out testing the new macro lens on her Canon R7 when she spotted a group of dragonflies. Drawn to this one for its bright colour, Michelle had to stay very still as she waited for the insect to land. She increased the shutter speed on her camera to highlight the details without blurring…

THIS STORY HAS a happy ending. It’s about hundreds of people coming together to have fun and delight in each other’s company. They’ll have some friendly competition and raise money for a good cause. But before I get to the snowmobiles and their breathtaking speeds, or the sounds of happy children, or the laughter around the fire, let me tell you something I learned about myself while reporting this story: under no circumstances will I be parking my car on a frozen lake. Being a journalist pushes you to the very precipice of your curiosity. And there, on the edge of Benoir Lake, near Bancroft, Ont., I found mine. When I pull up to my destination on a freezing February morning and ask for Angelo, someone politely gestures to the…

the FIXER WHO SHE IS Tammy Watson WHAT SHE DOES Turns cottagers into DIYers IN 1986, WHEN then 16-year-old Tammy Watson was in high school in Toronto, she likely never imagined that she’d use the skills she was learning in shop class to open up her own handywoman business in Ontario’s cottage country 34 years later. But that’s exactly what happened. As an adult, Watson and her wife, Mary, bought a property in the small hamlet of Fernleigh, in North Frontenac County. They planned to use it as a cottage but, in 2018, when Watson was offered a buyout package from her long-time government job, she did what many cottagers dream of doing. She sold her house and moved into her cottage full-time. However, because she had taken the buyout…

WHEN STONY LAKE, Ont., cottager Dave Rishor needs to transport gear, people, or both to his island cottage, he loads up one of his two Boston Whaler centre-consoles. “It’s good to have a boat you can rely on,” he says. “I like centre-consoles because they’re stable, roomy, and easy to clean.” Dave, a long-time realtor in the Kawartha Lakes area, is hardly alone in his appreciation of the multipurpose vessels. “I have seen more centre-consoles on the water in the last five years than ever.” Sometimes described as the Swiss Army knife of boats, centre-consoles were originally designed for saltwater fishing. Models range widely in versatility, functionality, and length—from 13-foot runabouts to 65-foot cruisers. And though smaller models can lack creature comforts, they’re popular because they’re easy to operate and…

WHEN IS THE last time you truly noticed an apple? Beyond the mythological or literary allusions, apples are standard fare in our lives. We grab a bag of them the way we grab any staple: to eat or to be used in whatever preparation suits our fancy. Current refrigeration, storage, and shipping techniques have prioritized certain apple varieties, leaving us, the eaters, with limited selections that are suited for the task: apples with tough skins that keep their colour and don’t bruise en route. These apples are sold not for flavour, texture, or nutrition, but for their ability to survive the means of distribution, not degustation. The irony is that apples, like people, are not made of averages, let alone for all purposes. Apples, like people, possess great diversity in…

Q: Why does food taste better when you eat it outside? Or am I imagining that?—Alan Harley, via email A: If you’re asking whether there’s research on the subject…sorry, we couldn’t find anything concrete. “I have no knowledge of any studies like that,” admits Danielle Reed, a chief science officer at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, Penn. There is, however, “a lot of evidence for something called ‘conditioned place preference.’ This means that when we eat somewhere that has other benefits, we learn that food is good in that place,” she says. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. When animals—and we’re animals—eat, they’re putting themselves in a vulnerable position (they become easier targets for predators). “So, any place that’s safe and calm and comforting is going to…

WHAT’S SEMI-CYLINDRICAL, made of steel, and is changing the way we think about building homes and cottages? Quonset huts. While their futuristic appearance may seem ultra-modern, they’ve actually been around since the 1940s. The structures were developed during the war to quickly and easily house military folks. Bases in remote locations would receive the huts in pieces, with personnel taking as little as a day to fully assemble one, from the corrugated metal shell, steel frame, and wood fibre insulation, all the way down to the plywood floor. Quonsets have come a long way since then. Farmers have used them for decades to store livestock, equipment, and hay bales, and now, people are living in them. When compared to traditional “stick built” structures, Quonset homes are better able to withstand…

THE WATERS OF Lake Ontario can turn violent in an instant. For three generations, my family has had a cottage on Presqu’ile Point, a spit of land that hooks out into the northeast corner of the lake. When I was a kid, sometimes a nor’easter storm would blow in—and I’d put on a raincoat and go outside to watch the water suddenly become savage. Metre-high waves, slate-grey and terrifying, would smash into the breakwall in front of me, spraying foam high above my head. I’d brace myself against the howling wind and wonder what it’d be like to be out on the cold and furious lake. It’d be lethal, as history shows. Eastern Lake Ontario is a tomb for scores of ships, many of which went down in precisely these…

CHESSA OSBURN WAS walking up a dirt path leading up from the dock and turned back to call out to me: “This might be my favourite view of the cabin!” I could see only a tangle of boulders and Douglas fir trees, with the edge of a slanted roof poking out behind. Her son, Barnaby, 8, still wearing his lifejacket, ran ahead of me, while her husband, Stephen Sims, and their daughter, Ophelia, 10, trailed behind. Stilton, a yellow Labrador retriever, was everywhere, in the manner of a dog looking after his people. A couple more steps and a building suddenly came into view: a split-level cabin, nested in a bowl of large rocks and cloaked in grey paneling. A walkway of grey-brown planks wound through large boulders and led…

DOUGLAS WARNER HAS mostly fond memories of the weeks he spent living aboard a sailboat, searching for northern map turtles on some of Ontario’s most scenic cottage lakes. It was August of 2022, and Warner and three colleagues anchored their 26-foot vessel in sandy bays, cooked and ate topside, slept in the cabin’s cramped V-berths, and got plenty of quizzical looks and questions from other boaters. “Every day was an adventure,” he says. The “turtle pirates,” as Warner and his colleagues fondly called their fieldwork roles, were part of a three-year effort to document the abundance of little-known populations of map turtles on lakes Muskoka, Rosseau, and Joseph by Saving Turtles at Risk Today (START). “It was refreshing for us because it didn’t involve slogging through bogs,” says Warner—that’s the…

Advice versa In “Captain Canadiana” (Winter ’24), Ryan Tarrant says “dipping into automotive fuel is risky” for snowmobile use. Huh? What other type of fuel is he recommending? I understand not to use E15 ethanol blend, but the vast majority of gasoline fuel available in Canada is up to 10 per cent ethanol, not 15 per cent. And as for fuel that is “months and months old,” you would have to be using a filling station that is extremely underused or remote to have not sold all their stored gasoline in months and months. Most urban stations have fresh fuel delivered at least weekly if not more depending on sales volume of course. Just some clarification would have been helpful in that article.—Steve Morris, St. Jacobs, Ont. Thanks for clarifying,…

THIS IS A story about Muldrew Lakes, so let’s start by setting the scene. Like every cottage lake, including yours, Muldrew is perfect: rustic cottages amid picturesque shores and forests. But Muldrew is also very different from your lake. Even a brief visit there gives rise to a flurry of unfamiliar and contradictory emotions that your lake probably doesn’t provoke. Muldrew Lakes—North, Middle, and South Muldrew—are actually just one long, s-shaped lake located 200 kilometres due north of Toronto, just outside of Gravenhurst, in Muskoka. It meanders through what must be one of the longest, narrowest gouges ever laid down by a passing glacier, about 15 kilometres, making two, full 180-degree turns before slowly emptying into Muldrew Creek. At first glance you’d think, This isn’t a lake, it’s just one…

MY FIRST COTTAGE Life Show was in 1999, its fifth iteration. The show was a grand success out of the gate, and we intended to keep it that way. For weeks leading up to the event, the whole Cottage Life team—those who made the magazine, the original CLTV series, and the folks who worked as support staff—went flat out to pull off the action-packed, three-day event, which had already become the biggest of its kind in the country. At the time, I was working as the receptionist, so I remember those days involving constant deliveries, 24/7 faxes, and many fights with the rickety office postage machine, which was working harder than anyone. These were important tasks, but I was the office junior, never in the heart of the action. Even…

Q: We have a cottage up on the south Bruce Peninsula, and it is very humid and damp. We’re replacing old mattresses, and I’m wondering, what is the best type of mattress that will not hold moisture?—Caroline MacDonald, email A: Sadly, mattress-makers don’t create versions that are specifically designed for damp, humid environments. That said, Stan Stadnyk, the owner of Mattresses of Muskoka in Bracebridge, Ont., suggests that you go with coil mattresses over foam. “You’ll get more airflow.” On the other hand, Rolands Oskalns, the owner of Vivid Cleaning, a steam-cleaning company based in Toronto, believes that a conventional foam mattress—not a memory foam mattress—could work fine in a humid environment. “It’s synthetic, lightweight, and easier to clean,” he says. Either way, covering the mattresses with waterproof protectors could…

Q: When it comes to winter clothing, does the colour of the outer layer have any effect on heat emissivity? For example, is white a better colour than black?—George Waters, via email A: We understand why you’re asking the question. “Everyone knows that in the summer, wearing white is better than wearing black,” says Stephen Morris, a professor emeritus in the department of physics at the University of Toronto. But that’s because dark colours absorb more heat than light colours. The reverse isn’t true: clothing colour doesn’t make a difference when it comes to emitting heat. “The colour of the outer layer wouldn’t have an effect on how quickly you lose heat to your surroundings,” says Joanne O’Meara, a professor in the department of physics at the University of Guelph.…

Pickleball pains I read your pickleball article “A Court of Poison Ivy and Acorns” (May ’25) and was particularly anguished. I am an avid player, but I would never inflict the noise of pickleball on cottage country. I find it surprising that you make no mention of what the impact of pickleball would be on a serene cottage evening and just how much it would disturb the neighbours. Even in the city, there are numerous complaints about the noise of the sport, so the impact would be tenfold in cottage country. If you love pickleball, play it at the gym, not at the lake.—Roland Wippel, via email With regards to your article on pickleball, it’s your neighbours that are going to end up with the rash! I spent more than…

Q: I have an umbrella on my cottage deck. Where the handle turns, there are a number of holes. Last August, I noticed an extremely busy bee, actually, a wasp. It spent the whole day filling up one of the holes with bits of leaf and little round balls of something. It seems like a very small place to build a nest, but is that what it was doing?—Linda Ondrack, Bay Lake, Ont. A: Your initial thought was right. “If the insect was collecting leaf material and stuffing it in those small holes, it was likely a bee, not a wasp,” says Rob Currie, a professor in the department of entomology at the University of Manitoba. He thinks you saw a leafcutting bee (family Megachilidae). “There are several species. The…

“I’M INVITED TO MY FRIEND’S COTTAGE EVERY SUMMER, and she always says, ‘Please don’t bring anything.’ So I don’t—because she said not to. But I’m starting to think that this actually makes me a jerk. Is it ever truly acceptable to bring nothing for the host? What’s worse, bringing nothing, bringing too much, or bringing the wrong thing?” Unfortunately, you are not the first victim to have been trapped by the cottage guest Catch-22, where the specific instructions of a host must be carefully obeyed while simultaneously being ignored. It’s one of cottage country’s oddest phenomena. And yes, if you bring absolutely nothing for your cottage host, even though she expressly stated this as her wish, you are a jerk. When a host says “Don’t bring anything,” what they are…

JOE NIMENS AND his partner, Erin Morano, live in what might be described in places like Victoria, B.C., Bluffer’s Park in Toronto, or almost anywhere in the Netherlands, as a float home. The couple, however, would choose a different term. Their 1,000-sq.-ft. dwelling, which is moored for much of the time in the Port Severn, Ont., harbour, consists of four 53-foot shipping containers that have been transformed into a home, a garage, a workshop, and outdoor kitchen. Rooftop solar panels generate electricity, a woodstove provides heat, an encapsulated polystyrene foam foundation keeps it afloat, and it has a self-contained septic system. A picture window affords a great view of the water. “It’s like a regular house,” Nimens says, glancing out at the vista. “The furnace goes on and off, we…

Q: “Help! I love my wife, but I hate the cottage (which she loves). I find it too rustic, and I always feel bored there. I don’t enjoy watersports, swimming, or hiking. But I do want to spend time with her. What should I do? Can I train myself to enjoy the cottage more? Or is there another solution?” A: Without resorting to advanced-level re-education techniques perfected in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, I can’t really think of any way that you can “train” yourself to enjoy a cottage more. You could certainly try to embrace activities such as swimming or fishing with a gruelling daily regimen of front-crawl sessions to the swim raft, multiple reps of cannonball sets, and endless hours bouncing crank-baits off the neighbour’s dock. But I…

WE ASKED ON social media for your suggestions of “legendary” cottagers on your lakes or in your cottage com-munities. And we were flooded with examples. You told us about everyone from 90-something-yet-still-hardcore cottagers to change-makers to Canadian celebrities to CL celebrities. You even told us about imaginary legends. Hey, fair enough: by definition, a legend can be unauthenticated. So, what makes a cottager legendary? Turns out, they don’t need to be famous. If they’ve lodged themselves in your memories and in your hearts, that’s enough. Here are our favourites from your favourites. (Who’d we miss? Email us: letters@cottagelife.com.) A Lake Boshkung waterski wizard ROSS PAWSON WAS 10 years old when he first tried waterskiing at his family cottage on Lake Boshkung, Ont. “We got real keen on it,” says Ross,…

I USED TO have a horse. He lived outdoors with a shelter year-round, 24/7—most domestic horses do. Still, one year, I spent more than $2,500 on rain sheets and blankets to protect him from the elements during fall and winter. I’d lie awake at night, listening to the wind howl outside my window. I’d drive to the barn at 3 a.m. I needed to see that he was okay. Nestled in the straw bed of his shelter, legs tucked under him, he’d blink at me sleepily, like, “Why are you here, human?” Once, I saw a cartoon tacked to the notice board in the barn. It showed a horse, draped in about 17 blankets, and another one, furry and naked. The naked horse asks, “Why are you wearing that?” and…

YOU CAN USUALLY find one of artist Kara McIntosh’s abstract paintings of Georgian Bay hanging above the living room sofa in her Pointe au Baril, Ont., cottage. But move to the dining room, and fine art quickly gives way to arts and crafts: the entire back wall is lined with glitter-covered paper plate awards earned by her three kids (now young adults) during summer camp at the nearby Ojibway Club. “One year, my daughter won the ‘Crazy for the Cliffs’ award because she was always asking to go cliff jumping,” Kara says. “Everyone’s a winner of some kind. And the older the awards are, the more washed out the construction paper has become.” These types of family memories were exactly what Kara had in mind when she bought the 2,350-sq.…

Ann McGuire just wanted a bite to eat under the clear blue skies of a July day. But when she arrived at one of her favourite water-access restaurants, the Craganmor Point Resort, the water was about five inches high on the patio. So she did what others were doing: she enjoyed her meal while ankle-deep in the waters of Georgian Bay. The Overend family, which owns the resort and restaurant, admits the high water levels last year on the Great Lakes and Georgian Bay made the season a challenging one. They invested more than $10,000 to build walkways above the waterline so that people could stay relatively dry. They also put up boards along the sliding doors to stop boat wakes from going inside the restaurant, which they came close…

FOR DECADES, SCIENTISTS and government officials working in and around Lake Superior have been playing an ecosystem version of whack-a-mole. Their target: the sea lamprey, a parasitic fish native to the Atlantic that had long devastated fish stocks in the greatest of the Great Lakes. In recent years, however, The Great Lakes Fishery Commission—in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—began applying a lampricide in the lamprey spawning grounds, the network of shallow rivers and streams that empty into Lake Superior. The timing is key: the chemical needs to be deposited during a brief window in May, depending on the water temperature. The control program had reduced lamprey populations by 90 per cent in most areas and…

Q: Can a cottage receive some kind of heritage designation that would protect it from demolition or major renovations?—Maia Julian, via email A: Absolutely! Well, maybe. “The first thing to know is that you can’t just ask for a designation,” says Mary MacDonald, a senior manager in Heritage Planning with the City of Toronto. “The cottage would need to meet a specified set of criteria.” In Ontario, these conditions are set out in the Ontario Heritage Act. One common, and probably obvious, criterion is that the building would need to have “a high degree of architectural value,” says MacDonald—a structure that’s well-designed, for example. But looks aren’t everything. “Heritage buildings can also be the site of something important that happened or associated with someone who’s recognized to have an importance…

THE WILDLIFE WORLD is like any workplace: some keen work-ers get a reputation for being top performers. But is it truly warranted? Maybe beavers are so eager because they have no life outside of their dam building. Maybe bees are so busy because they have poor time management skills. They may not be stamped on Canadian currency or star in a series of cereal commercials, but these cottage-country creatures certainly deserve some acknowledgement for the excellent work they do. Praise and appreciation are more important than a pay increase. Allegedly. The Architects & Builders muskrat RECOGNIZE THEIR HARD WORK The who-rat? This lodge-building, swimming rodent is the beaver’s less famous Canadian cousin. A muskrat uses its sharp teeth to cut roots, reeds, and cattails to build its structure. You’ll spot their…

HOSTING A HUGE Thanksgiving meal can be daunting. Not only do you have to navigate all the interesting personalities involved (or is this just my family?), but you also have to cook 931 things at once. I usually take on way too much and end up not enjoying myself as much as I could while everyone else gets to relax. Insert quiet resentment. There are so many reasons why doing Thanksgiving at the cottage is actually better than at home. Don’t believe me? First of all, you’re in a much more joyful habitat, surrounded by nature and probably copious cocktails. This is always a fantastic start to any project. Secondly, you can take your turkey out of the kitchen entirely by cooking it on your grill or in a firepit,…

I REMEMBER WHEN the cormorants came back. It was the mid 1990s. People around our Georgian Bay cottage said the black waterbirds with the long, snake-like necks were an invasive species eating the perch we like to catch. There was talk about oiling their eggs to limit the population. Since then, double-crested cormorants have become a common sight on our stretch of the bay and elsewhere in cottage country, part of the familiar fauna, mistaken from a distance for the loons with whom they share a love of fish. But, it turns out, they’re not invasive after all. Double-crested cormorants are native to Ontario. The population declined dramatically in the 1960s and ’70s because toxic chemicals, such as DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), in the ecosystem thinned the shell of their eggs and…

IN 2018, STEPHANIE and Mike Haas rented a friend’s cottage in Marmora, Ont., for a week with their young son Benjamin, who was five years old at the time; Mike’s sister; and his sister’s kids. “The kids being able to run around and hang out was fun,” says Stephanie. After returning home to Toronto, Mike and Stephanie thought it’d be nice to buy a vacation property of their own someday. They planned to spend the next few years renting to experience different regions, lakes, and cottage layouts to figure out what areas, style of builds, and types of lakes best suited them. The following summer, in late August 2019, the family rented a four-season cottage on Stoney Lake, Ont. They liked the property—it was on an inlet and built on…

HIGH OVERHEAD, TWO volatile partners—one earthy, the other ethereal—launch a turbulent, unpre-dictable dance. This could be little more than a brief infatuation, or one of those “never again” dates that’s as fun as freezing drizzle. But our lovers could also grow rapturous, operatic, even thunderously destructive. Say what you will about clouds, when water bonds with high-flying dust, things get dramatic. “I love a blue-sky day as much as anyone,” says Gord Baker, a veteran canoe tripper and a manager at Ontario’s Algonquin Outfitters in Algonquin Provincial Park. But in a country that celebrates sunny skies, autumn colours, and mirror-smooth lakes, clouds offer a break from blue-sky ennui. “They just make the sky more interesting,” says Gord. “They add action and colour.” “What’s a sunset without a cloud?” agrees Barbara…

IN RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, Dr. Jones uses a crystal-topped staff to focus a beam of sunlight on a scale model of ancient Tanis. As the sun moves, it eventually pinpoints the location of the lost Ark of the Covenant. The Staff of Ra—which looks a lot like a type of sundial called a noon mark—works because the sun’s path is predictable. I’ve always been fascinated by how sunlight could be harnessed so precisely. Sundials rely on the same principle as Indy’s staff: as the sun moves, a cast shadow shows what time it is. This project brings that ancient idea to the cottage, combining slipform stone masonry with cast concrete to make an enduring sundial. In masonry, slipforming is a method of stone construction using a form—typically a box…

One of the country’s most incisive voices, Elamin Abdelmahmoud, explores the landscape. 9,984,670 sq. km in area, some 2,000,000 lakes, and 8,890 km of land border with the U.S. A country always begins as a mirage, a hallucination that emerges between arbitrary borders. Soon after, it congeals into something not quite tangible but with vague shape, like a cloud or a shadow. Squint long enough and a meaning emerges—you see something in the illusion, and you say, “There! That’s the country.” Depending on your disposition, this is either a magic trick or a cruel lie. The unique thing with this illusion is that 158 years into its existence, Canada’s shape and meaning are still the cause of much debate and consternation. Some see hockey sticks and maple syrup in the…

The Big Nickel SUDBURY, ONT. Canada’s most famoustribute to currency must be Sudbury’s Big Nickel (it’s 64 million times bigger than an actual nickel), built in 1964. But there’s also a massive penny in Salmo, B.C., the Big Loonie in Echo Bay, Ont., and the Giant $2 Coin in Campbellford, Ont. At some point, people apparently stopped building big monuments to Canadian coins. We blame debit. The World’s Largest Axe NACKAWIC, N.B. The 15-metre-high toolreplica sits in Nackawic, N.B. It was built to commemorate the Jack Nicholson axe-versus-door scene in The Shining. Fine, no it wasn’t. It was to recognize the area’s significance to the forestry industry. Mac the Moose MOOSE JAW, SASK. At more than 10 metres tall, Mac was the tallest moose statue in the world when hewas…

Q: “A friend of mine lets my family use her cottage for a few weeks each summer when she isn’t there. But every time I arrive, the place is a mess, and I feel compelled to clean up after her or whoever visited last. It’s weird to me that she makes zero effort, as an owner, and also never prefaces the invitation by saying something like, ‘Just so you know, I haven’t been able to tidy up after my last guests.’ Should I say something?” A: Your situation does sound a bit strange. In my experience, there is no time when cottagers are more hyper-fastidious than during the pack-out routines at the end of a visit. The foundational reasoning behind a thorough cottage tidy-up has always been a bone-deep terror…

This party has a motto. “We say, ‘Let’s drink champagne and dance on the table,’ ” says cabin owner Bee Chalmers, about her family’s annual, epic, and action-packed holiday weekend party—a.k.a. the Pacific Island Gong Show. Gong show? “The weekend is crazy,” says her husband, Jake. “But it’s controlled chaos.” This particular brand of controlled chaos—PIGS for short—happens every year on an island in B.C.’s Howe Sound. It’s always on the Canada Day long weekend, and it always involves the same group of long-time friends: most of the gang, including Bee and Jake, met 30 years ago at nearby Keats summer camp when they were in their early teens. “The camp thing—that’s our origin story,” says Jake. But it’s not the reason for PIGS. The party first came about in the…

COTTAGE LIFE TV’S new documentary series, Todd Talbot Builds: The Passive House Project, (premiering Oct. 8) follows the real estate expert and contractor—and former star of Love It or List It—as he and his wife, Rabecca, build a passive house overlooking B.C.’s Okanagan Lake. Cottage Life: What is passive house construction and how is it different? Todd Talbot: It’s an approach that applies building science—actual science, not anecdotes or Hail Mary guesses—to create the most energy-efficient homes and other buildings. Done well, you can reduce energy consumption by 80 to 90 per cent. There are five main concepts used in most passive buildings. First, super-insulating does the heavy lifting to combat summer heat and winter cold. Second, high-performance windows and doors address the weakest points for energy efficiency in any…

THE CABIN WAS sold to us as a summer-only place: it was a 10-minute boat ride from the marina. So we studied the maps and told ourselves we would find a way to get there in winter anyhow. Maybe we could ski to the cabin when Georgian Bay froze? But we didn’t count on the currents that kept the water moving and the ice from thickening. Or the fact that the winters themselves were getting milder and milder. That first summer, we boated over to the waste transfer station to find a new home for two taxidermied fish. They had come with the cabin and were in excellent condition, but they offended the sensibilities of our vegetarian teenage daughters. A local handyman took them off our hands straight away. We…

Land of plenty Thank you for including the thoughtful, well-written article by climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe (“Long-Range Forecast,” June/July ’23). Katharine understands Canadian values and our concern for nature and the beauty that surrounds us. We do not take it for granted. We want to protect and sustain our beautiful land. Her article was intelligent, practical, encouraging, and inspiring. Thank you for your story, Katharine.—Esther Smith, via email We’re glad you enjoyed it! And you’re in luck—Katharine will be appearing on season four of the Cottage Life Podcast, in conversation with Michelle Kelly. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. The nature of things We were shocked to read, “We Need to Talk About Something” (Editor’s Note) in the May ’23 issue. Michelle opined that the environment isn’t a very…

Q: I have a cabin with a flat roof. We don’t have gutters because the snow and ice would rip them off. But not having gutters to divert the water is damaging the exterior of the building. What are my alternatives? —Matthew Schwab, via email A: First of all, your roof probably isn’t entirely flat. “In the roofing world, we recognize a flat roof to mean that there’s still at least a two per cent slope,” says Russell Richman, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and a building science consultant. And you can use gutters (a.k.a. eavestroughs) with such a roof. People do. Plus, the kind of eavestrough busting damage that you’re concerned about could happen even if the roof wasn’t flat. In fact, “a sloped roof could be more…

In this day and age I enjoyed reading “The Cottage is Boring!” (Aug ’23) and your tips for keeping kids engaged and loving the cottage. But I noticed reading was not among the activities listed. I have always cultivated a love of reading among my kids and now my grandkids. There is nothing like a great book to beat the boredom blues!—Kathy Larkins, Six Mile Lake, Ont. The latest edition of CL really hit the target. “The Cottage is Boring!” took me and my brother back to our childhood—“summering” at the lake was wonderful with all of the magic of the island, the cottage, the river, and the activities. Our teen years were difficult, sometimes very lonely with few friends around and all the required daily chores…boring! However, once we…

Dear Cottage Life The wooden cover of the book at our cottage says “Guests,” but for as long as I can remember, it has been called “The Cottage Book.” The July 27, 1959, entry reads, “Mother locked me in the john for two hours! Mrs. Tyler released me. Regards, Dad.” It is my hope that this book will continue to bring joy for years to come. —NANCY HALL, VIA EMAIL FEAST YOUR EYES ON THIS I cook a lot, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a “larger than life” sausage coil (“Not Just Another Saturday Night,” May ’19). We had live lobsters once for my son’s birthday, which involved a day trip from our boat-access cottage. At least these two recipes are easy to cook. But the mushroom salad—19…

Do you remember the first time you stepped foot in a cottage? I do. It was just a few weeks after the first time I heard what a cottage even was. I was 19. I wasn’t born in Canada—I moved here from Sudan when I was 12 years old. I didn’t speak English, and I spent the majority of my adolescence trying to understand what life here entailed. So when a friend invited me and a few others to her family cottage in Ontario’s Thousand Islands one summer, my first question wasn’t, “What weekend were you thinking?” It was more like, “Uh…sure… What’s that?” I may have struggled with the concept that was explained to me—apparently, some Canadians have a whole second property that is dedicated almost entirely to just…

I’m reminded of Lord Ronald in Stephen Leacock’s story. But unlike Lord Ronald, who flung himself upon his horse, 40 or so cottagers fling themselves into their boats and drive madly off in all directions. Not because they’re angry, but because they’re hungry. It happens once a year, every summer, in one of the most complicated dinner parties imaginable. Everybody attends and virtually everybody hosts, which means everybody has to navigate the perilous shoals of this water-access Georgian Bay community near MacTier, Ont. I grab my PFD and jump in the boat that’s been assigned to take me to the next stop on the watery route: Appetizers, part two, the second of four stages. Appetizers, part one has already happened, co-hosted by Richard Crouch and Jamie Crichton at Jamie and…

OUCH!!! MORE THAN six decades later, I can still feel that long, black umbrella come down across my back. It was Huntsville, Ont., late 1950s, the dead of winter. My buddies, Eric and Brent, and I had been “hitchin’ ”—grabbing on to car bumpers as they pulled up to stop signs, then sliding along for a block or two before letting go of the bumper and drifting into a soft snowbank. I had barely stopped when the umbrella landed. Winnie Trainor’s umbrella. She had been watching from her little apartment on the corner of Minerva and Centre streets, and she was personally putting an end to this foolishness. I never quite knew what to make of Winnie. She would have then been in her early 70s. Only a week earlier,…

NOVELIST CARLEY FORTUNE resides in a mid-century modern home in Toronto, but it’s in a little cottage three-and-a-half hours away where she does her best writing. The place, a rental she secures from a family friend every summer, is perched on concrete blocks at the bottom of a long, bumpy driveway at the end of an unpaved road. Inside, the knotty pine walls are rustic. On brisk nights, even in summer, you need a heavy sweater and a fire in the cast-iron woodstove. There’s no Wi-Fi, and the cell signal cuts out. At first glance, the place doesn’t scream “romance,” but to Carley, it’s what the cottage represents that’s deeply romantic. It’s here where she’s written two bestselling romance novels that have become something of a cultural phenomenon. Sometimes, she…