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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…

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…

ON GLORIOUS SUMMER days, the thought wafted through Blair Mahaffy’s mind like a cooling breeze off Manitoba’s West Hawk Lake: why not just hole up in the cottage forever? Sure, there’s always winter, but how bad can it be? When the pandemic came, Blair finally found out. And spoiler alert, it was a little like Doctor Zhivago. Despite a 1980s upgrade to the cottage Blair’s grandparents originally built in 1934, winter drafts barged in without knocking. Miniature glaciers grew across the windows. Even with the woodstove stoked and the baseboards heaters cranked to “rotisserie,” “you couldn’t leave clothes on the floor without the risk of them getting damp due to condensation,” Blair says. Fast-forward two years, and the cedar-sided structure has been transformed. There are new, well-sealed windows and patio…

Which is the better buy? A BUM SEPTIC SYSTEM CAN TURN THAT BARGAIN INTO A BOONDOGGLE…

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…

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…

ON THE AUGUST day I visited, a watchful security guard presided over the gate at Beach O’Pines, a community of cottages near Grand Bend, Ont. Get past him, and gain entry to an exclusive stretch of beachfront and smattering of cottages that’s been coveted for nearly 100 years. Ambling over the bridge and into the criss-cross of paved roads, even the light seems to soften. In place of urban laneways, footpaths run behind rows of cottages, greenery cascading overhead and underfoot. The white sand beaches seem made for building castles. Tall, sun-bleached grasses rustle in the wind. The area is a mash of old and sprawling new. Rustic cabins share the roads with four-car garages. In one driveway, a vanity plate on a dusty Jeep Wrangler reads “Bass Lass.” Across…

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…

Jackie Davis: Oxford says a ghoul is “an evil spirit or phantom.” Is that the same as a zombie? I will die in the next 10 seconds. It’s me versus zombies and nobody wins that fight. I’m at a log cabin, pursued by flesh-eating ghouls who want to shred me to pieces. Suddenly, the skies darken as zombie paratroopers float down around me. Now I’m outnumbered by battle-hardened undead soldiers. This is it. It’s do or die, fight or bite. The ghouls snarl and shuffle closer. I breathe deeply and yell— JD: I don’t think the army would hire zombies. Or…maybe no live people enlist anymore? “CUT! Great take. Let’s do another, but with 40 per cent more smoke and blood.” I’m directing a movie at this gorgeous mountainside cabin,…

WHEN MY FAMILY FINALLY got a composting toilet at our cottage in 2010, it was the most extravagant upgrade that our little off-grid cabin had ever received. Pre-composting unit, the throne was a bucket fastened below the outhouse bench. This system had been in place for decades, since before my family got the cottage; my German grandmother felt it perfectly appropriate (“Das ist cottage,” she liked to insist). But eventually, emptying a pail of raw sewage was a chore that made negative amounts of sense when there were so many better—and less disgusting—options available. So, after Oma passed, and after a lot of research, we settled on a composting toilet. A decade later, we still love it. Alternative toilets can be more efficient and consume less water than a septic…

Q: “We rarely let anyone use our cottage without us being there, except for a certain friend. Recently, she called to ask if she, her boyfriend, and her kids could stay for the weekend, which was fine with us. But after, she texted that her boyfriend’s children also came and stayed the night. I am not okay with her inviting additional guests without our knowledge. Am I wrong? And why am I feeling like the jerk for having to come up with a way to say that wasn’t okay?” A: No, you are not wrong, but you are also in a bit of a tricky situation in the personal hurt feelings department. Judging by the tales of frustration told by my cottage contacts, this specific offence seems to happen all…

From the time he was three years old, Woodie Stevens has spent every summer of his life at his family cottage in the Thousand Islands, a 10-minute boat ride from Gananoque, Ont. But it wasn’t until his 20th summer at the cottage, when he thought he had the Thousand Islands all figured out, that the islands and the river reached out and spoke to him and changed the course of his life. Woodie, born Ford Woods Stevens, is today a 77-year-old American, a career dentist in the Philadelphia area, a gentle soul who can spin a good yarn. His cottage, which has been in the family for more than a century, sits atop the highest point on Wyoming Island, some 60 feet above the St. Lawrence River. It features an…

A STICKER SITUATION I commend Cottage Life for printing the image of the man who owns that dream Cottage near Wawa, Ont. (“The Man From Snowy Hills,” Winter ’12/’13), and including the Ted Nugent sticker prominently in the background (p. 47). Obviously, Ted promotes hunting at every opportunity, and it was great to see that sticker in your magazine. TODD CARLSON, BURK’S FALLS, ONT. HE’S A DOCTOR, AND A GEOLOGIST! It was lovely to read the article by Charlotte Gray, “On Wings of Ecstasy” (Winter ’12/’13) about the Thousand Islands Cottage once owned by Professor Arthur P. Coleman. Dr. Coleman was instrumental in analyzing the geology of the Sudbury Basin and what eventually became the Cobalt Mining Camp, now known as the National Historic Cobalt Mining District of Canada. The…

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.…

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…

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,…

IT’S A SPRINGTIME Saturday morning at the cottage. From the spot where I’m weeding the garden, I can hear the kids shouting on the trampoline, the newly arrived songbirds calling to each other from the trees at the edge of the field, and, coming in from the east, the intensifying roar of a border patrol helicopter. It flies very low, and right overhead, so the agents in the chopper can get a good long look at all of us down here on the ground. The choppers have become frequent since last fall. Our cottage is about 200 metres south of the border in Vermont, making it right within the ribbon of land that border patrols on both sides are determined to police with historically unprecedented vigilance. Like most of the…

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…

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,…

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,…

Q: “I share a cottage with a sibling and two cousins. I’m the only ‘handy’ owner, but we all pull together for chores and big improvements—except for one of my cousins. He doesn’t lift a finger to help and avoids the work weekends that we have twice a year. He pays his share of the cottage dues, but that’s all he does. The others don’t seem to think it’s a big deal, but I’m starting to get mad. How do other cottagers do it?” A: A brilliant entrepreneur I know (my wife) has this to say about co-ownership situations: “Ideally, when starting any new venture, the only business partner you should have is the bank.” Wise words. And I think the same could really be said about cottage co-ownership which,…

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…

Q: How effective are opossums at tick control?—Grace McNally, via email A: Not very effective at all. At least, there’s no strong evidence that they are. You’ve probably read the same stat that we have—Virginia opossums, a.k.a. Canada’s only marsupial, eat about 95 per cent of the ticks that feed on them. Hey, good job, opossums! That makes you “ecological traps.” You’re so irritated by the ticks feeding on you that you immediately try to get them off your bodies—by eating them—and the ticks can’t complete their life cycles. Other hosts, such as white-tailed deer, are much more permissive. But here’s the thing: that conclusion comes from one American 2009 lab study (Keesing et al.). The researchers trapped five opossums and exposed each caged animal to 100 ticks. After four…

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,…

SPENDING TIME AT the cottage involves spending time with creepy-crawlies, whether you love them or you hate them. Dock spiders and mosquitoes and water striders and bees…it’s a never-ending list. And those are only the ones that you actually see on a regular basis. Insects alone make up about 80 per cent of the world’s species, and they all play a huge role in the ecosystem. “Ants are often under-appreciated for all that they do,” says Bob Anderson, an entomologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature and a long-time CL source for all things buggy. “Tiny parasitoid wasps that people will never notice keep insect populations in check. Fly maggots, meanwhile, aid in decomposition of animal and plant material.” And some of the most miniscule of our cottage-country beasts—including minute…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

HERE IS WHAT I’ve learned. If you walk through the forest not looking for fungi, you probably won’t see them. You won’t see their tiny spores swirling through the air, searching for a friendly place to land, a place to grow—even though their spores outnumber every other living particle in the air. You won’t see their mycelial threads that stitch the soil together under your feet and weave themselves into some of the largest and oldest organisms on earth—even though these interweavings among plants and roots are what makes life on land possible. You won’t see these not-animal, not-vegetable creatures hunting for nutrients in soil and rock, deciding (yes, deciding) which trees will get vital nutrients and when. And you might not even see their gorgeous fruit: the mushrooms that…

On Facebook, we posted a story about why you should be drinking boxed wine at the cottage. John Sharpe was quick to respond: “My wine is boxed. The box just happens to have a dozen bottles in it.” A family jewel The piece on the Stevens family and their unique island rock chair (“One Hundred Years in the Making,” Aug/Sept ’19) really stuck with me. While we do love the comfort and look of the traditional Muskoka chair, and we have many versions of it, I was most intrigued to read about the changes that the Stevens family has made to it. We wish we could sit a bit more upright in our chairs so that we can read with our heads resting on the back, and, as we age,…

Q: We live in Buffalo, N.Y., and we have a cottage in Barry’s Bay, Ont. Because of COVID-19, we were unable to get to our cottage in 2020. How bad is it for our 18-hp outboard—we leave it in an unheated shed—to sit for almost two years?—Micheal Tokarczyk, via email A: It’s not good. But it’s not that bad. Assuming it was put away properly, an engine could last for about two years, says Chris Pahnke of Inlet Marine Repairs in Port Moody, B.C. “If you left it for 20 years…that would be a completely different story.” Still, Murphy’s Law tells us that lots of things could happen over the course of two years: the blades of the water pump impeller could dry out, harden, and crack; moisture could cause…

Being present in the past I just finished reading “On the Shores of a Lake Like Yours or Mine…” by Katherine Laidlaw (Winter ’23). Many of us know of stories like this one, but this article is beautifully written and doesn’t sugar coat. As many of you are probably aware, we Jews right now are not okay. It is a dark era for us. Both world clashes and local events have led us to a place where our paranoias are coming alive. It is so important to highlight past immoralities, such as anti-semitism and racism, in order to project current thinking that these will no longer be acceptable. This type of story is so welcome at this point in time, and we thank you.—Dave Manson, via email I’d love to…

The Kijiji ad gave the impression of a trapper’s shack that a tornado dropped on the site of an ancient ruin. Jeremiah Johnson meets Judy Garland meets Indiana Jones. Clad in faded half-log and all of 320 square feet, it hunched on a small rise between granite outcrops. Linking it to the water and a few rough outbuildings, meanwhile, were a series of sunken paths, stone ledges, and enough slab steps lurching here and there to suggest the remnants of a vanished civilization. A friend’s son would later, while ascending one of these mossy, kinking inclines, liken the scene to Machu Picchu. Panache Lake cabin. Those three browser words were the sum of my real estate search. I got this whim one night to see if there was anything that…

Q: This summer, near our cottage, there were a few fires where cigarette butts were deemed to be the cause. I’m concerned that some people on our lake don’t understand the dangers of improper cigarette butt disposal. How should people be disposing of used cigarettes at the lake, where the vegetation can get tinder-dry in the summer? —Jolene Macfarlane, via email A: You have a valid concern. Cigarettes don’t account for the majority of fires, but they certainly account for some of them. In the summer of 2019, for example, seven Vancouver Island fires over the course of seven days were attributed to discarded cigarette butts. Part of the problem is that a butt can appear as if it’s extinguished, but if it lands on burnable material, it can still…

WHAT COULD I use to get rid of the sour smell on our dog, a lake-loving labradoodle? He has no other health issues. The smell only appears after he starts swimming non-stop in the lake. —Diana Spetz, VIA E-MAIL Unfortunately, it’s not an easy stench to banish, say our experts, and it’s especially rank when the dog is wet. “I know exactly what she’s talking about,” says Ruth Goodwin, the owner of Aragon Pet Grooming in Seguin Township. “It tends to happen in this area, especially when the water warms up.” Fido’s fur coat, which traps bacteria and organic matter from the water, is the problem. “Dog hair is quite conducive to absorbing stuff,” explains Jeff Simmons, a vet at Peterborough Pet Hospital. Goodwin recommends you keep your pooch’s fur…

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…

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…

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…

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…

life in pictures flight take Warren Lowe, Green Lake, B.C. How they got the shot Warren is an avid bird photographer. Last spring, a heron landed in a tree near his cottage, and he jumped to grab his Sony A9 camera. He took a high-speed sequence of photos and captured this heron just as it took flight. Sorting through the shots, Warren loved the framing of this one. “It was a lucky coincidence that the heron took off when it did,” he says. “I try to capture my love for the subject and share that as a story with others.” What makes it a winner Our judges see a lot of herons in the photo contest, but never like this. Usually the bird is stoic and poised, standing on the…

IF SOMEONE HAD told you in late 2019 that a virus first spotted in China would create unprecedented demand for cottage real estate in Canada, would you have believed them? Because that’s what we saw: a mass exodus north during the pandemic. From 2020 to 2022, cottage prices across the country jumped an eye-popping 39 per cent, with waterfront properties reaching an aggregate price of $736,900, up from $498,111, according to Royal LePage. Limited inventory sparked bidding wars that sent prices well over asking. Buyers snapped up properties without setting foot on them, foregoing home inspections to make offers more appealing. And cottage rentals were booked 365 days a year. It was a good time to be a cottage owner. But then the fog of the pandemic cleared. Offices recalled…

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…

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…

Q: “Everyone in my family brings their old stuff to the cottage. Basically any used item they don’t need gets sent up to the lake. They think they are making contributions, but I feel like I’m the only one who sees this stuff piling up. Who needs three hot-air popcorn poppers? My sister just dragged in a child-sized ceramic garden gnome because it has ‘kitsch factor.’ How can I stop this madness?” A: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” specifically refers to cottage “givers,” those generous friends, family, and relative strangers who selflessly donate second- and third-hand goods to their favourite weekend places. Pretty much every cottager does this, but when taken to extremes, it can turn a lakeside retreat into a landfill for multiple threadbare sofas,…

OUR COTTAGE lot covers 2.6 acres and is mostly wooded. What is the right size of chainsaw (14", 16", or 18") for maintaining the property? Is there a rule that correlates the saw length to the diameter of trees you are cutting? —JIM LONG, VIA E-MAIL There’s no rule except “the shorter the blade you can get away with, the better,” says Robin Wells, the co-owner of Simcoe Muskoka Tree Services. Anything with a 16" bar is large enough. Of course, while chainsaws are good for serious brush clearing and tree removal, they’re not so useful for pruning because they’re heavy and awkward. “For most pruning, a chainsaw’s a little big,” says Wells. And “it’s not a tool designed for the best-quality cut.” So think about investing in some additional…

Q: “Every year all kinds of stuff appears on the shoreline at my cottage. Mostly it’s junk, but one time I found a perfectly good canoe that I returned to a family across the lake. Did I really have to? Can I just keep things that wash up on my beach?” A: A non-scientific survey of cottage people I know reveals that just about every cottager has been the recipient of random flotsam and jetsam. Some of the usual suspects, like waterlogged fishing bobbers and crispy pool noodles are just plain crap. The rest run the gamut from the good (a shiny new cooler) to the bad (soiled diapers) to the ugly (a dead terrier, the top of a human skull). I spent a good part of my cottage childhood…

THIS IS A CRAZY THING TO ADMIT on the pages of this magazine, but we never really saw ourselves as cottagers. Too much work, we told ourselves. The city is great in the summer! Plus, we love to travel. For years—no, decades—we were such reliable guests at our friends’ cottage on Lake Huron that the tent they pitched every summer in the dunes had become known as the von Yurt. That was until our two kids had grown to the point where they no longer had long summer vacations to travel with us. And the notion of travelling in the summer to increasingly hot and crowded European capitals started to seem less appealing than the prospect of chilling out with a good book by a lake. And then, in March…

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…

Do I have an LDD allergy? Q: We had an infestation of LDD moths at the lake this year, and I broke out in an itchy rash on the back of my neck. At first I thought that it was mosquito bites. Was it the caterpillars? Am I allergic?—Dwayne Nickel, via email A: It’s certainly possible that the LDD moth caterpillars caused the itchiness. “The reaction is not caused by a bite or sting from the caterpillar; the caterpillar hairs themselves carry histamine as a defense mechanism,” says Yuka Asai, an associate professor in the Division of Dermatology with the Queen’s University Department of Medicine. “So if you come in contact with the hair, it can provoke a hive-like reaction that looks like insect bites.” This is more common on…

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…

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…

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…

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…