A true classic boat Your Sept/Oct ’25 cover photo of cottage life nostalgia is a lovely collage, but it’s missing a Canadian classic: the canoe. Thanks for sharing those memories. —Susan Lloyd, via email We can’t be-leaf it! We always look forward to receiving our copy of Cottage Life to find out what little gems the articles hold for us and how they give us a broader education of natural dynamics, both historical and current. In the Sept/Oct ’25 edition, we were drawn to the leaf schematics in “You Better Be-leaf It” (Waterfront). The illustrations are wonderful, by the way. However, we couldn’t help but notice that the leaf schematic of the beech and the largetooth aspen leaves are incorrectly presented. The beech leaf has been labelled as largetooth aspen,…
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…
IT’S A WARM summer evening, and a young girl—four, maybe five, years old—lies on a blanket staring through binoculars at a star-studded northern sky. Her dad, a science teacher, is next to her, pointing out the galaxy Andromeda. “As far back as I can remember,” Katharine Hayhoe says, “my father was teaching me about the natural world, having us memorize the bird species we’d see or looking for rare wildflowers or peering through the giant telescope that we dragged with us on most of our family vacations.” Family vacations usually revolved around astronomical events, like the time in 1986 when they drove to the Outer Banks in North Carolina to see Halley’s Comet. She admits her father, Doug, “is a little obsessed with the stars.” The family cottage bears that…
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…
IT was A fresh, early fall day when Barry Sampson and Judi Coburn arrived at Beech Lake in Haliburton, Ont., to find their cottage hoisted 11 feet in the air. A simple faux-log structure, the one-and-a-half-storey building was perched high on four stacked wooden cribs, looking a bit like a dignified older lady who’s lifted up her skirt and found herself revealing bare legs underneath. “I actually felt sorry for the building,” Judi, a novelist and retired teacher, says with a laugh. “It seemed humiliated with its underside exposed.” Barry saw it a bit differently. “I had a sense of the old cottage up there like a sentry, seeing views it had never seen before,” he recalls. A retired University of Toronto architecture professor and a principal architect at Baird Sampson…
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…
AS A KID WHO SPENT ALL SUMMER AT THE COTTAGE, the annual arrival of the Canadian National Exhibition carried double-edged significance. On one hand, it promised fun and excitement, unchecked gluttony at the food hall, and the terrifying possibility of vomiting on one of the loud and violent rides. But it also meant summer was officially over and soon it would be time for the drudgery of school. When the CNE opened, cottage-land—the best amusement park ever invented—closed for the season. I have now lived full-time in cottage-land for a little over 20 years, much of that working at a small business where cottagers were our regular customers, along with local neighbours, travellers, and tourists from all points on the map. This year it was a COVID-19 bust, but normally,…
Q: Your recipes often call for kosher salt. Do I really have to use it?—Jordan Richard, via email A: Well, no. But, as you probably have figured out, recipe developers often prefer it over table salt. So do chefs. “I tell my students not to use table salt,” says Paul McGreevy, a chef and instructor with the Culinary Arts program at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary. Why? “Table salt generally contains more than just salt. It has anti-clumping agents, and sugar, believe it or not.” It also, of course, contains iodine; a diet deficient in iodine is the most common cause of goitres—enlarged thyroid glands. “But I don’t use table salt, and I don’t have any goitres,” says McGreevy. (For the record, you can get iodine from…
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…
AS WE BUILT our new home in cottage country, my husband, Robin, a healthy 30-something, often joked with visitors to our construction site that he planned to “die in this house.” In addition to planning features for our golden years—wheelchair-accessible doors and showers—we chose building materials that we hoped would “see us out.” This was only somewhat ambitious. “The average lifespan of a house ranges from 50 to 100 years,” says Russell Richman, a professor of building science at Toronto Metropolitan University. Much like our own longevity, a building’s life can be extended by making good choices: thoughtful design, quality workmanship, regular maintenance, and durable building materials. Building for the long run can not only save you money and time on replacement and repairs, but it also has lasting environmental…
CALL IT A real estate light bulb moment. When Peter Mogl-Maclean and Paula Washington began looking for land on which to build a cottage in Nova Scotia in 2020, Peter realized many otherwise prime coastline views were blocked by hills or trees. “I said to Paula, ‘There’s a lot of undervalued real estate if we recognize that our first floor should be 30 feet in the air,’ ” he says, with a laugh. The joke soon evolved into an exploration of, “What if?” After a year-long search, the couple found a narrow, 15-acre property that fit their budget near Broad Cove, a small community about 45 minutes south of Lunenburg. The land was littered with blown-down trees, but Peter and Paula could see the property’s potential. To know for sure,…
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…
A STAIRCASE MIGHT be one of the most ancient creations in the history of human-built structures; experts believe the concept of stairs is at least 8,000 years old. The concept of cottage stairs—the kind we need to, say, navigate the long trip from the deck down to the dock—is, of course, much younger. And even though all stairs still follow the same basic ergonomic requirements that French engineer François Blondel described way back in the 17th century (the correct relationship between stair riser and tread gives the most comfortable and safest step—thanks for that, buddy!), building a great set of stairs at the lake is more than just perfectly calculated math. Here are five pro tips to step up your step game. François B. would have given them the thumbs…
WHILE PEOPLE RARELY romanticize studio apartments, a one-room cabin in the woods has an entirely different magic. Sure, it’s important to have a place to hide out when it’s raining or a spot where you can escape from your family for a while, but when the sun is shining and your setting is the great outdoors, sometimes a sophisticated little shack is all you—or your guests—really need. Here, we tour three well-designed retreats that address the bare necessities in one scaled-down living space. ’Ome Pod They say you can’t go home again. And yet, as comedian Shaun Majumder rose to fame as a cast member on This Hour Has 22 Minutes from 2003 to 2018, he found himself thinking about building a rental property back in his hometown of Burlington,…
THERE ARE EXACTLY three kinds of people who buy a cottage. The first kind is the one who pays. They buy newer properties, boats, and toys, and for what little upkeep or repairs are required, they shell out for them. The second kind is the one who came to the cottage without any idea whatsoever what they were getting into. This person doesn’t or can’t pay for help until they absolutely must and simply muddles along with half-broken things until they are beyond salvaging or until they break and quit the cottage forever (that’d be me). The third kind is someone like my father-in-law. These are fixers, the do-it-yourselfers, the people who see all the work there is to do around the house and say, “I need more of this,…
Hidden in plain sight Julia Pittman, 31, and her husband, Adam, 37, spent years looking for the right cabin. Like many young urbanites, they were renting in the city and ready to buy, but wanted to skip the house and go for a cottage. “I searched every day,” says Julia. “I thought I had looked at everything within three hours of Toronto, but somehow missed this one.” It was a score: a road-access, two-bedroom, four-season cottage right on the water, two and a half hours from the city, with no major renos required—for only $200,000. Adam found it in an area they had overlooked, on the Moira River, near Tweed, Ont. The best part of all? It was an A-frame, Julia’s favourite. “I love the slanted walls, the loft-like feel,”…
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 we lived in Saskatoon in the 1980s, my wife, Jessie, and I kept hearing tales of a lake lost in time, where picture-perfect cabins and charm-drenched cottages slumbered among the pines, their clocks stuck at 1926. A few people claimed to have seen this place, but no one could give us directions or even reasonable coordinates. They had a name—Round Lake—but maps showed only one body of water of that description, and it was in the south, not up north in the forest belt, where these people said they had been. We found ourselves wondering if these witnesses were completely reliable. Gosh, were mushrooms involved? A blindfolded ride in the back of a panel van? Then one day: revelation. A new acquaintance not only knew of the lake but…
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…
This column by CL founding editor (and legend), Ann Vanderhoof, first appeared in our Apr/May ’92 issue OUTHOUSES AREN’T JUST buildings—they are the stuff of cottage lore. Almost every cottager with a privy has a good tale to tell about it. One of my favourites comes courtesy of a phone-in radio show I was a guest on a couple of years ago. The host and I were discussing the joys and problems of cottaging, and a gentleman phoned in and told us this story. (He never specified whether it fell into the joys or problems category.) One summer night, a member of his family headed for the outhouse, carrying one of those flashlights where the light attaches the big rectangular six-volt battery underneath. While he went about his business the…
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…
“We’d rather cut our hands off than drive through traffic up to the cottage.” This is what Yannick and Shantelle Bisson would tell each other when the subject of buying came up. “We’re not cottage people,” they’d say. “We don’t have the time.” Yannick is often on set for 12-hour days on cBc’s long-running Murdoch Mysteries, while Shantelle has been writing a parenting book. But everything changed one evening at a friend’s place on Chandos Lake, Ont. “Every night at dinnertime they had this beautiful sunset,” says Yannick. “That was it.” Soon after, the couple bought a lot from a nearby cottager. Suddenly, as of July 2017, the Bissons were cottage people. Out of the woods Land procured, the Bissons turned their thoughts to designing their ideal cottage. Their ethos:…
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…
All in on PFDs WAY BACK IN 2007, I took a boating course as part of an assignment for this magazine. The idea was that I, a relatively inexperienced boat driver, would write about what it was like to learn. On the morning of the course, I was driving to the marina, counting my blessings that my job afforded me a day on the water, when my phone rang. It was then-editor of CL, Penny Caldwell, reminding me to wear a PFD in the photography that would accompany the story. Really? I asked her. Do I have to? It just seemed so…dorky. And I knew that wearing a PFD wasn’t required by law, and, besides, no one really does that, and it’s uncomfortable, and I was in my twenties and…
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,…
GEORGEVILLE AND GEORGEVILLE. Those are the answers to the where and why of the story behind this cottage. Georgeville—a charming village on the shores of Lake Memphremagog in Quebec’s Eastern Townships—also happens to be a big part of how it all happened. Leigh Partington and her husband, Mark Smith, built their modern-yet-uncompromisingly-comfortable 900-sq.-ft. cabin on a sprawling piece of land that had belonged to Leigh’s aunt Mary on her dad’s side. But that’s just the start. Leigh grew up here, and the Partingtons have been around almost as long as Georgeville itself. There’s a street named after them, and Leigh’s dad and grandfather, owners of a local construction company, have built about 80 homes in the area. Mark first fell in love with Georgeville when he worked as a teen…
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…
Q: I was out for a skate on the lake one weekend last winter when I came upon these markings. The distance between the prints is approximately three metres. They went on for kilometres, but eventually disappeared into the forest. Any idea what animal made them? Was it dragging something? Or was it maybe sliding across the lake?—Dan Bedard, Big Rideau Lake, Ont. A: Your second guess is correct. “The photo is definitely of slide marks made by an otter,” says Franco Mariotti, a biologist formerly with Science North in Sudbury, Ont. “They’re well known for sliding across frozen lakes.” And their slide marks can look like drag marks because of the way the otter moves across the snowy surface. It bounds, slides as far as it can go, gets…
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…
1 how to keep warm is job how to build and maintain a lasting fire in the fireplace THE KEY TO a roaring blaze is the “fire triangle”—heat, fuel, and oxygen—and people often forget one element, says Daniel Kimia, the managing director at Zoroast The Fireplace Store in Toronto. “Usually, it’s not leaving enough room for airflow,” he says, adding that kindling or chemical firestarters are better than newspaper to start and keep a fire going. They catch quickly and don’t burn out as fast. Choose seasoned hardwood such as oak, maple, or beech, that’s been dry for at least six months. “Hit two pieces of wood together. A solid, hollow sound means they’re dry,” says Kimia. Don’t pile on too much wood at once. Arrange kindling in a teepee shape for maximum…
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…
ADMIT IT, COTTAGERS. Your breakfasts are boring. If you’re making bacon and eggs every morning, it’s not a treat anymore; it’s a routine. Every weekend only has two breakfasts; don’t miss an opportunity to make them special. There’s a very cottagey solution to serving a morning meal that’s easy, delicious, and unforgettable—the barbecue. All the reasons a barbecue works for dinner apply to breakfast: everything cooks in one spot, cleanup is simple, it’s social, and—best of all—you can have that delicious grilled flavour, plus grill marks on your toast, to start the day. And no, a barbecue breakfast doesn’t require getting up at the crack of dawn, unless that’s your thing. With the right recipes and gear, breakfast is fast and easy, whether you’re using propane or charcoal. And for…
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,…
IS COTTAGE REAL ESTATE BECOMING A YOUNG PERSON’S GAME? While boomers still account for the majority of cottage sales, Re/Max’s 2019 Recreational Property Trends survey revealed that even Canadian millennials (roughly aged 24 to 39) are interested in buying a recreational property—56 per cent of them are in the market to purchase, up a full 14 per cent from the previous year. The cottage market is seeing the effects, and prices are rising across Canada. Tofino, B.C., topped the list: waterfront property prices increased by a whopping 80 per cent since 2018, with the average price now at $2.5 million. Collingwood and Blue Mountain, Ont., jumped by 36 per cent. And Prince Edward Island is dominating the Atlantic cottage market, seeing a 15 per cent median price increase. There is…
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…
WE BETTER MAKE a move, Philip Paculaba has decided, as the sky gets even blacker. The men work together, shifting the lechon with the steel-lined bed of burning charcoal deeper into the cover of a weathered tarp strung between the bunkie and a birch tree. When a support stand starts to tip, two of the guys lunge and catch the spit before it can hit the ground. “Even with this janky setup,” announces one, “nothing stops the lechon!” Not even this rain, which is churning the flat surface of Kahshe Lake, Ont., into matte grey felt. With no wind at all, the clouds above stop moving, and we wait as they empty out. While Philip pokes at the coals, his sister Rose arrives. She extends her golf umbrella over Philip,…
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…
SIXTEEN YEARS AGO, Nancy Vidler had a problem. No, she had a challenge. The cottage community where Nancy has a property overlooking Sunfish Bay in Port Franks, Ont., on the southeastern shores of Lake Huron, was dealing with phragmites, an invasive grass that had taken root on the beach. It was choking the area’s wetlands and replacing much of the native vegetation, including the nearby Carolinian forest ecosystem. The challenge wasn’t the phragmites themselves. A committee had been formed to address the invasive when it first appeared in 2009, and the group knew that applying a regulated and approved herbicide could work. Herbicides have their detractors, those who think it’s a scorched-earth strategy that threatens other plants, animals, and the waterways. So Nancy’s challenge became convincing her community to rally…
WENDY COLE WAS in her office in Kalispell, Mont., in December 2021 when a colleague told her that a man was at the front desk with an unusual request. He’d found a radio collar in the bush a short drive west of town, and he wanted to get it back to its owner. By its size, he figured it must have once been fitted on a wolf. It was that hunch that brought him to Cole’s office. She is a wolf and carnivore biologist who works for the Montana state government. She made her way out to the front entrance and got her first look at the collar. It was old, she guessed: its pale webbing was frayed and worn, and it was a VHF (very high frequency) radio collar,…
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…
There’s a light breeze in the air on an unseasonably cool afternoon in mid-August. The milder temperature is a relief for Quinn Sleeman. Decked out in a long-sleeved, red plaid shirt and brown hip waders, he’s clutching a pair of hedge trimmers as he walks down some moss-covered steps that meander through a small thicket of trees. He soon reaches a long wooden boardwalk that cuts through the marshy shore of his family’s Grey County, Ont., cottage with one goal in mind—to harvest the bulrushes that grow there. The weather might be cooperating today, but the late-summer mosquitoes are not. They’re out in full force, but Quinn’s undeterred from his goal. He steps off the wooden boardwalk into the marsh, where the bulrushes are beginning to dry from a grassy…
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.…
Make a splash WATERMELON + VEGETABLE OIL Greasy Watermelon In this classic lakeside game, two teams in the water battle to carry/pass/throw/dunk an oiled watermelon from the centre line past their end zone. PADDLEBOARD Balance Battle For fans of log rolling, two people stand opposite each other on a paddleboard in deep water and try to tip the other off. WATER BALLOONS + TOWELS Mission: Tossable Four people get into pairs and take opposite ends of a towel. Start by throwing a balloon into the air. One pair tries to catch it, then launch it back to the other pair, using only the towel. See how many times you can go back and forth before someone gets soaked! Play with your food DONUTS + STRING Online Donut Eating String up…
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…
PAUL KARIOUK HAS had a thing for bats since he was a kid. “I was Dracula every year for Halloween,” he says. So when Paul, an Ottawa resident who’s an architect by trade, was designing his own off-grid cabin on Lac Brochet, Que. (located about half an hour outside of Wakefield), he felt compelled to make space for more than just himself and his partner, Tony Gioventu, who is the CEO of a non-profit. The cabin would be perfectly positioned to provide shelter for up to a thousand of the tiny creatures, thanks to bat boxes attached to the support system underneath the 20-metre-high structure. Brown bats can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes in an hour, which can contribute to significantly more comfortable summer evenings. “Anything we can do to…
Dear Cottage Life It was my first time making ribs, and I followed your crumb-crusted ribs recipe (“The Crust Belt,” May ’16) to the letter. They turned out amazing—so tender and delicious. Thank you! They will no doubt become an (easy) cottage favourite.—ONT. Jane Corbiel, Lake Muskoka SKEWERED I was astonished at the predominance of the words “grill” and “grilling” in your May ’16 issue. Is this not a Canadian magazine? As far as I know, in Canada we “barbecue” on a “barbecue” and leave the “grilling” to the Americans. On a recent trip to Mexico, I met a lady from South Carolina who acknowledged this difference in vocabulary and was eager to explain to me that “barbecue” in South Carolina is the name for a particular style of cooking.…
LET’S BE HONEST: most trailers are dated at best, downright ugly at worst. Enter two creative owners who were able to make their spaces sing on a tiny budget. Carey Shaw, a photographer in Saskatoon, uses her early ’80s Prowler as a “tin cabin” retreat that’s permanently parked near Saskatchewan’s Last Mountain Lake. Lija Skobe, a director of fundraising and events for a Toronto-based nonprofit, treats her camper as a guesthouse addition to the cottage that she shares with her brother on Balsam Lake, Ont. Both prove that trailers are trending in the right direction. Rustic cabin meets Palm Springs The story of this summer getaway begins with an offer that Carey Shaw couldn’t refuse. Her friend was selling his trailer and spot at a private campground where she grew…
AT THE COTTAGE, a barbecue doesn’t just add to the kitchen; for much of the year, a barbecue replaces the kitchen. It’s a workhorse, not a show pony—for our money, long-lasting strength and practicality matter more than flashy extras, especially since we all forget sometimes to clean it, cover it, or treat it as we should. But the best part, the secret you need not share? Even though a good barbecue can handle every meal and almost every part of a meal, using one never feels like a real chore. Grilling only looks like work—it’s as much a part of cottage fun as the lake, the deck, and the first sip of a cold Chilcano. We’ve put together two easy meals from two countries where barbecue gatherings rule. Join us…
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…
BY THE TIME HER birthday rolls around in late August, Christina Jones has been at her island cottage since mid-June, mostly by herself, and basically marooned. There’s a kayak and a rowboat, but the septuagenarian is at the end of Baie Fine—a freshwater fjord culminating in the Pool, a lake-like pocket surrounded by Killarney Provincial Park—and the nearest marina, the one that taxied her in here, is some 20 kilometres away. Cell coverage is iffy, at best, and Christina typically can’t be bothered even trying. The days have bobbed along, borne on the rhythms of reading and knitting, of fetching water from the lake, of visits from kingfishers and snapping turtles. Often it’s enough to simply gaze at the circumvallate hills, chalky in colour but harder than marble, not to…
Trailer park joys The backstory: Growing up in a working-class Toronto family in the 1970s, Susana Martinez didn’t have many opportunities to vacation in rural Ontario. “We couldn’t afford to rent a cottage, let alone buy one,” she says. But when she was 10, her parents splurged on an all-inclusive stay at Elgin House, a lakeside resort on Lake Joseph, Ont. Susana, now a 53-year-old client service administrator for a Toronto wealth management company, has fond memories of waterskiing and long nature hikes from that rare childhood trip. “I fell in love with the calming effect of being near the water,” she says. Years later, she was keen to share those same experiences with her husband, Ben Bull, a 53-year-old IT security consultant, and her four kids. In 2008, they…
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…
AT FIRST GLANCE, the board and batten-clad barn next to interior designer Emily Griffin’s cottage on Balsam Lake, Ont., is a bit of an enigma. Is it a new building or an old one that’s been renovated? The answer, it turns out, is both. While the 1,200-sq.-ft. structure was built from scratch in 2019, its salvaged windows and doors (not to mention its furniture, rugs, and staircase) date back much further. In fact, tracing all their origins maps out Emily’s family tree. In the late 1800s, Emily’s great-great grandfather, Sir William Mackenzie (one of the founding figures behind Canada’s railway system), purchased a 600-acre plot on Balsam Lake. Emily’s grandparents, Kitty and Tony, inherited the property and the main residence’s icehouse. Later on, they divided up the remaining land into…
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…
EVEN THOUGH OUR little cottage is in Ontario, on a craggy cliff overlooking Kawagama Lake, it’s stuffed with Maritime-themed bric-a-brac: an anchor from a lobster fishing boat, crabs fashioned out of wicker, oven mitts in Cape Breton tartan, a shelf of Lucy Maud Montgomery, and a proud puffin in a snow globe. When the temperature drops, we zip into East Coast Lifestyle hoodies. That’s what happens when you marry a Nova Scotian. I found many excuses to use those tartan oven mitts these last few years. In 2020, when our offices and our son Sam’s kindergarten went virtual, our cottage became home. The surrounding forest, with its nodding ferns, darting salamanders, and fluorescent orange fungi, made an excellent schoolyard. And with no commute, I found the extra time to work…
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…
HAPPY WITH HADFIELD Just thought I’d write to let you know how much I liked your last issue. I found the articles, including the feature about Chris Hadfield and his cottage (“His Favourite Space,” Winter ’14/’15), quite informative. I very much enjoy your magazine and look forward to the next issues. —LEAH SPENCER, CARDSTON, ALTA. OR… NOT I couldn’t wait for the Winter ’14/’15 issue of Cottage Life to provide inspiration in terms of recipes and decor. Imagine my surprise when I found Chris Hadfield in shorts and a golf shirt on the cover. While he is an amazing man who has had a tremendous and positive impact on countless proud Canadians, I would rather have read about his first summer at the cottage in many years in, say, a…
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…
FOREST, FERNS, AND LOTS OF BUGS. Mike Kelar’s first memories of his family cottage on Otter Lake, Ont., are of a rugged wildness. There was nothing else there in 1978. Mike was five years old, and his sister, Karen, was eight, when his parents, Stan and Raija, purchased an empty, three-acre lot near Parry Sound. In the following years, the Kelars built a series of small structures on the property—a sauna first (a necessity—Raija is Finnish), then a small cabin and an outhouse. There was no running water or heat, but the family made it a happy summer home for decades. “It was great for my imagination,” says Mike, a graphic designer and the co-founder of Jacknife, a creative branding agency. “There was so much space and time for my…
1 “Born and bred” in the Fenelon Falls area, Adam Kay works for the Trent-Severn Waterway, a division of Parks Canada. In summer months, he serves as a supervisor at Fenelon Falls’ famous Lock 34, allowing the movement of boat traffic—which at peak times can be up to 225 boats per day—between Cameron and Sturgeon Lakes. With the end of boating season in October, the locks are closed, and the role of Parks Canada turns to off-season upkeep. Most importantly, water flow still needs to be managed. “Even though it’s the wintertime, we still have to maintain levels,” Adam says. Using a series of locks and connected “reservoir lakes” that feed into Balsam Lake from as far away as Minden, fifty kilometres to the north, the staff maintain the water levels…
BEFORE WE COULD bury it in the shallow waters behind our small Georgian Bay island, we had to tug the beaver’s corpse to the opposite shore, a marshy area lined by silvery birch trees and guarded by glinting white quartz. The creature had already sunk to the murky bottom, and we were forced to manoeuvre it with the long flukes of an anchor. When we’d finally hauled it into the shallows, my father, brother, and I silently observed the beaver’s powerful tail that looked like a thick paddle and its slick fur that seemed resistant to water. We studied its impressive teeth, long and curved for chewing, coloured a deep, startling orange. There was a sombre mood in my family that day many years ago, but also an undeniable feeling…
reflecting on the back deck—and the quiet whisper of memories FORTY-TWO YEARS ago, I landed on the island as a visitor and passed the pre-spousal cottage test. That meant simply to survive a weekend off-grid and show boundless enthusiasm. Mary and Jack, matriarch and patriarch, did their own thing. And, over the years, they showed me how to do the cottage thing, especially Mary, who was the beating heart of the cottage. When they weren’t down on the dock, my in-laws preferred the back deck. They got up early and drank coffee from bone China cups (after the war, Jack refused to drink from a mug). They folded their lean bodies into creaky metal chairs that faced toward the forest. They watched the morning sun start its grand arc toward…
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…
“COME HOME FROM land, with stone in hand,” said Thomas Tusser, a 16th-century farmer and poet best known for his collection of rhymed agricultural advice, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry. In his time, clearing stones from fields wasn’t just about making the land arable, it was about transforming an obstacle into a resource. Each stone, carried home in a pocket or cart, became the building blocks of walls and pathways. Tusser’s advice came to mind when I began dreaming up a landscape design for our rural home. But choosing the right stone—and knowing how to use it—would require more than just a keen eye and a few cottage guests pressed into service. I had questions. Granite or limestone? Flagstone or pavers? Dry-stack or mortar walls? So, I turned to…
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…