Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2021 i Cottage Life

A little T-L-Sea “Every animal counts.” That’s the motto of Dr. Marty Haulena and his team as they head out to find and treat some of the most iconic and vulnerable creatures in the sea. Wild Pacific Rescue premieres April 14 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on the Cottage Life channel, which you can watch in free preview until May 2nd. Find your channel at tv.cottagelife.com. Weather the storm Chances are you’ve seen some wild weather in cottage country—but not like this. The Weather Files: Total Impact tells the stories of people who work in extreme weather and the storms they’ll never forget. Plus, experts explain the how and why behind the world’s worst weather. You can stream it now by starting your free trial on the Apple TV app. Breakfast,…

A breath of fresh air Uitwaaien The Dutch practice of going outside to let go of the bad air and breathe in the good. SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE: stress relief, feeling invigorated, and boosting one’s general health A peek inside I am the happy owner of every single issue of Cottage Life magazine. My favourite features always involve a look inside someone’s cottage. Thank you for showing us “A Little Basket on the Beach” (Mar/Apr ’21). I love this charming cabin.—Sandra Foy, Redstone Lake, Ont. Karen von Hahn has done a beautiful job of preserving our now 75-year-old cottage in “A Little Basket on the Beach.” I say “our” because in 1946, the year I was born, my parents, the Gordons from Stratford, had our Lake Huron cottage built. (Your…

ÖTILLÖ. AN UNFAMILIAR WORD that’s almost as much fun to say as it is to do. It’s Swedish for “island to island;” legend has it that it started as a wager between four tipsy friends as to who could run and swim the fastest across the fjords of Sweden’s coastline. The sport is simple. You swim across a body of water, then get out and run along a trail or a road to the next place to swim. I did my first official event in 2019, near my cottage on West Hawk Lake, Man., along with my niece and her partner. We were excited for a rematch in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled all such events. So, we decided to continue our own impromptu Ötillös on our cottage weekends.…

This is batty Holy colony, Batman! Earlier this year, renovators in Unity, Sask., found nearly 400 bats hibernating in the attic of a curling rink. A wildlife removal service spent most of February carefully extricating the 386 big brown bats—a common species—placing them in plastic tubs, and transporting them to a wildlife rehabilitator. There, staff gave the bats water and fed them mealworms to replenish the fat stores they’d lost. The goal was to—shh, go back to sleep now—encourage the bats to return to hibernation. Injection of hope There could be a new preventative shot on the horizon. (It’s not a vaccine. Because it’s not always about you, COVID-19.) Late last year, a Lyme disease-preventing drug was approved for human clinical trials; the first trial began early this year in…

ROD Inspect the inside of the top guide for nicks or cracks. Even a slight abrasion here can cut your line, especially when a fish is pulling hard. Worn top guides can’t be fixed, but they’re cheap and easy to replace. Wipe down the connection points on multi-piece rods, and rub them with candle wax so the sections fit together and come apart easily. REEL Beyond keeping sand and grit from getting into the housing—as in, don’t drop it on the beach or drag it through dirt—most reels require little maintenance. But, if the handle or the spool isn’t running smoothly, lubricate it with a drop of light machine oil. A more likely trouble spot is your line. Both time and UV exposure significantly degrade monofilament fishing line. If it…

PETER TWIST, WHO LED THE Vancouver Canucks’ strength and conditioning program for 11 years and now trains high-level athletes at Twist Performance + Wellness in B.C.’s lower mainland, has some pre-season advice for weekend warriors planning a major building project. “The repetitive hammering and sawing of cottage repairs usually affects your shoulders and lower back,” he says. By training those areas, starting at least two weeks beforehand, you’ll also work your arms, hips, and legs, “so you get a good full-body effect.” Concentrate on mobility—“that’s flexibility in motion, like yoga plus movement,” says Twist—using slow, gentle exercises that get your hips low and your torso tall. For example, go deep into a squat and then reach for the sky when you come up, he suggests. Try changing your foot position…

Q: “I have the misfortune of living on a gorgeous little lake. Neighbours crowd their swim rafts around our dock, making it unpleasant and challenging to swim. They don’t care. Are there any rules about where you can put a raft? How close can it be to a neighbour’s dock?” A: Let me get this straight: you own a cottage on a gorgeous little lake—one that many people would give up some bone marrow to rent for a few weeks, especially during COVID-19. But your entire waterfront experience has been ruined by encroaching swim rafts? As in, adults and children splashing about and having fun? I’m having trouble imagining how swim rafts could be “crowded” around your dock. Is the water too shallow everywhere else? I also can’t figure out…

*We did not just make this up. This was based on your social media feedback. 10 Check the mouse traps. 9 Fill up the beer fridge. 8 Turn on the water. Pray that there are no plumbing problems. 7 Deal with the inevitable plumbing problems. 6 Celebrate not finding any mouse corpses by drinking a big glass of wine. 5 Read the log book from last summer. Try to decipher your own penmanship. 4 Set up the dock chairs; sit down for a moment. 3 Yell to the neighbours, “I’m not coming near you unless you’ve had the vaccine! But nice to see you again!” 2 Jump in the lake even if the water is cold as reverse hell. 1 Smile. Because—aww yeah!— you’re at the cottage again.…

DEPENDING ON THE LOCATION OF YOUR COTTAGE, sourcing speedy Wi-Fi is a challenge. But don’t worry: a new form of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet technology is set to improve things. “It will mean fast, affordable, and reliable broadband, everywhere, including cottage country,” says Michele Beck, the vice-president of North American sales for Telesat, a global satellite operator with headquarters in Canada. Most existing satellite internet providers use Geostationary satellites that deliver slower speeds with several downsides, for example, “lags” that can make working from the cottage frustrating—especially if you need to make video calls. In comparison, LEO satellites sit closer to earth and rotate around it. While this means thousands of satellites are needed to create a constellation capable of blanketing the world, it also means faster speeds and…

The search: 52-year-old Chatham, Ont., resident Shari Blackburn has always had a connection with the outdoors. She spent her childhood swimming on Lake Erie, and as a single mom, she passed her love of nature to her son, Tim. She’d take him kayaking and hiking, but it was after she began renting a friend’s cottage in Bracebridge, Ont., that they both developed a fondness for Muskoka. “It was so beautiful and peaceful,” says Shari. “I dreamt of buying a cottage there by the time I was 50.” Whenever she made the five-hour drive up from Chatham, Shari would check out local listings. While the average Muskoka cottage sells for approximately $1,000,000, her budget was $350,000. Shari works as an HR manager at Barry Callebaut, a chocolate manufacturer, but she still…

RON CONWAY LOVES heading out on the lake in his 1989 Springbok pontoon boat at his Donaldson Lake, Que., property, but its engine guzzled gas and had no electric start. “If my son wasn’t here to help with the pull start, I couldn’t use the boat,” says Ron, who’s retired and has been on the lake for more than 50 years. Not one to be stuck on land, Ron dreamed of a solar-powered motor that wouldn’t require him to lift an engine or gas cans. “I knew there were boats with electric outboard motors, so I thought ‘why can’t I do that with my pontoon?’” Ron purchased a kit, which included the solar panel and controller, for less than $500 from Renogy and an electric motor for about $400 from…

FOR YEARS, LAURIE BARBER and her husband, Joe Favero, worried about rot under their cottage. Bought by Laurie’s grandfather in the 1940s on a sloping lot, the cottage was sinking into 80 years’ worth of wet silt accumulated from runoff. But when Joe’s foot went through the floorboards of a back bedroom, they grabbed a camera and finally got a look below. It was worse than they expected. There was extensive rot in the sill plates and joists in the rear underside of the cottage. Whether it was built in 1940 or 2010, your cottage may also be suffering from a feeble foundation. Before you start digging, it pays to understand what’s going on underneath your cottage and what your options are for fixing it. What contributing factors lead to…

DECEIVING APPEARANCES are the key to preservation for untold numbers of black- and-yellow-striped patrons of spring wildflowers and gardens. Flower flies, though fearsomely attired like bees and wasps, neither sting nor bite. Numbering several hundred species in Canada, they are, in truth, among the most beneficent of all insects. FLOWER FLIES RANK second only to bees as pollinators of both native plants and many important crops. Most preferring large, wide, white or yellow flowers, they lack a bee’s efficiency, but make up for it by visiting and pollinating more blooms. They also like to forage in cooler conditions, when there are fewer bees about, and are the most abundant pollinators in alpine meadows and the Arctic. THOUGH THEY HAVE only two wings, rather than a bee or wasp’s four, flower…

It’s what’s inside that counts FOR ALWAYS AND EVER, all of the buildings at our family cottage were clad in white clapboard with brown roofs. It was the trademark of the place: each new structure would look the same regardless of when it was built. And, about 35 years after the first building went up—the cottage itself—you can bet everything needed a coat of paint. You can also bet that this was a job that no one was jumping up to get done during our precious weekend downtime. So neither I nor any of my adult siblings could complain when we arrived one Friday night to discover that my mother, the actual owner of the cottage, had painted it bright blue without asking anyone else for their particular opinion on…

TIM DODD WAS always happiest on Panache Lake, Ont., where he canoed, barbecued, and busied himself in his cottage workshop. Six years ago, Tim crafted an eight-foot replica of a pirate ship to mark his water intake. The three-masted barque (right), complete with mermaid figurehead, became a fun and striking landmark for cottagers all over the lake. Sadly, Tim died last summer at age 74 from a heart attack at camp. He was fetching a few tools when he collapsed. Family members took turns performing chest compressions at camp and during the 15-minute boat trip to the marina; another 10 minutes elapsed before the ambulance arrived. Tim was resuscitated but never regained consciousness, dying two days later in the hospital. His three adult kids decided the best way to honour…

SOLAR STAKE LIGHTS ARE GREAT for gently lighting a pathway—provided they can be stuck in the ground. But the path from my cottage to the water is mostly rock, which is tough going for plastic stakes. My initial solution was to build a tripod support. This worked okay, but on uneven surfaces the lights had a wonky lean. Then I remembered Weebles, the toy figures that “wobble but don’t fall down.” Their weighted, hemispherical base causes them to return upright when pushed over. My lights now behave the same way, using a cement base that’s weighty and weather resistant. I use these lights everywhere, including on the short trail out to our sunset-viewing spot and on the dock where they can be gathered up for winter storage. Any spherical container…

Q: Could mice chewing on strike-anywhere matches start a fire in the cottage?—Christopher Marks, via email A: First question: are mice likely to chew on matches? “I guess like any other gnawing rodent, there is a chance that a mouse would chew into a cardboard matchbox,” says Gary Ure of Second Nature Wildlife Management in Gananoque, Ont. “A match head is pretty abrasive, so maybe coincidentally it’s just another object to gnaw on.” Second question: are mice likely to chew on matches and start a fire? “I’ve never heard of this,” says Ryan Murrell, the fire chief of Ontario’s Township of Muskoka Lakes. Neither has any other fire official that we talked to. Strike-anywhere match heads contain phosphorus, and “I would not think that rodents would be attracted to it.…

IT’S EASY TO SEE WHY SOME WATERFRONT PROPERTY owners shake their fists at wakeboats: they’re upset at the boats that rumble by blaring tunes and making towering wakes that crash onto shore, causing erosion and stirring up sediment, damaging docks, and sometimes even making the water unsafe for swimmers and other boaters. But it’s also easy to see why so many cottagers love them: they allow a variety of watersports that aren’t possible with traditional cottage boats. That includes wakesurfing, a sport that’s eclipsed waterskiing and wakeboarding in popularity in many areas, where enthusiasts ride waves on a compact board directly behind the boat, without a tow rope. In recent years, the tension between those who operate wakeboats and those who are raising alarm about their excessive use has risen.…

This DIY guest wall complements the organic feel of Catherine Byers and Lynn Richards’ off-grid cottage on Miner Lake, Ont. “There is a lot of birch on our property, so every summer I collect the fallen pieces off the ground and set them up in a basket with Sharpies,” says Catherine. “It’s become a competition for our guests—who can create the fanciest name card.” The idea originated at the couple’s previous cabin where guests recorded their names on slips of paper that they pinned to the wall. “The paper yellowed and would curl up quickly,” says Catherine. The birch bark is sturdier. “I love that our guest book becomes art for everyone to see.” Share your guest “book” photos on Instagram with #cottagelifesub or email us at edit@cottagelife.com.…