IN THE MID-2000S, Ellie Thiessen’s friends bought a cottage on Kushog Lake, Ont. As a regular visitor, Ellie, the general manager of a bookstore in Newmarket, Ont., quickly fell in love with cottage life. “The water was clean and great for swimming,” says Ellie. “And it’s a reasonable distance from the city.” From 2017 to 2019, Ellie rented a cottage on the lake with her family, including her two sisters, Tena, the director of operations for a staffing company in Toronto, and Linda, a dog walker, also in Toronto.
By mid-2019, Ellie proposed to her sisters that the three of them go in on buying a cottage. “I thought she was nuts,” says Linda. The trio of sisters already owned condos or homes and didn’t think they could afford a…
