Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2025 i Cottage Life

An early bird special The Cottage Life channel will help you get your day started right. Introducing Dockside Mornings—from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m., we’ll air a marathon of one of your favourite CL shows. One day, you might be whisked high above the ground, asking yourself, “What is that?” with Mysteries from Above. On another, you can picture yourself cruising down epic waterways all around the globe during World’s Most Scenic River Journeys (right). You’ll also find other shows about weather, home and repair, and the outdoors. There’s something for everyone! Find your channel at tv.cottagelife.com. Get the picture? It’s that time of year! The CottageLife Photo Contest opens July 1. Turn to p. 38 to learn how to enter and to see our epic grand prize! Now we’re…

TWO YEARS AGO, after wildfire charred stretches of forest around Fox Creek, Alta., the town knew that it needed to introduce preventative measures. A town employee came across Boulder Mushrooms, a Colorado company that studies the use of fungi to mitigate the spread of wildfires by decomposing wood piles. Intrigued, the town reached out to Michael Schulz, a research chair at Portage College and a member of the Alberta Mycological Society. The hope was that Schulz could perform similar research around Fox Creek and reduce the amount of wildfire fuel close to the community by targeting slash piles and waste wood—stacks of brush and branches produced by commercial logging operations and development. “We’re going to try and figure out ways to inoculate those piles with local species of fungi that…

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…

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

Its ominous name and reputation notwithstanding, chokecherry is top of the menu for wildlife across Canada in late summer. The typically multi-stemmed tall shrub or small tree, averaging two to three metres high, abounds along forest edges, further offering a dense sanctuary for birds and beasts year-round. Fragrant spools of white, late-spring blossoms—attracting hordes of bees, butterflies, beetles, and flies—yield bounties of chokecherries that can turn very dark purple in August and September. As with other fruits that have pits, each pea-sized cherry has a stone that holds a single seed containing the building blocks of cyanide, activated within human stomachs. The pulp itself is edible but bitter and mouth-puckering, though it sweetens with age and frost. Drying and cooking neutralizes poison in the seeds, and, with the addition of…

Jim Stewart For “The Cottager’s Guide to Cloud Collecting” (p. 72), illustrator Jim Stewart based landscapes on cottage memories in Ontario—summer camp on Lake Mazinaw, family cottages in the Kawarthas, and trips to Georgian Bay’s Mink Islands. “The rocks there, on Stalker Island, look soft,” he says. “I love that look.” Jim now spends much of the year painting in Maui. “Tropical skies are different,” he says. In a storm, “they’re blacker than any I’ve seen in Canada. But here we have the extended summer light of early morning and late evening.” While he typically works quickly and loosely—“I’m really an abstract painter”—he studied photos to get the clouds right for our pages. Capturing an ephemeral cirrus cloud is a challenge, says Jim. “Cumulonimbus, on the other hand, are satisfying.…

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…

LAST SUMMER, JACKIE Kelly-Pemberton and her husband, Steven, checked off the last project—if that exists—on their cottage reno to-do list: the outhouse. Since purchasing their off-grid cabin in Ontario’s Central Frontenac area in 2015, they had been using the original pit privy. After nearly a decade, Jackie knew how she wanted to upgrade it. “Glampy” was her goal. “It’s the outdoor experience with a bit of glamour,” she says, and it had been the guiding principle for her entire cottage redesign. To achieve the glampy look in the roughly 8-by-8-foot outhouse, Jackie spent a year sourcing repurposed decorations, the first of which was a collection of old fishing lures (now displayed inside a spoon rack). “I was going through my father-in-law’s fish tackle afterhis passing, and I thought, What do…

LEON HILDEBRANDT’S BEACH bar didn’t come together overnight—but having one at the cottage was always part of the plan. Back in 2015, Leon designed and built a large, circular stone firepit next to his cottage in Sauble Beach, Ont. He left space for a path that he imagined would one day lead to something more. Over the next eight years, he designed a garage but decided to hire a contractor to build it in 2019. Finally, in 2023, he brought the beach bar to life. “I’d been thinking about it for a long time,” says Leon. “It started as a mental exercise. Then I put pencil to paper, and soon I got building.” He planned the space himself, keeping the build straightforward enough that he could do it alone. Leon…

WEIGHT WATCHING Digging a greenhouse foundation, I hit soggy clay. After lifting about 300 pounds of the stuff into my wheelbarrow, I rolled it to the hill edge. As I hoisted the handles up to dump the clay, it refused to let go and the wheelbarrow rotated forward. I launched right over the barrow and down the hill! Luckily, I landed on brush, with only an injured ego, and none of my neighbours saw.—SEAN LEDOUX A CASE OF SHINGLES Once, I was installing cedar shingles on a cottage using a staple gun when I heard a hissing sound from inside. My staple had penetrated the plywood and pierced a can of spray foam, which was rapidly expanding into a blossoming ball of sticky foam.—STEVE MAXWELL COULD BE THE ROUTER While…

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…

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…

When he was photographing Bob Street on Bostwick Island (“Now and Again,” p. 52), Chris Katsarov Luna didn’t notice the shot at first: “I’d exhausted all the obvious angles. Then I moved to the mirror.” There, he saw Bob absorbed in a decades-old photo album. “We’re looking through two lenses—the camera itself and the mirror,” he says. “The mirror, I think, adds temporal distance as well as physical distance.” Layers of history, in a cottage handed down from people in old photos to Bob and now to his son, echo in the layers between the photographer and his subject. “The mirror,” says Chris, “carries the symbolism of that moment.”…

DRUMROLL, PLEASE! THE Guinness World Record for “largest antlers” goes to a moose found near the Yukon’s Stewart River in 1897. The rack was almost two metres, tip to tip. That’s above average for today’s moose, but nothing compared the largest antlers ever discovered on a fossil species, Megaloceros giganteus, a.k.a. the Irish elk or giant deer. The long-extinct mammal had an antler spread of morethan 3.5 metres. Holy buck!…

IT’S WHEN YOU’RE trying to carry four full paint cans to the nearly finished bunkie that you realize those handles and our paws were not designed for each other. Mammoth Grip lifters ($13, amazon.ca) let you hook multiple bags, buckets, or even propane tanks on an ergonomic handle that won’t dig into your digits. Panels of plywood or drywall are heavy and awkward, and human arms are too short to reach across them comfortably. Panel lifters, including the Powerfist Plaster Board Carrier, extend your reach and hook the panel edge securely ($13, princessauto.com). Lifting, or moving, straps help you and a partner lift heavy objects with the large muscles instead of straining your lower back. Some, like the Forearm Forklift, hook over your forearms ($42, homehardware.ca); others, such as the…

A BUILDING WITH a preserved wood foundation is supported not by concrete, but by load-bearing wood stud walls enclosing a basement. Substituting wood for concrete below grade may seem counterintuitive—doesn’t wood usually rot in contact with soil?—but a PWF is easier to build and modify, sequesters carbon, and insulates better—all without rotting. PWFs are not new—they were introduced to the national building code in 1975, using design and construction requirements set by the Canadian Standards Association. Despite being below grade, the preservative-treated lumber used in PWFs can last several lifetimes. The first trial houses using PWFs were built in Ottawa in the early ’60s. The dimensional lumber and plywood used in PWFs is chemically impregnated for long-term, below-grade use and is stamped accordingly. It’s similar to regular pressure-treated wood, but…

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

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…