Innholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2025 i Cottage Life

IN THE LAST issue of Cottage Life, I asked readers to tell me about their cottage’s history, thinking that I might uncover some interesting stories to use in this issue all about the old days of cottage country. I knew I’d hear some warm tales, but I wasn’t prepared to relate so closely to this email from reader Cheryl Toms: “Briefly: boat access, off-grid, no running water, no luxuries. A ramshackle cottage and five free-range kids (I’m in the red boots) enjoying the time of our lives. It’s now 54 years since our first arrival, and it’s still a boat-access, off-grid, no running water, slightly-less-ramshackle cottage, but it’s part of our DNA. The best summers of my life were the first years, when everything was at its most disheveled and…

ONE SUMMER AT our cottage on White Lake, Ont., west of Ottawa, I spied a foot-tall white ball of fluff with a long, dark beak sitting on the walkway. It was a baby bird. On previous visits a month earlier, my husband and I had been surprised to see a pair of turkey vultures circling the peninsula. Their presence then, and the large, long-beaked chick now, led us to one conclusion: we had turkey vultures nesting on our property. A couple of days later, two chicks appeared on the walkway. We quickly researched to find out about turkey vultures and their young. We were concerned that the parents would abandon the chicks now that we were on the scene. But a few days passed, and the chicks seemed to be…

NEED A CLASSIC, hand-hewn beam for a fireplace mantel or a bunkie? Hew it yourself from a straight log the old-fashioned way. I made the main beams for my house like this, but check with your building department first—some building inspectors insist on formally graded lumber for structural uses. Freshly felled logs are easiest to work; green timber will dry fine after it’s cut into a beam. Trim any branches flush, then raise the log onto strong sawhorses that put the top of the log no higher than waist height. Use a level to mark the log ends with the thickness and width of the beam, extending the lines right out to the edges of the log, tic-tac-toe style. Using a level ensures that the outlines are square and plumb.…

Q: Can a cottage receive some kind of heritage designation that would protect it from demolition or major renovations?—Maia Julian, via email A: Absolutely! Well, maybe. “The first thing to know is that you can’t just ask for a designation,” says Mary MacDonald, a senior manager in Heritage Planning with the City of Toronto. “The cottage would need to meet a specified set of criteria.” In Ontario, these conditions are set out in the Ontario Heritage Act. One common, and probably obvious, criterion is that the building would need to have “a high degree of architectural value,” says MacDonald—a structure that’s well-designed, for example. But looks aren’t everything. “Heritage buildings can also be the site of something important that happened or associated with someone who’s recognized to have an importance…

AS OF 2015, Josh Reyes had never been to a cottage. His family, who is from the Philippines, would go on camping trips, but it wasn’t until he started dating Mallory Rowan that he began cottaging each summer at her family’s place on Dickey Lake, Ont. By 2020, he was a full-on convert. That summer, the couple were visiting a friend’s cottage on Lac Bataille in Val-Des-Monts, Que., when he realized just how much he loved the lake. “We were sitting on the dock, watching the sunset, and I looked at Mal and said, ‘One day, I’d love to have a place like this,’” says Josh. She agreed, and the dream began. By late 2021, they had lined up a budget of $500,000. The couple wanted a waterfront property with…

NOTHING DEGRADES A rope or frustrates its use like a frayed end. While thin polypropylene rope ends can be fused with a “butane backsplice”—melting fibres with a lighter—this isn’t practical on larger ropes and leaves a hard nub. West Country whipping is a simple, better-looking way to tame wild ends of any rope; since it relies on basic overhand knots, it’s even kid-friendly. You’ll need cord thin enough to wind easily around the rope end. Start by tying the loose fibres together temporarily with a short length of cord, at least half a centimetre from the end. You can get by with a couple of overhand knots, but the better option is a useful variation on a clove hitch—the constrictor knot. Wrap the cord end around the rope and over…

THE EMPTY LAKEFRONT nest is the dream of most aging cottagers. Children finally bug off, taking with them the myriad irritations of child rearing. It becomes safe to walk the dock ramp at night without taking a header courtesy of a misplaced toy. Walls no longer warp from the savage sounds of young-adult boom boxes. But in reality, children always return. Used-to-be teens, once dragged kicking and screaming from city party life and into cottage-country tranquillity, are back. They come in minivans packed with trunks of baby clothes, boxes of baby dishes, easy-to-assemble baby amusement parks, and other must-have items. First to spill from those bulging minivans are the most dreaded of cottage guests: the granddogs. Huge, shedding granddogs tossing off enough hair to weave scarves for 100 winter carolers.…

THE WATERS OF Lake Ontario can turn violent in an instant. For three generations, my family has had a cottage on Presqu’ile Point, a spit of land that hooks out into the northeast corner of the lake. When I was a kid, sometimes a nor’easter storm would blow in—and I’d put on a raincoat and go outside to watch the water suddenly become savage. Metre-high waves, slate-grey and terrifying, would smash into the breakwall in front of me, spraying foam high above my head. I’d brace myself against the howling wind and wonder what it’d be like to be out on the cold and furious lake. It’d be lethal, as history shows. Eastern Lake Ontario is a tomb for scores of ships, many of which went down in precisely these…

“I can’t imagine shooting this for any other magazine,” says photographer Daniel Ehrenworth, about this image of Annie Grotrian’s kitchen (“An Island of One’s Own,” p. 52). “Other editors would say, ‘This is a mess! You didn’t even take the pot lid off the counter!’ But you guys expect that at CL.” Indeed, it’s exactly these kinds of images, ones that artfully display the flotsam and jetsam of cottage living, that we favour. While it all seems like a jumble, there is a use for every item, and often a story too. “This scene has a music to it that’s unique,” says Daniel, “and it’s really what a cottage is all about—using what you have on hand and making the best of it.”…

FROM RUSTY STEEL tools to tarnished bronze boat hardware, steel wool restores oxidized, grimy metal surfaces to shiny newness—almost magically. I typically start by washing and drying the surface to avoid clogging the steel wool with dirt. Like sandpaper, steel wool comes in grades: very coarse #3 steel wool is tough enough to scratch off a layer of paint, while #0000 is the finest grade, more suited to polishing. For removing heavy rust on a shovel, I use #2 coarse to get back to bare metal. To bring tarnished outdoor brass back to its glory, #0000 will gently remove oxidation and polish the surface. When I’m using steel wool to polish, I don’t use lubricant, though some people add a little oil or mineral spirits; I find it simpler to…

In 2017, we included a “Flashback Snaps” category in our annual photo contest. Flash forward to the spring ‘24, when we conceived of this issue’s theme, and our art director, Taylor Kristan, again looked through the entries and found shots from as far back as 100 years ago. They suggested we include a few images in this issue, celebrating cottage days gone by. Of course, we couldn’t resist. Although much has changed, both at the lake and beyond (safety regulations around snowmobiles, for one—check out p. 83), these photographs reveal that much remains exactly the same. We cottagers are still raising the flag, swimming in the lake, and making s’mores, just as we did a century ago. And hopefully we’ll be doing the same a century from now. Plus ça…

WHEN IS THE last time you truly noticed an apple? Beyond the mythological or literary allusions, apples are standard fare in our lives. We grab a bag of them the way we grab any staple: to eat or to be used in whatever preparation suits our fancy. Current refrigeration, storage, and shipping techniques have prioritized certain apple varieties, leaving us, the eaters, with limited selections that are suited for the task: apples with tough skins that keep their colour and don’t bruise en route. These apples are sold not for flavour, texture, or nutrition, but for their ability to survive the means of distribution, not degustation. The irony is that apples, like people, are not made of averages, let alone for all purposes. Apples, like people, possess great diversity in…