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Wind winging: the affordable, easy-to-pick-up winter sport you have to try

Photo by Liam Mogan

Dan Bartoli is a Canadian superdude. By day, he is a soft-spoken, mild-mannered electrical engineer who works for a global manufacturing conglomerate. From the company’s outpost in a Peterborough, Ont., industrial park, he designs and builds tiny, mundane machines. “We make instruments that measure volume and level using ultrasound,” he tells me. I had no idea such contraptions existed, but apparently, lots of companies need lots and lots of them, and they’re not cheap. The work has kept him busy, endlessly improving his mousetrap for decades. 

But once he clocks out from work, Dan seeks out adventure, attempting feats of derring-do using way cooler gadgets. He is fit and lithe, seemingly without an ounce of body fat, a late-fifties guy with the cut physique of eternal youth. Only the salt-and-pepper hair hints at his years. On this mid-March weekend, we are at his cottage north of Buckhorn, Ont., on the shores of Gold Lake. A snug log cabin hideaway is built atop a massive granite slope, but the little wooden shed down by the lake is where he keeps his gear. 

The day is cold but cloudless, and the lake is blanketed by a thick sheet of ice and a cushion of fresh snow. Dan’s wearing mirrored Ray-Bans to filter the bright sunlight bouncing off the white horizon, nothing but middle-aged chill. He grabs his alpine boots and slips them on, even though there’s no chairlift within an hour’s drive. Then he pulls out his skis, leaving the poles behind, and grabs the mystery gear—a waist-high duffle bag weighing less than seven pounds, along with what looks like a bicycle pump on steroids. 

With pump in hand, skis slung over one shoulder and duffle bag over the other, Dan walks it all out to the middle of the frozen bay. Most guys with gear to show off can’t stop talking about it, but Dan doesn’t say a word. He is not a talker to begin with (a trait common to both mild-mannered men and their alter egos), and his silence heightens the anticipation. He drops the bag onto the ice, unzips it, and reveals his superpowered contraption. It looks like what you might get if you crossed a windsurfer with a hot-air balloon: a mast-less, hand-held triangular kite with an inflatable skeleton. Is it a bird? A parachute? No! It’s…an Armstrong A-Wing with a 5.5 m² surface area. 

Dan blows up the wing’s airframe in two minutes flat with less than 100 pumps. He lays his skis on the ground, snaps his boots into their bindings, holds the wing above his head, and he’s off. It’s not a particularly windy day—not even windy enough to require the harness he sometimes uses—but the wing is so light and manoeuvrable that he can hold it at whatever angle best captures the breeze to propel him forward. He’s doing something I previously thought impossible: downhill skiing without a downhill slope, gliding effortlessly on a bald flat lake. 


Photo by Liam Mogan

Game changer

The inflatable wing, though built for summer, is the winter cottage toy we’ve all been waiting for

Photo by Liam Mogan

Get hooked

In strong winds, Dan uses a windsurfing harness
to keep his arms from getting fatigued. The harness hooks onto a rope that hangs between the wing’s handles. The rope releases when he pulls the wing in close.

Standing beside me out on the ice, Dan’s wife of 34 years, Cindy, gets a chuckle out of my amazement. “You may have noticed he’s a quiet guy,” she says, “but this is what gets him woohooing.” Cindy is the chatty one in the relationship, the artist to his engineer, an amateur photographer and writer. 

They’ve always been active as a couple, but Dan’s the adrenaline junkie. You should see him, she tells me, when there’s some real gusts for him to lean into, when he can slalom, spin, and practically achieve liftoff. “The first time he ever tried it was in the farmer’s field behind our neighbourhood in Peterborough,” she says. “It was very windy, but he got the hang of it fast.” As she was watching him test his wing from their bedroom window, she recalls, a neighbour texted her. “She says, ‘You gotta check this out! There’s this guy out in the field…What is that thing he’s holding? Is he on…skis? What he’s doing is unbelievable!’ She was watching him through her binoculars. She didn’t know it was Dan.” 


Photo by Liam Mogan

Cozy up

The outdoors is never far from mind, even when curled up by the fire, thanks to a great collection of nature-inspired art, such as Cindy’s mom’s Bradford Exchange wildlife plates.

Photo by Liam Mogan

All are Welcome

Dan and Cindy warm up in the living room. Two futons, Ikea chairs, and a rocking bench and chair give plenty of seating for times when their kids (Jake, 31; Trevor, 29; and Sadie, 27) visit.

Photo by Liam Mogan

Treasure Trove

The cottage is an inspiring repository for Dan and Cindy’s collection of natural history books, found treasures, and other artwork.

Photo by Liam Mogan

A Snowy View

The south-facing picture window is framed by big,
mature oaks, so the cottage has the benefits of shade in summer and maximum light through the winter months.

Winter cottaging is not for everyone, but as the saying goes, those who like it, like it a lot. Cindy and Dan Bartoli’s cottage isn’t fully winterized; its central heating system is a woodstove, supplemented as necessary by portable electric heaters. But they love it here in winter. Once the fire is roaring and dinner’s in the oven, the open-concept living area cozies up and holds the heat nicely. As a bonus, the leafless winterscape provides an even better view of the bay. 

The property was initially purchased by Cindy’s mother and her aunt, Peggy and Carol Noyes, who, in 1952, snapped up one-and-a-half acres of just-released Crown land with 400 feet of waterfront. The lot cost $143.70, plus a survey fee of $80.50—Cindy still has the receipts. The sale was conditional upon the construction of a private summer cottage within 18 months and valued at no less than $500. Peggy and Carol bought a prefab kit for a 20-by-24 foot structure from Peterborough Lumber and built it with the help of Peggy’s boyfriend, William Wakeford, who promptly purchased the smaller neighbouring lot and built an identical prefab on it six years later. 

Theirs is an iconic Peterborough love story: Peggy worked at Quaker and Bill at General Electric, the city’s two largest employers at the time, and whose massive manufacturing plants still dominate the cityscape (though GE’s beautiful red-brick buildings, built in the late 19th century, are now mostly empty—the company shut down its Peterborough operations in 2018). They met and married at Mark Street United Church in Peterborough’s East City neighbourhood, and had three kids who spent their summers with their cousins at the Gold Lake cottage in the Kawartha highlands. The provincial park of the same name, originally an 18 sq. km postage stamp on the map, was expanded in 2003 to 375 square clicks that now borders their lake. 

Cindy loved exploring that wilderness as a kid—“It was our playground growing up,” she says. Her childhood cottage experience was rustic in the true sense of the word: no running water and an outhouse. “Whenever we complained, my mother would just say, ‘It builds character.’ It became a family punchline.” Stubbed toe? Dunked canoe? Poison ivy rash? Lose big at cards? It builds character. 


Photo by Liam Mogan

Going the Distance

Once the ice is in, Dan and Cindy love to ski into
Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park, which abuts Gold Lake. ”We can go farther, faster on skis than we can by paddling and portaging,” says Cindy.

Photo by Liam Mogan

A Dog for All Seasons

Cottage dog Bruce (on the right), a Pomsky
belonging to the couple’s daughter, loves to play
outdoors all year, unlike Rosco (left), their Yorkie-
Bichon.

Photo by Liam Mogan

Blue View

In warmer weather, Dan and Cindy grill on the deck overlooking the lake.

Cindy and Dan met as third-year undergrads at Queen’s University in the mid-eighties, at a girls-night-in house party where Dan and his buddies were dressed up and serving dinner for the gals. After they’d been dating a while, she brought him up to Gold Lake for what she called the cottage relationship test: “If he can spend a week with an outhouse and no shower and still wants to come back, he might be a keeper.” (This test is really just another way of saying, “It builds character.”) Dan passed this test with honours; he and Cindy wed in 1988. 

Around that same time, Peggy and Bill engineered a property deal: they traded Bill’s smaller neighbouring cottage to Carol for her share of the original cottage. That deal cleared the way for a rebuild: in 1991, 40 years after it was originally built, Peggy and Bill tore down the prefab and built the current one in its place, with a spacious porch, a hot shower, and four bedrooms surrounding the open-concept living area. And perhaps best of all, the woodstove made it possible to come up in winter.

Cindy and Dan are four-seasons-active people, preferring human-powered activities to motorized ones: canoeing over boating, Nordic skiing over snowmobiling. “But for as long as I’ve known Dan, he’s always had an affinity for wind,” Cindy says. He learned to sailboard as a teenager growing up in Sudbury, Ont., and though he’s been doing windsports his entire life, he still struggles to describe why he loves it. “The engineer in me is fascinated by the physics of it,” he says. “There’s just something about the power in the wind, when you’ve got the harness on and everything is balanced and the wind is pulling you, and you’re just flying along.” No one who sails is ever bored by sailing. Every wind is unique, and using it to power your vessel is always a test of physical and mental acuity. Even when you spill, it’s a great natural high. 

But windsports are almost invariably summer sports. The only exceptions to this rule are kite skiing and ice boating, activities that entail a lot of complicated gear (the ropes on the kite are an ordeal all on their own), technical knowledge, and potential injury. Furthermore, kiting requires a very large body of frozen water, while ice boating requires a very large body of frozen water without any snow on it, which is a tall ask. They’re fussy sports. Neither is the kind of activity most cottagers can do from their waterfront. 

The inflatable wing, though it was built for use on water, is the game-changing winter cottage toy that we’ve all been waiting for. 

Its development was part and parcel of the recent decade-long wave in water sport innovation, including the stand-up paddleboard and the foilboard, which is basically a surfboard with a hydrofoil riveted to its underside, allowing it to rise out of the water when moving at speed. And with each of those inventions, the adrenaline junkies could only watch and wonder: wouldn’t it be cool if that thing had wings? 

The key to the invention of the wing, which didn’t exist until a few years ago, was the inflatable-strut technology that forms its skeleton, which is rigid enough to catch the wind but light enough for any 14-year-old to hold over their head. The first commercial wing was introduced to the market in 2018, and it’s surprisingly affordable for such a new technology: anywhere from $700 to $2,000. 

Their popularity has also been propelled by Covid-19. In fact, it was in the midst of lockdown-enforced web surfing ennui when Dan first discovered them. “We were going to go to Aruba with another couple to learn to kiteboard in the winter of 2020, but that trip fell through,” he recalls. That’s when he found some videos of winter wingers on skis and snowboards. The advantages, he says, were obvious right away. “There’s no way I could kite ski at the cottage because the lake’s not big enough. But I knew the wing could work.” He bought his A-Wing online for $1,300. Shortly thereafter, he was out in the field wowing his neighbours and, soon after that, woohooing on a frozen Gold Lake, just like he is now. 

There’s only one way to end a day of winging on the lake, and that’s in the sauna. (This, by the way, is where I learned how ripped Dan is.) It’s a wood-fueled barrel sauna manufactured in Ontario by Dundalk Leisure Craft. Cindy and Dan bought it in 2018, and thanks to both the sauna and the wing, they spend more of their winter weekends at the cottage than ever before. Dan’s mother was Finnish, so affinity for saunas runs in his blood.


Photo by Liam Mogan

Some Like it Hot

Dan and Cindy relieve sore muscles after an active day on the ice.

Photo by Liam Mogan

Some Like it Cold

The author tries an icy plunge.

Once Dan gets the sauna fire roaring, he pulls out some more cool gadgets, an auger and a giant saw, to cut a hole in the ice for a cold bath. In keeping with their ethos, they’re 100 per cent human powered, no batteries or ripcords allowed.  Dan’s got the system down: he draws a big triangle on the ice, drills a hole at one point, then saws straight lines between it and the other two points.

After 20 minutes in the dry sauna heat, it’s time for a dip. With total calm, Dan walks out to the triangle and lowers himself into the freezing water. He basks in it for a while before returning to the sauna. Steam rises off him like a slow-simmering human torch. I, on the other hand, a polar-bear-dip novice, can barely keep my composure as my lungs shrivel up in the water, then scamper back to the sauna like a lizard on its hind legs. 

The best thing about winter winging, Dan tells me, is its accessibility. If you can ski or snowboard, you can do it. “You don’t need lessons for winging like you do with kiting,” says Dan. “It’s really easy.” There’s some learning to do when it comes to harnessing the wind—Dan can talk endlessly about optimal angles and wind direction—but you figure out the basics pretty quick. 

And snow is probably a better surface for learning windsports than water. There’s no ducking under a swinging boom; no falling into the lake; no hauling yourself back onto a sailboard; no uprighting a soaked, heavy sail; no falling back in when you can’t find your balance; no deerflies biting your ankles through the entire ordeal. When you’re winter winging, you just tumble onto your kiester in the snowy cushion like you would on the slopes, and then you get back up and keep going.

Cindy is not the type to dote over or worry for her husband, but she definitely recognizes the advantages of his winter hobby. She tells me about the many injuries Dan has sustained while windsporting in summer—wrenched ankles, jammed fingers—but he won’t stop unless he’s bleeding. “Winter winging is safe,” she says, “and it has really opened up the season for him and for us.” There has never been a lower price to pay, in terms of money or risk of injury, for the adrenaline rush of windsports. It’s enough to make anyone feel super.

Want to try winging? Here’s how to get started

Look for smooth, packed snow in an open area such as a lake or field (bigger is better). In softer snow conditions, wider skis or a snowboard will work better.

wind winging gear
Photo by Liam Mogan

Skis: Dan says he bought his skis about 20 years ago for some trips out west and hadn’t used them much in the last several years. “So winging was the perfect reason to dust them off,” he says. “Any set of skis or a snowboard will work for wing skiing.”
Dan’s gear: Skis are Head C10s, and boots are Alpina

Harness: A windsurfing harness and line for the wing will allow you to cruise all afternoon without tiring.
Dan’s waist harness: Dakine

Wing: “There is now a huge selection of wings online,” says Dan. According to Jean-Robert Wilhelmy, co-owner of windshop.ca, before you buy, you should think about whether you’ll be using it in winter and summer, how much wind your area gets, and whether the lake tends to have a lot of waves. Wings are measured by area in square meters in a range of sizes, such as 2 m² at the low end and 7 m² in the upper range. You also need to factor in your weight and experience; as they go up, so can the size of the wing. “To start, you need a beginner-intermediate wing that is quite powerful to get you going, such as the Freewing Go or the Takuma Concept,” says Wilhelmy. He recommends a 4.3 m² to 4.5 m² wing for lighter weight and 5.2 m² to 5.5 m² for medium to heavy. “A wing that’s too big gets very tiring and heavy on the arms, and if it’s too small, it won’t make you move.” He suggests taking lessons at the beginning and starting with a good wind to help you get going fast.
Dan’s wing: Armstrong A-Wing 5.5 m²

This story was originally published as “The Wing King” in the Winter 2022 issue of Cottage Life. 

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What is dead pool? A water expert explains

Journalists reporting on the status and future of the Colorado River are increasingly using the phrase “dead pool.” It sounds ominous. And it is.

Dead pool occurs when water in a reservoir drops so low that it can’t flow downstream from the dam. The biggest concerns are Lake Powell, behind Glen Canyon Dam on the Utah-Arizona border, and Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border [shown above]. These two reservoirs, the largest in the U.S., provide water for drinking and irrigation and hydroelectricity to millions of people in Nevada, Arizona and California.

Some media reports incorrectly define dead pool as the point at which a dam no longer has enough water to generate hydroelectricity. The more accurate term for that situation is the minimum power pool elevation.

As a 22-year drought in the Colorado River basin lingers, reaching minimum power pool elevation is the first problem. Lakes Powell and Mead have turbines at the bases of their dams, well below the surface of the reservoirs. Water flows through valves in intake towers in the reservoirs and is channeled through the turbines, making them spin to generate electricity.

Water levels in the Colorado River’s major reservoirs are falling to levels not seen since the reservoirs were created.

This system relies on what hydrologists call hydraulic head—the amount of liquid pressure above a given point. The higher the level of water above the turbines in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the more hydraulic head they have and the more power they will generate.

IJC recommends government action for Lake Huron-Michigan water levels

When the level in a reservoir approaches minimum power pool elevation, the turbines lose capacity to produce power as they start to take in air along with water and must be shut down before they are damaged. A reservoir that reaches this point usually has quite a bit of water left before it drops to dead pool and water stops flowing from the dam.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recently announced unprecedented changes in its regulation of the water in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. First, the bureau will retain in Lake Powell 480,000 acre-feet of water that was scheduled to flow down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and into Lake Mead for use by California, Nevada, and Arizona. One acre-foot is about 325,000 gallons.

Second, the bureau will release an additional 500,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Dam on the Wyoming-Utah border. Water from Flaming Gorge flows into the Green River and eventually into Lake Powell. The water level in Lake Powell was 3,522 feet on April 30, 2022—just 32 feet above the minimum power pool elevation of 3,490 feet. Dead pool is 120 feet lower, at 3,370 feet.

The bureau acted suddenly because the levels in both lakes have dropped far faster than anyone forecast. In the last year, Lake Mead dropped 22 feet; Lake Powell, 40 feet.

Extreme drought and climate change partly explain this rapid decline. Another factor is that Glen and Boulder Canyons are V-shaped, like martini glasses—wide at the rim and narrow at the bottom. As levels in the lakes decline, each foot of elevation holds less water.

Signs that your lake might have elevated levels of bacteria

For now, finding enough water to keep generating electricity is the focus. But unless California, Nevada and Arizona make big cuts in the amount of water they use, dead pool in Lake Powell and Lake Mead can’t be ruled out.

This article has been updated to clarify that Hoover Dam holds back Lake Mead.The Conversation

This article, by Robert Glennon, Regents Professor and Morris K. Udall Professor of Law & Public Policy, University of Arizona, is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

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Ticks in February?

Photo by DuxX/Shutterstock

Mild winter weather may have pet owners itching to hit the trail with their canine companions, but they should be aware that they’re not the only critters taking advantage of warmer than expected temperatures. Some pet owners report that their vets are now recommending keeping their dogs on tick-preventing medication year-round.

We talked to Katie Clow, assistant professor in One Health in the Department of Population Medicine at the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph for her take. “If it’s above freezing, we should be thinking about ticks,” says Clow.

During the cold winter months, ticks spend most of their time buried down in leaf litter in the forest, says Clow, who helps lead Pets and Ticks. But if there’s limited snow cover and temperatures get warmer, they’re going to crawl out of that layer and come out to feed or at least look for a host, she says.

The general recommendation is that pets be on tick preventatives from April into November, says Clow, which are the months with the highest tick activity. Clow says if pet owners are interested in using tick preventative medication for their animals outside the warmer months, they should have a conversation with their veterinarian. 

Regardless of whether a dog is on tick prevention or not, pet owners can protect their canine companions by checking for ticks following any outdoor time. Clow recommends that owners remove any ticks from their animals as quickly as they can. Owners should use tick pullers or tweezers and make sure to pull the tick directly out of the animal, remove the tick’s mouthpiece in the process. 

Clow also stresses the importance of getting an identification on the removed tick. There are lots of ticks that will feed on dogs, she says. The predominate species to worry about is the backlegged tick, which can carry the bacteria that cause tick-borne illnesses in dogs, including anaplasmosis and Lyme disease. To find out what tick they’ve come across, pet owners can take advantage of eTick.ca, a free public resource where users can submit photos of ticks for identification.

Fact or fiction: Debunking 4 common myths about ticks

Following tick removal, owners should monitor their dogs for symptoms. Clow says to be on the lookout for any signs the dog is not feeling well, such as not eating or being a little sore. Owners can also watch out for any signs of lameness or limping on a certain leg. “These are some of the first signs we see of Lyme disease,” says Clow, adding that they would prompt a visit to the vet right away.

If owners find that they’re repeatedly removing ticks off their dogs, it might be time to reconsider your walking route. “If you seem to be pulling ticks off your dog in certain areas consistently, stay out of those areas when it is peak tick activity: spring, fall, and warm times in the winter,” says Clow. 

For more information on pets and ticks, or to submit reports of tick findings on your pet through the Pet Tick Tracker, visit the Pets and Ticks site. More resources can be found on the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association’s Tick Talk site.

Report card: how effective are these animals at controlling ticks?

 

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Cottage Q&A: Liability insurance for a remote cabin

By Portrait Image Asia/Shutterstock

Is it possible to get liability insurance only for a remote cabin? My concern is that a guest could get hurt, or when we aren’t there, someone could trespass (and get hurt). We are U.S. citizens, so we can’t add it onto our home policy. We aren’t concerned about fire and theft because we don’t leave anything of big value inside.—John Sterzick, via email

It’s possible. But it may not be easy. (Sorry.) Or cheap. (Double sorry.)

“It’s a challenge to get coverage for standalone liability,” admits Greg Robertson of R. Robertson Insurance Brokers in Toronto. “There are wholesalers that will provide liability only, but the cost could be more than insuring the cabin.”

Wholesale brokers don’t deal directly with the client, they communicate with the client’s broker. “It’s the client’s broker who will approach me for coverage,” says Bev Mitchell, a special risks underwriter—and a wholesaler—with Johnston Meier Insurance Agencies in Maple Ridge, B.C. “As a go-between, I have contracts with companies the broker can’t access.” 

Could installing cameras lower your insurance costs?

You’re probably going to need to shop around. Check with various local brokers who deal with cottage insurance: what’s the cost of insuring your place on a package that includes liability vs. the cost of a standalone liability policy? As an example, Peter Granata of Kennedy Insurance Brokers in North Bay, Ont., says that most premiums for full-coverage policies are between $1,000 and $5,000 per year. The minimum premium for a liability-only policy from one insurer that the brokers sourced was about $1,500 (plus tax) per year. And the maximum? It would be too difficult to ballpark. “I’m unaware of a maximum quote,” says Granata. “Factors such as property acreage and location would play a part in determining the annual premium.” 

Mitchell says that while getting a liability policy via wholesaler is generally very expensive, the fact that your cottage is remote could be a game-changer. “Many insurers either do not want to insure in remote areas or charge an extremely high rate for the building coverage,” says Mitchell. If that’s the case, going the wholesaler route might work out to be the lesser of two expensive evils. Good luck with your search!

This article was originally published in the Winter 2022 issue of Cottage Life.

Got a question for Cottage Q&A? Send it to answers@cottagelife.com.

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Light pollution has cut humanity’s ancient connection with the stars—but we can restore it

Photo by Andrey Prokhorov/Shutterstock

Humans are naturally afraid of the dark. We sometimes imagine monsters under the bed and walk faster down unlit streets at night. To conquer our fears, we may leave a night light on to scare away the monsters and a light over the porch to deter break-ins.

Yet, in huddling for safety under our pools of light, we have lost our connection to the night sky. Star counts by public awareness campaign Globe at Night revealed that, between 2011 and 2022, the world’s night sky more than doubled in artificial brightness. Yet local interventions can create meaningful change.

Light pollution is cutting us off from one of nature’s greatest wonders, harming wildlife and blocking research that could help fight climate change. Stars are more than pretty glimmers in the night sky. They have shaped the mythology of every human civilization. They guide birds on their astonishing migratory journeys. And now we need to do our bit to prevent light pollution so stars can be part of our future.

The human eye can detect around 5,000 stars in the night sky. But the light emitted by skyscrapers, street lamps, and houses obscures all but a handful of the brightest stars.

Our ancestors used the rising and setting of the constellations as calendars. They also navigated by the stars as they searched for new lands or traced nautical trade routes. Sailors don’t normally use the stars to navigate any more, but they are still taught how to, in case their navigation systems break down.

Migratory animals, including birds and insects, are drawn away from their natural flight paths by the beckoning “sky glow” of cities. In the summer of 2019, Las Vegas was invaded by millions of migrating grasshoppers, while the beams of New York’s 9/11 Tribute in Light are a magnet for flocks of migrating songbirds flying at night.

Disoriented by the bright city lights, birds crash into towering skyscrapers. Insect numbers are collapsing worldwide and light pollution is making matters worse by disrupting their nocturnal life cycles.

What is light pollution

Light pollution is caused by the same physics that turns the sky blue during the day. Sunlight is made up of all the colours of the rainbow and each colour has a different wavelength. The air that surrounds us is composed of tiny particles (such as oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules).

As light from the Sun makes its way through the air, it is scattered by these particles in random directions. Blue light (with shorter wavelengths) is scattered more than red light (which has longer wavelengths). As a result, our eyes receive more blue light from every direction in the sky.

At night, light scattered by the same air particles causes the sky to shine down on us. A small fraction of this sky glow is caused by natural sources, such as starlight and the Earth’s atmosphere. But most of the light that creates sky glow is artificial.

The constellation Orion, imaged at left from dark skies, and at right from the teeming metropolis of Orem, UT comprising about half a million people.
Light pollution is not pretty.
Jeremy Stanley/Wikimedia, CC BY

Light pollution also affects our ability to study the universe. Even modern observatories, built on remote mountaintops, are affected by the encroaching sky glow from growing, sprawling cities. Light pollution is so widespread that three quarters of all observatories are affected.

Migrating birds flying through Tribute in Light in 2015.

Looking up

There is no reason to despair, though. We created light pollution; we can fix it.

Around the world, dark sky associations are working to educate the public about the hazards of light pollution, to lobby for legislation to protect dark sky reserves and encourage people to reignite their connection with dark, star-studded skies.

Fighting light pollution begins at home. If you need to keep outside lights on for security, use shielded lamps that only shine downwards. Use light bulbs that do not emit violet and blue light as this is harmful to wildlife. Smart lighting controls will also help reduce your house’s effect on wildlife and make it easier for you to observe the night sky.

Will a sky crowded with satellites spell the end of stargazing?

In the UK, the 2023 annual star count will take place on February 17-24. And, wherever you are in the world, you can always take part in the year-long Globe at Night star count whenever you want.

The task is simple: step outside on a clear night, count how many stars you can see in a well-known constellation, such as Orion, and report back.

To defeat light pollution, we need to know how severe it is and what difference national policies and local interventions (such as replacing the street lights in your town) make. In the UK, for example, star counts show light pollution may have peaked in 2020 and has started to decline.

The nine best places to go stargazing in Ontario

Perhaps the most important aspect of star counts is that they shine a light on our vanishing night skies and galvanize us to take action. Ultimately, it’s up to each and every one of us to reduce our effect on the sky, by changing the way we light our homes and neighbourhoods and by lobbying our representatives to pass dark sky legislation.The Conversation

This article—by Or Graur, Reader in Astrophysics, University of Portsmouth— is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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4 winter catastrophes and how to prevent and fix them

By northlight/Shutterstock

It’s called “catastrophizing”—lying awake, fretting about your job or the kids or the dumb thing you said to the neighbours and whether they’ll ever speak to you again and could you be a pariah and is it time to move so that your family has a fresh start… 

Whoa. Relax. Think of your Happy Place, snuggled beneath a blanket of white. A heavy blanket, thanks to that last storm. How strong is that roof, anyway? The ice dams alone could be a disaster. What if the power goes out and the pipes freeze? Or next week’s polar vortex gives the deck the heave-ho? 

We get it—it’s easy to fret about the cottage on a stormy night, especially when you’re not around to keep an eye on things. But a little planning and maintenance will help you sleep better, and ensure your cottage toughs out another winter. Let’s focus on the likely outcomes, not just the worst-case scenarios. And remember your coping skills and your ability to learn, adjust, and fix things. Trust us, you’ve got this.

1. Roof collapse

The worst case Pointy thing on top of the cottage suddenly becomes flat or concave, and is much less useful. 

How likely is that? It’s not—if you’ve followed the building code. Canadian codes require that roofs outmuscle the worst combined snow and rain load encountered over 50 years. In Sudbury, Ont., that’s a robust 2.9 kilopascals (about 60 pounds per square foot). For the East Kootenay Village of Nakusp, B.C., it’s a mighty 4.5 kilopascals—94 pounds per square foot. Put that in your snowglobe and shake it. 

When collapses occur, they’re usually due to “pre-existing construction or maintenance deficiencies,” says forensic structural engineer Nabi Goudarzi, of Origin and Cause in Ottawa. Maybe your cottage was built before the code, or without reference to it. Or the years have worn down a less-than robust design until the roof got wobbly.

Common problems Improperly aligned, undersized, poorly spliced or rotting rafters; rafters that are too widely spaced; rafters and trusses that are inadequately braced; or builders who’ve scrimped on nails. (Yes, that really happens.) There’s also the bane of middle-aged cottages, rafter spread. “It could even progress to the point of pushing out the exterior supporting walls, leading to failure of the roof and possibly the wall structure,” says Roger Frost, a home inspector in Orillia, Ont. 

This clever snow removal tool makes clearing your roof a cinch

What should I look for? “Wood framing has flexibility,” Goudarzi says. “Before it gets to the point of collapse, you can see cracks in the gypsum boards or sagging on the roof.” 

Sheds are apt to collapse without warning because “they don’t have interior finishes so there will be no early cracking before the collapse,” Goudarzi says. But if a shed falls at your neighbours’ and there’s someone there to hear it, it makes a sound: “Ten minutes before the collapse, I heard what sounded like nails popping. I thought it was snow starting to slip on the roof,” says Kim Pressnail, an associate professor emeritus with the University of Toronto’s department of civil and mineral engineering.  

The fix “If you see sagging and cracking, call a building inspector,” Goudarzi says. The solution may be as simple as reinforcing rafters or improving bracing. With the advice of a structural engineer, “a lot of these problems, if they’re caught before the damage occurs, can be fixed very easily.” (The cost would vary with the amount of damage and the size of the cottage.)

How to tell if a wall is load bearing

2. Ice dams

The worst case “Failure of the roof deck, severe mould, and increased damage to other parts of the cottage,” says Paul Grizenko of Montreal-based PRS Roofing. “I’ve seen people with their kitchen ceiling cave in, or a big amount of mould building up in the attic that they had no idea about. The vapour barrier was effectively trapping all the water up there.”

Ice dams form when meltwater, warmed by the sun or attic heat, refreezes on the eaves’ cold edges. Water backs up behind this icy dam, flows beneath the roofing, and seeps into the attic or walls. 

How likely is that? Pretty darn likely—at least, if leaks go unchecked. “Ice dams are like having an overflowing bathtub on top of the roof,” Grizenko says. “If you catch it early, you can clean it up. If you let it run, you’re going to have major problems.”

10 rules of rooftop de-icing

Common problems Interior leaks, damage, rot, and mould.

What should I look for? Ice building up along the edge of the roof, a frozen Niagara of icicles on the eaves, and telltale water stains on ceilings or exterior walls.

The fix “Ice dams are a function of heat loss. The quantity and quality of your insulation is probably the most important aspect. Once you get the insulation right, the next part is ventilation,” Grizenko says. 

“A lot of older cottages have insufficient insulation, particularly at the junction where the roof and walls meet. As heat is transferred through framing members, it warms the roof deck and melts the snow,” adds Roger Frost. 

Keep heat out of the attic by insulating and sealing the hatch and penetrations for pipes, plumbing stacks, electrical services, and chimneys. Recessed incandescent lights are also big heat-wasters, so consider replacing them with Insulation Contact (IC)-rated units. Good ventilation also whisks remaining heat and moisture from the attic. If you don’t see roof, gable, and soffit vents on your cottage (especially if it’s older), ask a roofer whether the venting is adequate.  

Install snow-and-ice membrane next time you re-roof. “If it’s done well, you can still have an ice dam up there, but the water won’t get in,” Grizenko says. Electrical heating cables can help clear roof eaves, so long as they’re strung “above the point where ice dams typically form,” Grizenko says, and placed so the heating effect from one cable overlaps the heat coming from the next. Keep meltwater moving with additional cables in gutters and downspouts. 

Ventilation in an uninsulated attic

Buy a telescoping snow rake, and use it to reduce snow load and damming. “You don’t need to take the snow right down to the shingles,” says Colin Marshall of Barrie’s Will Marshall Insurance Brokers (who has 15 years of experience plus his own snow-load run-ins at his vacation place in Sudbury, Ont.). Even when you can’t reach all the snow, raking off the bottom two metres or so, all the way around the roof, will help. 

Just remember, never chip ice off the roofing—that will shorten its life. “Ice doesn’t just sit on top of the shingles, it encases them,” Grizenko says.

3. Bursting pipes

The worst case A heating or hydro interruption that causes pipes to freeze, split, and then thaw  when the power is restored is a recipe for disaster in an unattended cottage. Jeremy Begin of Cottage Country Plumbing in Bracebridge, Ont., has seen heating systems fail and waterlines freeze, leaving a “six-foot-deep ice block” in the basement. Because there were multiple leaks, the main floor was “an ice cave, complete with icicles coming from the ceiling,” he says. 

“I have seen basements completely full of water and what looks like frozen waterfalls spilling out of patio doors,” says Bruce Hodgson of Water’s Edge Plumbing in Lac du Bonnet, Man. Outside the cottage, “in a case where waterline freezing is extensive, it will sometimes require us to completely re-pipe a home or cottage—everything from the pump and waterlines to the faucets and toilets.”

Cottage Q&A: PEX pipe vs copper

How likely is that? Likely enough that most insurers require you to drain the water system and have someone check the place every three days or install automated freeze alarms. For cottages with regular winter use, “turn the water off at the main and run the tap at the lowest point in the plumbing system. You will have eliminated most of the water,” says Colin Marshall. “If it does freeze, there’s more give in the system for water to expand.”  

Common problems “Frost-free” outdoor taps (a.k.a. “wall hydrants”) split when cottagers forget to disconnect the hose and drain the valve. “Most people don’t find out until they use the tap in the spring, and it’s leaking all over their basement or crawl space,” Hodgson says.  

Other headaches include the water service freezing where it enters the cottage (often due to heating cable failure), and septic systems and drain pipes chilled when there’s too little insulating snow, or when the snow has been compressed by snowmobile traffic. 

What should I look for? Find frozen pipes by locating the taps that aren’t running, and work your way back to icy sections. Check for chilly or drafty zones in cabinets beneath sinks, or crawl spaces. Sometimes, you can feel them with your hand or find stiff sections in PEX pipe. A digital temperature gun helps too. For pipes concealed in floors or walls, check for the coldest floor or wall surfaces in the draftiest and poorest-insulated areas.

How to deal with frozen pipes

The fix Inside, turn off the water where it enters the cottage, leave the tap open, and wrap accessible frozen pipes with towels and pour warm water over them, or use a heat source (eg., hair dryer, heat gun, or portable heater). Thaw the pipe from the tap end, so any pressure buildup from water turning to steam escapes from the spigot. (Or don’t thaw, and wait for a professional, advises Begin. There is a chance that there’s a split somewhere in the pipe. If you thaw it, you could risk water spraying everywhere.) For concealed pipes, you could gamble that they’re okay, try cranking the heat, and watch for leaks. But this can be a slow process, and if the pipe does require a fix, you’ll still have to cut into drywall or flooring. 

Small splits in copper can be soldered. If pipes require replacement, consider PEX—it has some flex, unlike copper. Outside, you may have to wait until plumbing thaws in the spring or hire a plumber to steam ice from drains or waterlines. If your septic system suffers from a deep chill, you might also need a follow up inspection by a contractor, scouting for cracked or burst components.

How to make your three-season plumbing work all winter

Unless you’re draining the pipes, set the heat at 12°C or warmer, and insulate areas where cold air chills pipes in interior walls, cupboards on exterior walls, and cold-exposed areas of basements or crawl spaces. “For frost-prone lines, heating cables are an effective way to prevent many problems,” Hodgson says. 

Keep snow over septic areas and waterlines, or supplement with bales of straw or purpose-made insulating “septic blankets.” You can also excavate the line and install rigid foam insulation.

4. Frost heaving

The worst case “Foundation collapse,” says Ari Marantz of Winnipeg’s Trained Eye Home Inspection. “I’ve seen where the cottage falls off the posts and is sitting on the ground.” Freezing soils can also crack mortar joints on unheated block basements, leaving them bowed and displaced, says engineering professor Kim Pressnail.

How likely is that? It’s location, location, location, says Pressnail. Given the right mix of water, sub-zero temperatures, and soils full of “the S-word—silt,” Pressnail says your cottage can lean like Italian architecture.  

Common problems The culprit is ice lenses, disc-shaped collections of ice crystals in the soil. Lenses grow by wicking water from deep, warm ground, and drawing towards colder areas. Usually that means they’ll rise towards the cold surface, “jacking” cottage piers, deck posts, and culverts on the way. But with an unheated basement, lenses can push towards the cold blocks, shoving them in.

6 signs of a failing foundation

What should I look for? As with snow load, a shifting foundation is forcing your cottage to flex. Look for cracks, buckling walls, and jamming doors. Outside, “look at other buildings. Have they moved around or tilted? Do you see frost heaves on the road? Culverts lifting? Sidewalks and fence posts jacking out of the ground? If your neighbour’s cottage is on piers and its ridgeline looks irregular or is sagging like an old horse, chances are you’re in a frost-prone area,” says Pressnail.

The fix Put new footings well below the frost line and get knowledgeable advice. “Experienced building inspectors know the soils in their areas, know what does work and what doesn’t work,” Pressnail says. “People see them as a pain, but they’re there to help you.”

If piers or posts are shifting, “you’ll need to call somebody in to lift and level the cottage,” Marantz says. Ditto for wall repairs, which will require extensive excavation. Adding free-draining soil around the cottage perimeter helps, Pressnail says, but he also suggests insulating floors, walls, and even the ground around frost-troubled cottages. A horizontal layer of extruded polystyrene foam, buried for about 30 cm around the cottage, creates an insulating buffer against frost and ice lenses. “It’s equivalent to snow,” Pressnail says, “but it’s always there.”

You’re not alone in this, cottagers!

You don’t have to handle this on your own. Track winter conditions by reaching out to neighbours and keeping in touch with your lake association. Consider a camera that lets you check snow load and ice dams, or heat and leak sensors inside the cottage, or even automated valves that will shut down the water system if a leak is detected. But technology can only do so much. You’ll still need a neighbour, a cottage-watching service, or your own presence when something seems amiss. Consider it an IRL excuse to visit your Happy Place. 

3 common cottage foundations and possible fixes

Catastrophes do happen, and winter is hard on stuff. Even with climate change, “less cold doesn’t mean never cold. It doesn’t mean we’ll be the Miami of the North,” says David Phillips, the senior climatologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada. In a warmer, wetter, more unsettled winter, the next couple of decades will likely still feature what Phillips calls “Paul Bunyan snowfalls” off the Great Lakes, plus more freezes and thaws, more ice storms, and the odd Polar Vortex. (Brrr.) The cold hard truth? Planning for winter can help you chill. Lying awake at night, fearing the worst, will not.

This article was originally published in the Winter 2022 issue of Cottage Life.

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Before you buy, check these 10 things that can be costly surprises

Photo by LesPalenik/Shutterstock

Cottages or cabins are synonymous with the rest and relaxation many of us crave, and they make for a very inviting escape from the city. Whether you’re deep in search of that dream recreational property or you’re casually browsing and seeing what’s out there, it’s important to know exactly what due diligence is needed when you do find the one.

There may be more work ahead than you’d anticipated, as many people don’t realize that cottages and cabins come with hidden issues or more complicated challenges to navigate than other types of properties. This means asking the right questions and digging a bit deeper than you might initially think is necessary. RE/MAX realtor Rachel Dempster serves B.C.’s Sunshine Coast.

This is one reason Rachel always recommends using a local realtor over a city realtor who doesn’t know the area as well. “City realtors have referral networks to realtors in other areas, so it’s best to work with locals,” says Dempster. “Generally, realtors know right away if a listing falls into a more unique category that requires special inspections and due diligence.” Dempster advises looking into the following key areas, no matter where you’re looking, before you purchase a property.

Septic systems

In Dempster’s experience, about 90 per cent of remote properties require septic testing. For instance, she recently sold a 10-acre property on Nelson Island, B.C. with no septic (or electricity). While this is an extreme case, it does happen.

As a result, Dempster likes to do a quick check when it comes to rural properties just to be sure her clients know exactly what they’re in for. And you should talk to your realtor about doing the same.

“Always add subjects for septic inspection to your contract,” says Dempster. Go through the system’s history—you need an adequate, regularly-serviced system or a plan for new installation within your purchase deal.

Dempster also advises checking the septic is the right size for the property, since septic systems are built based on the number of bedrooms, not bathrooms. This means an older system in a one-bedroom, two-bathroom cabin may not be sufficiently sized and could need an upgrade (which can be costly).

Another key thing to consider when it comes to water systems—where the water comes from (i.e. a well or municipal service) and whether it’s safe to drink.

Archaeological and geotechnical considerations

If you’re looking for a property in an area potentially home to archeological digs (common in places such as B.C.), be aware that your property could be subject to inspection. If anything is found, deals can be cancelled, particularly those for new builds.

Geotechnical considerations such as erosion are important too, depending on the severity. For example, “There’s a part of Half Moon Bay on the Sunshine Coast, which looks great if you go there by land. But, by boat, you’ll see a lot of erosion,” says Dempster. This further illustrates why local knowledge is invaluable.

Road access

Access to your property can come in different forms. The property may be on a township-maintained road or a resident-maintained private road. If the road is private, you may be responsible for paying to help maintain it, for insurance. Check ease of access, especially in the winter, as it can be expensive and time-consuming to clear snow.

Water access and conditions

If you are interested in boating at your cottage, you’ll need to confirm whether boat launches are restricted to owners or whether they are open to the public. You may also want to find what what controls the water level. Is the lake spring-fed? Is it part of a river chain controlled by dams? Does the water level fluctuate to allow you to keep your dock in the water in the winter. You don’t want to be caught off-guard by the water dropping five to six feet by the end of October.

Other due diligence considerations

  • Electrical systems—get an inspection to ensure they’re in good working order
  • Air quality—certain areas of the country have a high presence of radon, for example
  • Dock condition and management on either coast, including permitting and safety
  • Property lines, bylaws, and zoning—there can be restrictions on short-term rentals, for instance
  • Garbage collection—some areas don’t have it and require you to dispose of waste or recyclables yourself
  • Maintenance—ask your realtor and the previous owner, if possible, so you know what to expect

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Snowboarder dies in accident at Quebec ski hill

Photo Courtesy of Bromont, montagne d’expériences/Facebook

A snowboarder has died after colliding with snow-making equipment at Bromont Ski Resort in Quebec’s Eastern Townships on Saturday evening, police say.

The incident occurred around 7 p.m. on the resort’s Edmonton run of the Versant des Cantons hill during a “nuit blanche” event where the hill is lit by colourful lights and remains open until 1 a.m. The man, a 26-year-old from the Montreal area, was found unconscious. The resort’s rescue personnel administered first aid until an ambulance arrived and transported the man to Brome-Missisquoi-Perkins Hospital in Cowansville, where he was pronounced dead.

“This tragic event is deeply disturbing. Psychological support is offered to the teams directly involved in the intervention. Our thoughts are with the young man’s family and loved ones,” the resort wrote on its Facebook page.

Canada’s Minister for Sport, Pascale St-Onge, who represents the area’s riding, also commented on the death, writing on Twitter: “Such sad news. The whole mountain community in Bromont is grieving this morning. I am wholeheartedly with this young man’s family and loved ones.”

The Bromont police are investigating the incident and have asked anyone who witnessed the collision to contact them. As of Monday, the police had yet to release the deceased’s identity as they were unable to reach his immediate family.

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Cottage country populations are booming. Are rural areas ready for the wave of new residents?

Photo illustration by Taylor Kristan

My wife, Lynn, and I purchased a cottage in November of 2019, back in the final, carefree weeks of the Before Times.

It’s not a cottage anymore.

The property we bought was unusual, the kind we never expected to encounter. The living quarters were nothing special: a modest, seven-year-old, one-storey build with a small kitchen, three bedrooms, and an open-concept living space. The location, however, was perfect for us. It was surrounded by forest with no neighbouring cottages in sight and just a short bike ride to the lake.

But it wasn’t on a rural road, nestled amid acres of wilderness. It was located in a forgotten Huntsville, Ont., subdivision six kilometres east of the city centre, a quick jaunt down Hwy. 60, and it featured the full suite of amenities and hookups: municipal water, sewer, and garbage services; plus underground electricity, phone, cable, and natural gas. All that forest was made up of dozens of undeveloped lots that had been sitting unsold for years. Our property was one of only four built parcels the entire length of the street.

At the time, we couldn’t believe our luck. We were getting all the seclusion of a rural property without the hassles of water wells, septic systems, or propane tanks. We knew that the surrounding lots would eventually get bought and built, but we expected it to happen gradually. We figured we would have this corner of Muskoka all to ourselves for another three to five years. Those three to five years lasted six months. Buyers started snapping up lots in the spring of 2020. By June, some of them were already being cleared for development. Today, there are no lots left for sale. Fresh air and birdsong have been eclipsed by the belching and beeping of backhoes. Eight new homes have been completed and eight more are under construction. None of them are modest. They are massive properties, the kind you don’t live in seasonally. The new neighbours are here for good.

I’m not complaining. It’s still a great property, and we enjoy it tremendously. Even so, the lightning pace of the metamorphosis—and the social, economic, and cultural upheaval it represents—is astonishing. That’s a lot of people pulling up stakes, churning up settled ways like an outboard in the water.

And it’s not just happening on my street. In the post-pandemic era, small communities everywhere, the kind that once welcomed cottagers for ten weeks of the summer then went quiet the rest of the year, are experiencing an influx of year-round residents. A huge chunk of economic activity is being transferred from urban to rural areas, and a whole swath of society seems to be relocating and reorganizing itself. The change is still in progress, and no one knows yet what it will look like once it settles down.

From the cottage he owns on Kasshabog Lake in Ontario’s Kawartha region, Terry Rees has a perfect vantage point on the Great Cottage-Country Migration. “There are about 600 properties on Kasshabog, but typically there would never be more than 100 families around,” he says. “Now, there’s 300 on any given day, and 500 on the weekends. And there’s more activity on the lake at all times of the year.”

Rees also happens to be the executive director of the Federation of Ontario Cottagers’ Associations, so he’s been tracking the migration in communities other than his own. “It’s happening everywhere, and the pandemic has been a huge trigger,” he says. “We know from our surveys that lots of people retired and moved to the cottage—they decided, ‘I’m close enough, I’ll take the pension and go.’ Others decided that, if they’re going to work from home, they’d rather be at the lake than in a condo.”

At this moment, you’ll likely hear a similar story from municipal leaders in most rural towns across southern Ontario. “Last April, the number of ambulance calls we received was up 64 per cent from the year before,” says Carol Moffatt, the former mayor of The Township of Algonquin Highlands, near Algonquin Park, with a population of about 2,600 people scattered across its 1,000 square kilometres. “In April! That’s shoulder season. There’s not supposed to be anyone up here in April. But our year-round population had increased.”

The migration actually began before Covid. Cottage prices have been going up for years, a reflection of increased demand for properties. Rees says the changes on Kasshabog Lake have been underway for about a decade: as properties change hands, new owners invest in upgrades so they can spend more time there. Rees says the pandemic has accelerated this process, and the data bears him out. The pandemic turned a modest trend into a mass movement.

In 2021, a total of 73,500 Toronto residents packed up and moved to other parts of Ontario. Last year, that number increased to 78,100. Other large cities across Canada have experienced a similar exodus. Back before the days of remote work and Zoom meetings, those people would have moved to a nearby suburb and commuted to the office. Now, the old real estate adage “drive until you qualify” has become meaningless— without a daily commute to worry about, you can drive as far from the city as you want.

This helps explain why, from 2016 to 2021, four of Canada’s ten fastest-growing communities were located in Ontario cottage country: Wasaga Beach (population increase 20.3 per cent), Tillsonburg (17.3 per cent), Collingwood (13.8 per cent), and Woodstock (13.6 per cent). Those all happen to be “big” small towns, ranging in population from 18,000 to 47,000. They have paved roads and restaurants and big box shopping districts and hospitals. They have some ability to accommodate growth.

For smaller villages and rural areas, it’s a different story. Those communities, which have spent years worrying about their declining populations, are now dealing with a cavalcade of new residents. It looks like an answer to their prayers. In reality, it could be a mixed blessing.

When a tiny municipality like Algonquin Highlands experiences a 64 per cent increase in April ambulance calls, it’s more than just a sign of residential growth. It’s actually a wicked problem whose solution sets other variables in motion. If a municipality puts more ambulances into service, it will need to build a new ambulance bay. And it’ll need to increase winter road maintenance so that ambulances can get to their calls, which will mean more plows.

All of this assumes that an increase in shoulder-season EMS calls is stable and reliable. But it’s obviously neither of those things right now, because the migration wave is still rising. When will it peak? What if it crests and then recedes? What are the demographics of the incoming population? What are they likely to need ambulances for? Snowmobile accidents? Slips and falls? Heart attacks while shoveling snow? Just what is the community responding to here?

The same logic applies to other municipal services. The more local parks and trails get used, the more maintenance they require—and the more complaints the municipalities get when maintenance doesn’t happen promptly. When everything in a community gets used more intensively, everything needs more intensive, and more frequent, attention.

According to Rees, these are the questions that now beset Ontario’s rural councils. “Bancroft staffs all its emergency services based on the expectation that 70 per cent of the community isn’t there in the winter. That’s not the case anymore.” As the snow melts, other problems are exposed. Hastings County, which includes Bancroft, is facing an unprecedented number of building permit requests: a total of 335 were issued for homes and businesses in 2022, with a total value of more than $32 million, compared to 243 permits issued valued at just $13.5 million in 2019. “They’re getting requests for renos, new builds, additions, outbuildings, you name it,” says Rees, who speaks regularly with officials from across cottage country. “Council agendas are jampacked. They’ve got reams of complex proposals and not enough planners or staff or bylaw officers to process them all.”

That construction, as it proceeds, is going to generate lots of debris. And the new, year-round residents are going to produce lots more garbage. So when town staff aren’t processing construction permits, they’ll be scouting new dump sites, because the current one will need replacing years earlier than expected. That’s what happened in Bluewater, a rural municipality on the shores of Lake Huron that includes the town of Bayfield. In 2019, the local landfill still had an estimated six years remaining in its lifespan; by June of 2022, thanks to mountains of unexpected garbage, it only had five months left to live— a situation that prompted the local council to refuse large loads of construction waste.

And when all the construction is complete, after all those big trucks are done lumbering back and forth thousands of times on rural roads, guess what then? Those roads will all need repaving. “All roads are built to standards based on volume, speed, and load,” says Robin Jones, the mayor of Westport, Ont., a village of 750 people north of Kingston on the Rideau Canal. “Our roads aren’t built to the same standards as the 401.”

After 40 years of managed stasis, places such as Westport and Bancroft aren’t used to thinking about these things. They’re thinking about them now. “There are scanning methods that we can use to assess wear and tear and manage the roads. We’ve learned a lot,” says Jones, who is also the chair of the Rural Ontario Municipalities Association. She is bringing what they’ve learned in Westport to the ROMA conference to share with her peers.

Needless to say, all this stuff must be paid for, and no rural community has that kind of money in the bank. Towns that go quiet through the winter can function on sedate property tax rates, but as they grow into four-season communities, rate increases are among the options on the table. Many waterfront cottagers, whose properties often come with higher tax rates than those on traditional, landlocked lots, bristle at the mention of rate hikes. But the reality is that your tax rate is based upon a set of assumptions that no longer hold true: that the landfill wouldn’t run out of space so soon, the roads wouldn’t suffer so much wear and tear, the ambulance service would more or less shut down for the winter, and the municipal workforce wouldn’t have to grow to accommodate all these new demands. “When most people were only here part-time, we taxed them accordingly,” says Carol Moffatt. “Tax rates will have to go up. It’s a basic business model.”

This is how the system works: we all pay our share for the ambulance service, even if we are less likely than others to use it, so that the paramedics don’t need to ask anyone for a credit card number before rushing them to the hospital. For those who remain part-time cottagers, however, it still stings. Their use of roads and landfills isn’t going up, but there’s a good chance their taxes will.

Whether your taxes are going up or not, your property value definitely is. For nearly two decades now, as big-city real estate prices have rocketed into the stratosphere, rural villages and cottage towns have watched it unfold like a fictional TV program. Rural house prices stayed stable, priced at levels that reflected the rhythms and the workings of a rural economy. With a good, local job, you could afford a good, local home.

As buyers move in from the city, they buy their homes with city money from city jobs. The city economy is bigger, its rhythms faster, its deals fatter. The migration is injecting massive amounts outside wealth into once-insulated communities, and not all its impacts are positive. It’s driving rural prices upward, and it’s pricing locals out. According to Royal LePage, Ontario’s average waterfront recreational property price was forecasted to hit about $738,000 in 2022, up from $653,000 in 2021—and from $413,000 just five years earlier, in 2017.

The migration is also creating a shortage of housing, particularly for renters. Westport, an historic lumber mill town, has a lot of large, stately homes. “Many of them had been subdivided into rental apartments,” says mayor Robin Jones. “With prices rising, some owners recognized it was time to sell, and the buyers turned them back into single-family homes.” Westport is growing. Its restaurants and grocery stores need workers, as do all its other small businesses. But there’s nowhere for those workers to live.

The solutions aren’t obvious. It takes years to plan and build rental housing or new ambulance bays. Meanwhile, employers have begun reversing their pandemic work-from-home policies. Those who could work remotely from the cottage might get called back to the office grind, slowing growth in rural communities.

Others may well discover, after a year or two, that rural living isn’t for them. “I think there’s a natural limit to how many people can live in small rural communities year-round,” says Rees. “It can be stark in winter. There aren’t many restaurants. There are no squash courts or pools. The hospitals are far away if you need care.” Once the migration trend hits its peak, will it plateau or slide back down to earth? No one knows for sure. Not yet at least. Jones believes that, once things settle down, the migration will solve the biggest problem previously facing small towns. “This growth will ensure that rural Ontario survives,” she says.

For now the changes are still underway, and they have longtime residents concerned about the changing character of their communities, and how much urbanity will be injected into their surroundings. “The growth is not a bad thing. It’s good news and we’re proud of it,” says Andrew Sloan, the mayor of Central Elgin, which includes the bucolic lakeside village of Port Stanley—one that’s seen a fair amount of new development. “At the same time, we want the region to be able to keep its small-town character.”

Keeping that character is both a planning challenge and a cultural challenge. “I call it going from ‘cottage country’ to ‘lakeside lifestyle,’ ” says Moffatt, the former mayor of Algonquin Highlands. “And it does come with a collision of values.” Cottagers are all about teaching the kids to catch fish and chop logs. Lifestylers prefer delivery. That’s the stereotype, anyway, and to some degree it fits. “People who move from urban centres come with different expectations of what a municipality can deliver,” says Jones. Moffatt, no longer in politics, is more plain-spoken: “The generational cottagers are accustomed to the way small communities handle things. Many newcomers want things here and now. They are surprised that they might need to bring their own trash to the landfill and are upset to learn that it’s closed on Wednesdays.”

But no one believes the cultural divide will last, and that rapprochement will come sooner than later. “Our newcomers have an interest in keeping the historical character of the community,” says Sloan. “It’s part of what drew them here.” Moffatt agrees, “These are wonderful people moving into our community. They wouldn’t be here if they didn’t enjoy the same things generational cottagers do.” The solution, she says, is old-fashioned cottage hospitality: everyone needs to log off Facebook, meet their new neighbours, and get involved in the community. “Once people get to know each other, they’ll sort themselves out,” says Moffat. “We just have to get them out of their echo chambers and into council chambers.”

This story originally appeared in our Mar/Apr ’23 issue.

Philip Preville lives in Peterborough, Ont. He’s an avid hiker and skier. He plans to try canoeing whitewater rapids this summer.

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New bear research: She ain’t grizzly, she just looks that way

Photo by BGSmith/Shutterstock

Black bears are black, and grizzly bears are brown, right? Turns out, it’s not so simple. Some black bears are, in fact, brown—and perhaps increasingly so. A new study published in Current Biology sheds light on the cause. 

“Sometimes called cinnamon bears, black bears can appear in a variety of shades: a chocolate, a blond, a brown,” says Emily Puckett, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Memphis. 

Puckett wanted to know whether black bears are appearing brown due to interbreeding between grizzlies and black bears. “Because they come out similarly coloured we had a reasonable hypothesis that it was an interspecies movement of alleles [or genes].” But the answer to that, they discovered, is no. “It’s a unique mutation and it’s unique to black bears,” she says. 

One of the most fun aspects to the work, and what gave them a hint as to the actual mechanism for the change in bear colour, according to Puckett, was looking back at a study that was done in the1980s that drew on the diligent work of natural historians and wildlife communities. “I was astounded at this paper. They surveyed managers across the US and Canada, and came up with a series of maps of the percentage of black animals on the landscape across the geography.” That study looked at about 40,000 bears, and there was an older paper from the ‘70s that tracked the colour of female bears and their cubs. From those frequencies, which were remarkably consistent, Puckett and her team could guess that the mechanism probably arose from a dominant mutation. 

Wild profile: meet the black bear

To find that out Emily Puckett and her team used tissue samples from bears that were hunted, killed by vehicles, or animals captured for other research studies or management purposes. They did genetic analysis and hair colour analysis on samples from hundreds of black bears (Ursus americanus) and a small number of grizzly bears (Ursus arctos). In the end, they concluded that the “cinnamon morph” is caused by a mutation in the TYRP1 gene. Puckett effuses about being able to build on the work of past citizen scientists and wildlife biologists. “These natural histories from wildlife communities were spot on,” she says, “then I get to come in with the latest technology and create 200 bear genomes.” 

Puckett was amazed to discover that her allele frequency data (what the genetic analysis shows) “matches up very very closely to the data measuring phenotype frequency” (or what the animals actually look like). “Which actually makes sense,” she says, “because it’s a dominant mutation.” 

Not only did they discover the gene mutation that causes the colour morph, they also found out when, historically, the mutation took place. “We used a very fancy population genomics coalescent model that estimates when in time the mutation arose on the chromosome,” she says. “And we ran that for the specific point mutation that we identified that caused the brown colour and estimated that it was 9,360 years—or 1,440 generations—old.” 

So, where could you expect to see a so-called cinnamon bear? In the US, in the Southwest, the Sierras, and California is where the researchers saw the brown version of the gene showing up in the highest frequency, decreasing as you move north up into the Rocky mountains. “The Rockies are of course this massive barrier even for a large, strong animal like a bear to move through,” says Puckett. “So once you get east of the Rockies, or north of the Rockies, into the Yukon, you see that gene showing up, but in lower frequencies.” 

Puckett explains that genes spread as one animal moves from its natal area to a second area and breeds, moving alleles, or genes, from population one to two. “This is such a fun part of the paper—it’s basically the same piece of DNA being copied over and replicated—from bear parent to kid—found in the southwest, found in Alaska, found around the Great Lakes, Manitoba, Ontario, and then in Connecticut—that’s as far east as we’ve found it.”

The last piece of the puzzle was what adaptive advantage did it serve to have brown fur instead of black? The researchers tested two proposals. First, could being a lighter colour give an advantage for thermoregulation, since the trait arose in a hotter, drier environment? Second, could it have allowed the American black bears to ride on the coattails, or reputations, of grizzlies where their ranges overlapped, allowing them to better compete? They tested the different factors and didn’t get support for either hypothesis. “So we don’t know why it happens,” says Puckett. But they now wonder whether some type of selective advantage, such as, perhaps light coloured fur might be hard to spot in different environments. “In forest habitats, they might blend in more if they are black. In more edge habitat, where the forest cover is more open, maybe those are places where brown allele might be more favoured.” 

In the meantime, we can say that for some bears at least, cinnamon is the new black.

Wild profile: meet the grizzly bear

 

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