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Cottage Life

What’s the deal with competition-themed cottage gatherings?

Heidi Berton

Why must lakeside gatherings involve chili cook-offs and karaoke contests? What happened to just, you know, gathering?

Q: “I host an annual party at my cottage every Victoria Day weekend—it’s sort of a ‘Welcome Back to the Lake’ kind of thing. My neighbours are encouraging me to give it a competition theme: you know, Best Potluck Dish or Best Costume Based on a TV Character. I feel like that’ll discourage people from attending. What’s the deal with this—isn’t it enough that we all just get together and have a barbecue?”

A: You should consider yourself fortunate to have avoided the irritating “competition entertaining” trend for so long because, like giant hogweed or mindful paddleboard yoga, it’s one of those things that infiltrated Cottage Land some time ago and simply refuses to die. I remember working at the meat counter of our little cottage-country store about 10 years ago and having to help customers who, as part of a cottage weekend invite, had to whip up an entry for a burger competition or a rib cook-off. It was a foreign concept to me at the time. Some guests took the clever approach of buying our house-made patties and passing them off as their own. Others were deadly serious, showing up with oddball Internet recipes that required special ingredients like ground hanger steak, bacon jam, or shiso leaves that would all but guarantee glorious victory at the now-annual Mud Lake Patty Smash. But many customers who weren’t very handy cooks were just stressed out by the whole thing. I had to walk a few through the Burger 101 crash course so they could create a patty that wouldn’t make them the butt of weekend jokes. Burger anxiety? What kind of host-monster would want to put their guests through that?

All fingers point to those pointless reality TV shows where competition gets made out of things that don’t usually require winners and losers in the normal universe. You know, singing, dancing, baking. That sort of thing. It’s no surprise that people are addicted to watching television. That’s part of the human condition. But how our love of gladiatorial entertainment got transmuted into a popular form of cottage entertaining is a mystery to me. Yes, competition has always been part of the cottage scene, from canoe races at the regatta to a fishing derby weekend. But these activities are intrinsically competitive in the first place. That’s the whole point of the exercise. The way I see it, the big difference between the fun competition of a badminton game and the angst-inducing rivalry of a Frozen-themed costume battle or a fish taco smackdown is that in badminton, and most other regular competitions, you measure out winners and losers by keeping score, or timing a race, or weighing a fish. But cottage food competitions must be judged, and like many of the very worst Olympic events—I’m looking right at you, figure skating—rely on a biased and often fraudulent way of awarding medals. That’s why figure skaters are always crying. And there’s no better way to ruin a cottage dinner party than to watch the losers of a Cold Soup Cook-Off hold hands as their tears wash stage makeup into a bowl of artisanal gazpacho.

So, just in case it is not perfectly clear, you are not alone in wondering what’s up with this weird competition theme thing. Yes, it will probably deter a few guests. And yes, it will be a colossal pain in the keister for those folks who play along. But because this is your annual party, you occupy the decision-making high ground. So tell your neighbours, in a nice way, to go pound salt. If they want to host a bake-off or a dress-up theme weekend, that’s their business. Case closed. But your final question distresses me: “Isn’t it enough that we all get together and have a barbecue?” Well, it should be, shouldn’t it? I mean, isn’t the point of getting together at the cottage, whether for a dinner party or a whole weekend, to get together? You know, fellowship, some good chat, maybe a few laughs? Have you noticed how often, in a social setting, people feel they must constantly show you stuff on their phones? Is it because we are collectively losing the power of conversation? Is it possible that a competition theme helps with that by giving us something to talk about?

So maybe you could argue that the structure of competition-type themes makes entertaining easier. Maybe. But I recently heard about a group of cottage couples who do a rotating Chopped theme dinner thing, where the host has to make a meal that includes four random ingredients that the other couples picked. I’m not sure I get it. Was regular socializing too boring for them, but this diabolical arrangement gives them a frisson of culinary excitement? Or was regular entertaining too easy? So they devised a way to stimulate their dopamine receptors by making meal prep exceptionally difficult and prone to epic failure? Here’s a test that tells me these guys are total whack jobs: head to a library, a bookstore, or the Internet and try to find cookbooks with “difficult”, “stressful”, and “time-consuming” in their titles. You will find none. Now perform the same search using “easy”, “fun”, and “delicious” and you will be deluged with suggestions, especially when the books are about entertaining guests.

But who knows? Maybe the times have changed, and the cookbooks haven’t caught up yet. For the record, I am not an enthusiastic cottage host. But if the modern way to entertain guests is to make the process a hardship and a competition, I am ready for the challenge. For starters, why not have guests compete to accomplish something useful, instead of producing six middling variations of Coquilles Saint-Jacques? Like a timed event to see who can split the most firewood in 30 minutes? Or a team contest to see who will reign supreme in cleaning measured sections of eavestrough? The competitive variations—and the potential for entertainment—are almost endless. You could set parents against children in a deck chair stain-off. Or separate married couples and pit them against each other in an inside versus outside window cleaning battle. The best part is that because everyone seems to have gone gaga for cottage theme competitions, your guests will actually thank you for hosting a wonderful weekend after they’ve knocked off all your spring opening chores. It’s enough to make me really embrace the idea of cottage entertaining.

This article was originally published in the March/April 2023 issue of Cottage Life.

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Cottage Life

Are there cons to winterizing the cottage?

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Q: “Last year I winterized my cottage—which was a big job but seemed sensible at the time. Then winter rolled around, and I only went up for one weekend. I feel like I’ve just wasted a whole bunch of money on something I won’t use. Was I wrong to winterize? Everyone said it was the best way to go.”

A: I know it’s hard for many people to imagine, but there once was a period in history when having a year-round cottage with all the mod cons of home was the exception, not the rule. Back then, cottages were mostly for warm weather use, and in the fall—usually on Thanksgiving weekend—the pump got drained, and shutters were hung for another long winter. That, of course, was ancient history. Today, it seems like seasonal cottagers are pretty much a minority. 

Usually, when cottagers take the year-round leap, it’s because they are true winter lovers who want to get as much enjoyment out of the place as humanly possible. You know, skiing, snowshoeing, fishing through the ice. Wineskins and raclette. That sort of thing. These folks come up every weekend and even do family holidays at the lake. For others, their primary motivation is to one day move to the lake and live there year round, a transition that many retirees attempt with varied levels of success. In both scenarios there is a degree of passion and careful planning involved, neither of which I’m seeing in your situation. Even considering factors like bad weather, hockey tournaments, dance classes, and doctor’s appointments, if you only managed to visit your newly upgraded cottage-home for just one weekend all winter then it might be time to admit that year-round cottaging is just not your bag.

From the sound of it, you have been railroaded into this expensive action by an outside influence. Did a real estate agent offer you some advice about “resale,” perchance? They often use the word like a whip. That’s why so many people have multiple unused guest bedrooms, tempered glass deck railings, and sprawling acreages of “one-floor living.” Or were you perhaps swayed by a close friend or relative who loves to spend time at your cottage? You know, the lump who is there every weekend but doesn’t contribute a single red cent toward upkeep, maintenance, or an expensive renovation? Alternatively, God forbid, have you been talking to your lake neighbours? This can be dangerous. You might get solid advice about February living. Or you might be seen as a source of companionship for the retired marketing executive next door who has gone batty from the romantic solitude of full-time winter at the cottage. Misery loves company. 

Special considerations for insuring winterized cottages

I don’t want to play Debbie Downer here, but while you may have just flushed away a large bowl of money doing your renovation, there is another loud sucking sound that has yet to come your way. Because you’ll want to keep the heat on so the pipes don’t freeze. You’ll also need to hire a friendly plow truck lady to keep your lane clear for the fire department. The more it snows, the more you pay. And be prepared: your taxes may go up. So while you sit at home not using your cottage, it is gorging itself on vast amounts of your money like a beautiful, fully insulated deer tick. 

What’s more, Murphy’s Law dictates that because you made a specific effort to fortify your cottage against winter perils, something bad and expensive will surely happen in the first few years. Like a ruffed grouse going kamikaze through the picture window in the great room. Or a family of flying squirrels occupying the guest bedroom. Maybe the backup generator won’t run. Or maybe the backup generator won’t stop, gobbling up all the propane so the furnace can’t fire and the pipes freeze solid. Which means indoor flooding come spring. Thinking about this stuff can cause worry and stress, stress that you didn’t know that you’d feel until you winterized. Did you remember to close the window in the upstairs bathroom after your last visit? Sure, lots of people with year-round access use their cottages as regularly as possible in the winter. But there are a whole bunch more I only see once or twice, who are just coming up “to check on the place” to ease their nerves.

4 ways a cottager keeps the spirit alive after closing up

But there is hope for you yet, and the solution is simple. Go to your cottage and start using it—not just in the winter, but also in the most inhospitable bits of time in spring and fall. The place is all set up for you to enjoy, after all. The only way you can know if year-rounding is right for you is to work at it a bit. And apart from actually getting better value for your cottage dollar, you might learn how great it feels to be up on the lake when conditions are less than perfect. (Or, flip side, you might discover how much you hate it.) I love the off-seasons because there are fewer other cottagers around. Which is great if you enjoy silence and solitude, but not so good if you need constant company and stimulation. Will you feel isolated? I can’t really say, but you could always hang out with your neighbour, the lonely executive, and play some two-handed euchre. Just give it a try.

Winter activities for your whole family

But let’s say your winterized experiment is an abject failure because of some small detail. Like the fact that you hate cold weather. Fear not. Because if those realtors are right, hordes of buyers will fight for a chance to buy your cozy and convenient cottage, open for business 365 days a year. Which would be a perfect opportunity for you to become an old-school cottager with a strictly seasonal hacienda. When autumn comes around, you can drain the plumbing and board the place up. Remember to flip the main breaker and suspend your phone service till next year. Come winter, rather than worry, you can have happy dreams about the place. Home to summer fun and only one big turkey dinner.

This article was originally published in the Winter 2019 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

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Cottage Life

Help! I’m bored of board games

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Q: “My family loves playing board games at the cottage, but I’m not a fan. I think most games are boring. (My sister says I’m a “weirdo.”) I will play one or two rounds to be a good sport, but I usually just end up reading a book while they play. How can I suggest switching things up without taking away from their fun?”

A: Board games are enduring fixtures of pretty much every cottage place, filling drawers and closets and blanket boxes with a geological record of game-dom that can reach back to a Parcheesi board that has been in the family since the Boer War. Even people who don’t play games at their regular homes will have a hoard of cardboard entertainments up at the lake, which is a bit odd, but maybe it’s because the family cottage is the one place where enough people gather to provide the critical mass you need for board game play. It really doesn’t matter, though, because board games, like s’mores and sunburn and mosquito repellant, having been specifically named in the Book of Cottage, are mandatory things. So it is written.

I think some cottagers who don’t really like board games will play them if necessary, usually to appease a bored child or to “be a good sport,” as you have already noted. So, no, you are not a weirdo. Personally, I dislike most board games because of their utter pointlessness, with moves controlled by cards or dice, and little in the way of mental stimulation. Think Candy Land or Pop-O-Matic Trouble. Risk is all about global domination, which sounds like the best thing ever, but even if you win the game, you actually end up dominating nothing but a sheet of cardboard and some plastic game pieces. And that’s after playing a game that can take days to finish. But what do I know? When I was a child, my very favourite games were Mousetrap and Rattle Battle, mostly because they involved noisy contraptions that drove adults nuts.

I would guess that most cottagers truly do like board games, if only because they represent togetherness and family tradition.  I also suspect some people play games because they must always be active and organized and are patently unable to relax and do nothing. Why some people love games more than others is a mystery, but we do know one thing for sure: there are about a gazillion different board games out there in the Fun-O-Verse, both old and new. Maybe if you could find a new game, one that you might actually enjoy, you could join in the cottage fun without having to suffer through two hours playing Clue where, spoiler alert, it was Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the library.

Check out these four movies based on board games

One way you could escape the misery of Cards Against Humanity or Hungry Hungry Hippos is to get your cottage crew into some games that are more active and less board. For example, I would rather play darts than Bananagrams any day of the week. (Actually, I would rather eat a bran muffin studded with broken glass than play Bananagrams, but that’s just me.) Why not shake things up with proper old-timey action games like horseshoes or ring toss or croquet or lawn darts? Cornhole anyone? I hear the hip kids are even throwing axes at wooden targets these days. Does anybody play mumblety-peg any more? Maybe it’s time to start.

Another way to up your game, so to speak, is to play for real money. The stake amounts are entirely arbitrary so you can play for pennies or real polymer banknotes. Do consider, however, that the higher the stakes, the more exciting your games will become, which translates into a higher level of emotional investment and better motivation. For example, regular Monopoly, using Monopoly money, can be super boring because, well, what’s the point? But swap that cartoon cash for Canadian Pesos and things get real interesting, real fast. Like when your judgemental sister checks into your new hotel on Marvin Gardens. “Who’s the weirdo now, Marcia? You owe me 1,200 bucks!” 

The application of real currency to board games is truly transformative. Trust me. Normally I wouldn’t give two hoots if you sunk my battleship. But if you sunk my battleship and now I can’t pay my car insurance because I owe you $900? Well, that’s another, more exciting, kettle of fish entirely, isn’t it?

A lot of the time, cottage board game play is all about keeping children occupied. Which is great, because playing games with children for real money can be tons of fun. Kids are so naive. With really small ones, you can convince them, for example, that your loonie is worth more than their toonie. What’s the harm? For youngsters, the artificial construct of currency is just an abstraction, like the Tooth Fairy. Without being braggy, I will tell you that I am pretty good at Scrabble. But when I play against 10-year-olds, I am all but unbeatable, which is a very nice feeling indeed. Plus, I get to walk away with some extra cash in my jeans. The pay-it-forward benefit when you play children for real money is that you are actually doing them a favour. Beating a grade schooler at Jenga is one thing. But beating her at Jenga and taking $15 worth of Grandma’s birthday money teaches humility and how to appreciate the value of a dollar.

Creative ways to keep your kids occupied when cabin fever strikes

There’s a good chance you won’t be able to change your family’s board game habits. And I doubt you will turn into a game-lover overnight. So you might just want to stick with the status quo and read your books while others play. But if you truly want to warm up to the games thing, a good place to start is with a liberal application of alcohol. Adults only, of course, and here’s the thing: Pong was one of the first video games ever invented, yet nobody remembers it anymore. But when someone added beer to the equation, Beer Pong became the biggest party game in cottage country. It really cracked the code. That’s why playing Snakes and Ladders is dull and can lead to murmuring sadness, but navigating the same board with a pitcher of margaritas is super fun, even when you lose. You could even “gin up” some theme game nights with combos like Mojito Othello or Pina Colada Pictionary. Who wouldn’t love to play Trivial Pursuit of Zinfandel? The same way some good gravy can tune up a milquetoast meatloaf, a touch of tipple can make a good board game better and a bad one bearable. It’s a game changer.

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

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Cottage Life

Help! I share the cottage with a DIY dud

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Q: “My family shares a cottage with my parents and cousins from both sides. I am not very handy, but a few of my cousins are DIYers who insist on doing all cottage repairs. Normally this would be a good thing, but they usually do a very poor job and a lot of projects have to be done twice, which is a waste of time. I have suggested that paying someone to do the job right the first time would be money well spent, but they say any tradesperson would just ‘rip us off,’ even though we have never hired one before. No one in my family wants to rock the boat because my cousins are good people, but I’m getting tired of paying twice for materials. How can I change this situation?”

A: Having single-handedly staffed the Shared Cottage Complaint Hotline for the last while, I can safely say that your cohabitation experience is fairly unique because most family squabbles about fix-it stuff pivot around a central axis of laziness. Usually, this means family members are unwilling to help with chores and maintenance, sometimes to the point of defiant work avoidance. But it can also manifest itself in that special form of indolence where human arms are so lazy that they cannot reach down to pick up a purse or a wallet, or peck out an e-transfer on a smartphone. Sadly, at many shared places, sloth and stinginess walk hand in hand.

You are in an unusual bind. Like your cousins, many DIY enthusiasts—particularly the new, heavily bearded kind who refer to themselves as “makers”—are loathe to spend money on any task they could imagine performing themselves. It doesn’t matter that they have never installed a 200-amp electrical service panel before. How hard could it be? That’s why YouTube exists. Besides, they saw Mike Holmes do it once, and it only took his guy 22 minutes. Bear in mind that these are “normal” DIYers we are talking about. Your cousins are outliers because they see contractors as rip-off artists rather than hired help, and they appear to be extreme in their aversion to paying a professional to ensure professional results.

For regular DIYers, doing things themselves is all about pride, personal accomplishment, and a desire to learn a new skill. But because your cousins have comingled those same qualities with miserliness and suspicion, it will be very difficult to convince them to pay actual money for professional help, even if it is badly needed. And it’s curious that they repeatedly botch jobs only to redo them. Because while enthusiasm is a big part of DIY DNA, most of us have enough self-awareness to identify a job that is just too large, too complex, or too dangerous to tackle. That’s when you hire someone who is smarter and owns the proper tools and equipment to do the job. Having to redo a project you just finished last year? It’s proof positive you were never up to the job in the first place. But ultimately, it depends on the project: messing up a garden planter is no big whoop but screwing up more serious repairs, like plumbing or electrical or major roof fixes, will have serious and expensive consequences.

I guess you could try to convene a family meeting and lobby to raise money for some badly needed work, but I fear you’d be in for a rough ride. If expenses are shared evenly, your cousins won’t want to pay a red cent. And you might find that other members of your family suffer from alligator arms and are happy to put up with someone else’s half-assed job if it costs them little or nothing. To complicate matters, you would be operating in a perilous zone of hurt feelings, given that your cousins mean well and work hard, no matter how poor the result.

I recently spoke to a cottager with the reverse of your problem. His uncle, a retired contractor, also insisted on doing all the repairs and upgrades at a multi-family cottage. He had the talent and the tools, and any work done was of the highest quality. But he worked very slowly, with many stops and starts, so small projects took forever and big ones never ended. But he always had an excuse for slow progress and was adamant that a pro would take just as long and do a substandard job. Talk about a no-win situation. The guy is slow, but he does really good work for free. How do you find fault with that without looking like a total jerk?

Short of putting up with the status quo, I can see only two ways forward in this stalemate and both will cost you a lot of money. In a weak bid to minimize hurt feelings, you could make a pitch to the group that identifies specific jobs and suggest that money for them could be voluntarily contributed by family members. It’s a crapshoot. If everyone else votes to chip in, your handy cousins might cave under pressure and cough up some dough. But if they refuse to participate, the dominoes could fall, and you might be left with meagre or nonexistent support.

Agreement in any group is difficult. When the group is related by blood, consensus is usually impossible, sometimes just because when they were both 12, Kate gave Justin a wedgie in front of all the kids at the regatta. My advice, if you can afford it, is to simply pull an end-run around the whole family and personally pay to have a job that is important to you performed by a competent tradesperson. Secure a contractor well in advance, and try to schedule the work for a time when no one else is around. When the dust has settled, tell your cousins you feel terrible because they work so hard, and you can’t even swing a hammer. Mention their dedication and selflessness. Your kin might grumble, but I bet they’ll take the compliment. I’d also give 50/50 odds that other family members will feel pangs of conscience and toss some bucks your way. Or maybe they won’t. It’s actually quite impossible to know. But when you share a cottage with extended family, the relative who risks nothing, gains nothing.

This article was originally published in the June/July 2022 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

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Cottage Life

I hate the cottage—what now?

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“Help! I love my wife, but I hate the cottage (which she loves). I find it too rustic, and I always feel bored there. I don’t enjoy watersports, swimming, or hiking. But I do want to spend time with her. What should I do? Can I train myself to enjoy the cottage more? Or is there another solution?”

Without resorting to advanced-level re-education techniques perfected in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, I can’t really think of any way that you can “train” yourself to enjoy a cottage more. You could certainly try to embrace activities such as swimming or fishing with a gruelling daily regimen of front-crawl sessions to the swim raft, multiple reps of cannonball sets, and endless hours bouncing crank-baits off the neighbour’s dock. But I think this approach would just make you hate cottaging even more. Imagine trying to make yourself enjoy s’mores by eating 10 of them a day for a month. First you would barf. Then you would never eat another s’more again. Ever.

I used to harbour deep suspicions about cottage-phobic people. I mean honestly, what major malfunction could make a person dislike the cottage experience? What’s not to like about rocks and trees? Or cheerful wild creatures? How could anyone not like the blessed silence or swimming in a lake or listening to the wind? What the hell is wrong with these people? I thought. But today, after decades of half-hearted self-improvement, I’ve learned to walk a kilometre in another person’s Birkenstocks before passing judgement. For example, just to turn things around, I don’t care for urban, city environments. Way too many people in a city and that means lining up for stuff which, outside of airport security, I refuse to do. Cities are also dirty and really loud. And people walk around staring at their phones like cross-eyed zombies. Nothing new here, I know. But it’s not for me, and I can’t train myself to like it. So if you don’t feel the love for life at the lake, who am I to judge?

While I don’t think you can make yourself love the cottage thing, you might be able to find ways to make it bearable, if only to spend time with your wife. (More on this later.) It sounds like you might be happier if you had more things to do that did not include relaxing, reading, playing board games, swimming, etc. Maybe you could line up fix-it jobs to occupy your time. Or, plan trips to town for activities that would break up the dreary monotony of being held hostage at a beautiful retreat on a pristine lake. This is exactly why small cottage-country towns exist: so bored cottage people can get a break from lakeside living.

The following routine will take up half a day, and you can do it three times a week, if you have the stamina. First, head to town and try to find parking within a 10 kilometre radius of the “downtown core.” Next, walk around while deciding which ice cream or frozen yogurt stand you like best. Eat your delicious treat at a crowded public space—don’t feed the gulls—then perform another lap around town, visiting each and every gift shop, outfitter’s store, soap outlet, and artisanal wind-chime pop-up without actually buying anything. Finish with one more circuit for some selfies with whatever strikes your fancy. Before heading back to the cottage, break down and buy that hideous animal-themed track pant and hoodie combo you coveted earlier. Wear this outfit the next time you come to town for ice cream and browsing. It will let others know this is not your first rodeo.

Ironically, when you compile a list of things one might do to avoid participating in traditional cottage routines, it actually sounds a lot like the normal operating procedure for a great many cottagers today, who simply export their regular life routines to a different chunk of real estate, like high-income hermit crabs. The old rustic cottage is a thing of the past. Now we build year-round homes on the lake and bring our home lives with us. Golf memberships, gym memberships, yoga classes, local theatre, movie nights, and dining out are fun and engaging ways to avoid actually being at the cottage. Some cottagers even send their kids to canoe camp while they are already at the lake. It’s genius, if you really think about it. 

So hold your head up. Instead of being a cottage-phobic misfit, it might just turn out that you are actually in a majority position, one more person underwhelmed by the lake lifestyle. Great news for you! Except, unfortunately, it really doesn’t help solve your problem.

You are motivated to change your ways because you want to spend time with your wife, which is certainly admirable. But have you asked her what she thinks about the situation? I ask because my wife and I are pretty much inseparable. We live together, we work together, we travel together, and we enjoy our cottage together. I think it’s a beautiful arrangement. But whenever I have to go away for work or a fun trip with the guys, I have barely announced my plans before my shaving kit and clothes have been packed and loaded in the truck, which is already running. At our time of parting, she will usually stuff $500 in my shirt pocket for walk-around money and say something sweet like “Have fun. But don’t bother calling. See you next week.” Is it possible that by not visiting the cottage you might actually be doing your wife a favour? Have you considered that catering to your cottage-phobic ways might cut into her enjoyment of the place she loves best? It can’t hurt to ask. You might not like the answer, but it might save you from a further lifetime of dreary cottage life.

This article was originally published in the October 2021 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

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Cottage Life

Off-season? Not for the locals in cottage-land

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This essay about living in the off-season was originally published “Life in a northern town” in the Winter 2020 issue of Cottage Life.

As a kid who spent all summer at the cottage, the annual arrival of the Canadian National Exhibition carried double-edged significance. On one hand, it promised fun and excitement, unchecked gluttony at the food hall, and the terrifying possibility of vomiting on one of the loud and violent rides.

But it also meant summer was officially over and soon it would be time for the drudgery of school. When the CNE opened, cottage-land—the best amusement park ever invented—closed for the season.

I have now lived full-time in cottage-land for a little over 20 years, much of that working at a small business where cottagers were our regular customers, along with local neighbours, travellers, and tourists from all points on the map. This year it was a COVID-19 bust, but normally, when I hear that the CNE will be opening soon, my heart gives a little pitty-pat of joy, because it means that very shortly my town and the everyday routines of the people who live year-round in cottage country will return to normalcy.

I consider it a rare blessing to be able to live in this place of water and rocks and trees. Every season has a special beauty, and there is plenty of wilderness, space, and solitude. Which is why so many cottagers have made it, or hope to make it, their year-round home. That’s the wrinkle to living in an attractive locale; everybody else wants to share the experience, and who could possibly blame them? The downside for small towns, and the people who live in them, is a dramatic seasonal population explosion that at times can seem overwhelming. In the District of Muskoka, seasonal residents represent more than 57 per cent of the population. That varies town by town, of course. In Huntsville, where I live, permanent people outnumber seasonals almost 3:1. But in smaller townships such as Georgian Bay, where seasonal residents constitute almost 87 per cent of the population, those numbers are powerfully reversed. When you consider that these figures don’t include tourists and travellers and leaf-lookers, never mind the organized mayhem of triathlons and craft beer festivals, it’s easy to see how small places quickly fill to bursting in peak season.

This uptick in population obviously has pros and cons in a small-town economy. For those of us who work in businesses that rely on seasonal tourism—which is most everybody—boom time means business time and money in the bank. But it also means long hours, little time off, and a sense of sweeping invasion as traffic snarls and parking spots disappear. Banks and stores are jammed and local restaurants and watering holes are crowded to capacity. That scene, of course, was pre–pandemic. But it will return again, when things get back to normal. When a few routine errands that would normally take an hour will devour the best part of a day, if they can be completed at all. And sometimes patience wears thin. Sometimes tempers flare. It’s at these moments of maximum summer that my little town starts to exhibit the crappier aspects of the city I escaped from many years ago. This is when I sometimes curse summer tourists, in all their various guises, as “those goddamn ice-cream eaters.”

But it’s not as if this phenomenon is new. Summer in cottage country has probably been this way since well-heeled people wearing boiled wool suits started coming here on trains and steamboats. It’s all part of the rhythm of the seasons, and the overheated, overcrowded, overly busy summer is but one part of the tourist town equation. The other part, and maybe the better one for locals at least, starts to show its face when traffic in cottage places starts to thin out a bit. Traditionally, Labour Day signalled the end of summer and a drastic decline in tourism. Some cottagers would return for closing-up and the ritual of Thanksgiving by the lake, but by mid-September the high season was pretty much over. Like someone flipped a switch. In normal, non-pandemic years, the subtle slide into off-season calm is more drawn out—and busier later into the year—as European tourists arrive to enjoy fine autumn weather, and the population features more retired people, who are masters of their own schedules. More like a dimmer than an on/off switch.

Still, it is quieter. And my first luxury of the dimmer season is to be able to visit my own cottage for more than the night or two I usually manage in July and August. Not long ago, before we sold our store, my summers were spent serving cottage customers, and when I can finally get to my own place, I truly appreciate the experience. It might be too cold for swimming and broiling in the sun, but it feels like an exotic vacation for me. Just doing normal cottage chores is a welcome respite from grinding it out for six days a week, because working on cottage projects, as we all know, is not the same as real work. Leaving the town you live in every day can make four nights up at the lake seem like a two-week vacation, and with a little rest and relaxation, the sweaty hustle of maximum summer eventually slips into the rearview mirror. The return to relative normalcy also means getting to do touristy stuff like going for a hike in Algonquin Provincial Park or improvising a road trip from town to town, cruising for junk store treasure and maybe even, miracle of miracles, stopping at some rinky-dink place to eat an ice cream cone.

For people who live in cottage country and work in businesses defined by summer tourism, fall and winter give opportunities to reconnect with friends and neighbours, people you don’t see all summer, especially if they too are part of the intense tourist economy. In the fall, regularity returns for everyone as kids head back to school and the routines of work life, hockey leagues, and dance class kick in. Still busy, but a more measured tempo.

Grocery shopping or cruising the aisles at Canadian Tire can once again be a mildly pleasurable activity. The global pandemic has thrown a wrench into the works, of course, but in a normal year this is the time to meet friends for wings and beer, host a dinner party, or just hang out in someone’s garage working on a four-wheeler, without having to be anyplace in a screaming hurry.

The first broken spoke on the Ferris wheel of cottage-land shows up in late November, when the weather usually turns abysmal, and pretty much runs until Christmas. Dark and cold and sullen, it’s no longer autumn, nor is it proper winter by a long shot. A good time for many to fly somewhere warm. For me it’s a time of making and mending, starting new projects and trying to finish others.

The high point of this period is hunting season, moose first then whitetail deer, as solo hunters get some bush time, and the big family camps hit full stride, carrying on traditions that are as precious to them as any cottager’s hard-earned summer stint at the lake. For many people who work without cease all summer, hunting season is their most cherished and inviolable vacation. It’s a tradition that many cottagers don’t get, and it’s hard not to laugh when I hear from someone who can’t understand why they aren’t getting call-backs from their plumber during the first week of deer season.

When you are a local, the sometimes bizarre behaviour of tourists can be hilarious, like trying to make a U-turn on main street on a summer Saturday (impossible) or seeing a troop of urban hipsters with matching beards and slim-fit bush jackets get carded at the pub. One year, a lady drove her car over the edge at the waste transfer station and landed inside a dumpster.

At our store we’d regularly chuckle at the sight of keen survivalists strapped with 10″ Bowie knives, ready for their weekend of provincial park camping. Not hilarious is the off-hand rudeness offered to servers at restaurants and high-speed dangerous driving on cottage roads. Garbage is a problem, whether it’s regular litter or full bags of trash left by my driveway, in the parking lot of our store, or tossed on the side of the highway. There are a lot of people trying to squeeze into cottage country during the summer. And it stands to reason that a small percentage of them will be irresponsible jerks.

When I first moved to cottage country, I was surprised to find an us-versus-them attitude, at times quite ugly, held by some locals. They are a minority of people who complain bitterly about “citiots” and “tourrorists,” those non-specific ignorant visitors who, as certain vocal locals see it, have all joined together to make local lives a misery. Taking a page from the racist playbook, they think outsiders should just go back to where they came from. Everybody has heard commentary from these yobs before, and most just dismiss the moron minority. But I know many cottage people who are deeply hurt by this kind of talk, surprised to hear it because they consider themselves part of the community, many having come here for generations. They shop in town, support local hospitals and charities, and have made long-lasting ties within the community. And this is the response? With the first pandemic’s first spring came even more small-town small mind, as each little jurisdiction wagged frightened fingers at their nearest neighbour, all of them decrying the imminent hordes of big city cottagers charging north to gobble up food and supplies, spread disease, and congest hospitals. Which as we know, simply did not happen. The reality is that anyone involved in a small-town, tourist-based economy, especially the business owners, builders, trades, retailers, and service providers who cater to cottage customers, knows that without support from “outsiders,” there would be no local economy whatsoever. But just like everywhere else it is found, this chronic resentment toward “rich and privileged” visitors is driven by economic inequity. A summer snapshot of cottage country might depict shiny happy people having fun, but in the District of Muskoka, just 28 per cent of permanent households earn more than $100,000 annually, compared to 76 per cent for seasonal residents—a situation that would grow exponentially more dire if cottagers and visitors stopped spending money in cottage towns and “just went back where they came from.”

Winter in cottage country is, obviously, simply amazing. I’ve always liked the cold season, but up here its best parts are magnified and more exceptional, the silence above all, as the whole world gets blanketed in a sound-absorbing mantle of snow. It’s also at this time, but only when the ice is good and thick, that I can revisit my island cottage, hauling in weeks’ worth of supplies with a snowmobile.

A few years ago, I made a simple groomer for the trails around my property at home, so now there is a network of smooth winter boulevards for snowshoeing, skiing, and cutting firewood to heat the house. It’s important to get outside. Hunkering down indoors with Netflix and a stack of cookbooks is the surest path to an interminable and miserable four months. Do I get frustrated by January thaws that make everything melt and reset the fun odometer? Sure I do. And does moving mountains of snow from my driveway get a bit tired by March? Absolutely. But there’s nowhere I would rather live, especially in January and February when cottage country is mostly left to locals.

After my move north, it was always fun to make occasional random trips back to the big city for food and shopping and nightlife. But as the years went by, and my age advanced with them, those trips became less interesting to me and more infrequent. These days, my preferred direction of travel is due north, to my new version of cottage-land. There are no hot-and-bothered crowds on my island, no sense of invasion even on the busiest summer days, and it’s the place I like to be and think about all the time.

No matter where they live, I’m pretty sure this is something all cottagers share. At our store, during the boiling panic of summer, I would routinely ask Friday afternoon cottage road warriors about the traffic on the way up, especially if I’d heard of an accident or a lane closure on the radio. Without fail, rather than grumble or complain about the worst-drive-ever, most people would simply give a tired smile and say: “I’m just happy to be here.”