Tag: Cottaging

Building Friendships at the Cottage: A New Perspective

August 1, 2025

We know our neighbors better on the island where our cottage is, than those where we live. I found that curious and made me think why.

Many people go to their summer homes to relax, to leave the city behind, and to be alone to regenerate their physical and mental health. I thought that cottagers prefer to be left alone. But I found the opposite to be the truth.

Before I go any further, I should explain how we arrived purchasing a cottage that may have relevance to my argument. We camped and tented for our vacations in the beginning until our one-year-old child woke up in an inch of water from a downpour one night. This prompted us to purchase a tent trailer, ensuring we would be above ground in case of a storm.

The tent trailer took us to Florida, the west coast (Vancouver), the east coast (Charlottetown) and many camp grounds in Ontario and New York State. The whole family enjoyed traveling and sightseeing with a tent trailer.

However, as the children grew up, summer camps, sports activities, and jobs made it inconvenient to travel with them, and we sold the tent trailer.

At the time I sold the tent trailer, a friend invited us to visit their cottage, and we canoed to their place on an islad. We had so much fun on the lake that day that we stayed overnight, and I decided I must have a cottage on this island. When I found a cottage for sale, I made a stink bid in the fall, a poor time to sell it. Since the couple owning the property was going through a divorce and the wife wanted her share of the money at once, they agreed to sell it. That property had good “bones”, or structure, but was unfinished and needed a lot of work.

The first task with our newly acquired property was to finish the ceiling with the tiles already stacked in the cottage. When mice dropped from the ceiling onto Kathy while she was sleeping in the bedroom, finishing the ceiling became the number one task. Other projects followed, like building steps going up the hill to the cottage, where there was a dirt path that was slippery when wet.

We also joined the local cottagers’ association, a common group in such communities. The primary function of these groups is to have an annual meeting with a BBQ event, providing the opportunity to meet others. At these AGMs, there are also talks about subjects of interest to all, like water filter systems, and how to avoid mosquitoes and ticks. Once the ice is broken, friendships form. A few years ago, there was an even bridge club on the island.

This weekend’s visit with a few neighbors shaped my views on our cottage community. The next-door neighbor from New Jersey invited us for dinner, and the discussion flowed easily despite our diverse backgrounds and lifestyles. We learned more about the neighbors’ families than we ever knew about our neighbors in town.  

Our neighbors from Michigan invited us to their spacious deck that same weekend. During a discussion about where they met, we learned that the man’s Vietnam experience ended with an injury, resulting from a grenade blowing up next to him, with long-term consequences. This neighbor has done a lot of work on his cottage and has accumulated a wide range of construction equipment. I found one of his tools helpful, a heavy-duty jack that I borrowed to lift up my sinking dock.

We paid a visit to another old friend from Pennsylvania. His grandson was there keeping them company. During our visit, another neighbor dropped in and brought a bag of fresh samosas from Toronto. We all had one and admired the new ceiling completed in their large entertainment room.

Never to miss our Canadian friends from Ottawa, we walked over to their immense deck the next day, where they always relax with a book and a glass of wine in the afternoon.

Although socializing is fun, the weekend was also work; Kathy power washed the outside decks, which are substantial, about one thousand square feet, with a wraparound deck extending into steps leading to the waterfront. I used a weed-eater to clear the front and back yards. I shaved the grass to the ground to make sure no ticks would enjoy my yard, ticks thrive in tall grass, and I had some bad experiences with them just a few weeks ago.

Despite seeing these people only during the summer months, I found that we know more about them than we know about our city neighbors. It could be because in town, most people work. In cottage land, people take their time to hang out, relax, and enjoy seeing others doing the same. Vacationing is a good time to make friends, and cottaging offers such an opportunity.

What is Canadian Culture

February 7, 2024

During a lively discussion with friends, I asked: what is Canadian culture? After a surprising period of thoughtful quiet, someone suggested that Canada has musicians, authors, and artists who combine to define Canadian culture. But I said that many of these have made their career in the US. For example, Celine Dion, Joni Mitchell, and The Guess Who (Burton Cummings) have become famous south of the border. When it comes to writers, Rohinton Mistry, although a Canadian author, wrote about India, Michael Ondaatje, another Canadian author, wrote about World War II (The English Patient), and Margaret Atwood’s novels have also enjoyed wide popularity south of the border. So, why would we call them examples of Canadian culture? What is Canadian about their work, except for their citizenship?

I brought up our difficulty when visiting friends and family in Europe; what should we take as gifts that would appear Canadian? We have often taken coasters and shawls with native Canadian themes but not much else. We could not think of other items. Canadian native themes represent a small portion of the Canadian art fabric, although considered very Canadian abroad.

When I think of Canadian culture, the McKenzie Brothers come to mind; Bob and Doug, acting as two dimwitted brothers, swilled beer, and every second word coming out of their mouths was “have another beer” and “eh,” on their popular show called The Great White North. There is something about drinking beer that is Canadian, whether in a ballpark or at hockey arenas during games. Bob and Doug have certainly become Canadian favorites, and I would label their popularity as part of Canadian culture.

Another part of Canadian culture is hockey. It is widely popular, and most children start playing when they are big enough to lace up a pair of skates. One of the most popular hockey commentators on “Hockey Night Canada” was Don Cherry, whose flamboyant suits and analyses of hockey games charmed many Canadian homes.  

Rick Mercer is a Canadian icon whose show was on air for over twenty years. His humor and rants pleased Canadians. His travels in the US interviewing famous people and asking dumb questions to embarrass interviewees were enormously popular in Canada (including one with then-presidential candidate Bush – Rick asked Bush about Canadian Prime Minister “Jean Poutine”). I appreciated his humor but did not like the idea of embarrassing people. But apparently, his wit pleased Canadians, which tells me something about Canadian character.

Founded by the ex-hockey player Tim Horton, the coffee shop chain of his name has become a Canadian institution. Although many Starbucks, Second Cups, and other coffee shops exist, Canadians gravitate to a local Tim Horton for their morning fix. I would call the chain part of our Canadian culture today.

We also enjoy the unique throat singing by Inuit people. In Canada, you hear throat singing on national holidays. I would call it a part of the Canadian cultural mosaic.

So, you may ask: what is culture? I am not an expert on this subject, but to me, it is a pattern of behavior of people living on a usually contiguous piece of geography with common traditions acquired over generations vis-a-vis work, diet, clothing, social interaction, language, religion, likes, and dislikes. For example, think of the French culture of Quebec, their joie-de-vivre, their history with les habitants (the original settlers from France in what is now Quebec), their love of hockey, and their language. And do not forget their food: poutine, tourtiere, feve au lards.

What spawned the discussion on Canadian culture was whether we are losing it. Whether the influx of immigrants, refugees, and the vast numbers of foreign students dilute Canadian culture, and whether the Prime Minister, advocating the concept of the “trans-national state,” supersedes traditional Canadian culture.

While the US embraced the “melting pot” concept for their newcomers, Canada favored “multi-culturalism.” We love the different cultures immigrants bring with them, their ethnic restaurants, and their ethnic community centers, and we support them financially to celebrate their national holidays. We encourage foreign cultures to thrive in Canada; we celebrate them on July 1 each year, Canada’s birthday. The more we do this, the more we dilute Canadian culture with foreign cultures. We forget who we are and what we stand for, except for Canadian society’s equity, diversity, and inclusion slogan.

Let me describe a day when I met three newcomers to Canada that made me think about their knowledge of Canada. A cheerful young fellow took my passport pictures at a pharmacy. Arriving six months ago from Sri Lanka, he has not secured a job in his field, civil engineering. Nobody in his home country told him during his application process he might need to requalify in Canada to work as an engineer. And so, he worked as a cashier and passport photographer at the pharmacy. Hoping for a better future, he has already rented an apartment to welcome his wife and two-year-old child in two months.

The fellow sitting beside me waiting to get his social insurance card at a Canadian service center (I  was there to renew my passport) came from Zimbabwe two months ago. As a pharmacist, he already has a job and awaits his family’s arrival in a few months. He told me he learned how to dress for the cold in Canada in January. He informed me he would stay for twenty years and then return home. He may change his mind in the next twenty years, and I am sure he will learn a lot about Canada that may attract him to stay.

The agent who did the paperwork to renew my passport was born in France to African parents. Bilingual and with a federal government job, he may be Canadianized to a degree, but I wondered how he feels as a black bilingual person in English-speaking Ontario.

These are just three examples of Canadian newcomers I met one day, and I wondered what they knew about Canadian culture. They will undoubtedly learn. Two have experienced the cold Canadian winter for the first time, which involves tuques, mukluks, down-filled gloves, and parkas. Years ago, I worked at the federal immigration department when a program existed with funding to assist immigrants in adjusting to Canadian life. The program does not exist anymore.

Personally, camping in the wilderness, canoeing, and picking wild blueberries on land recently devastated by forest fire, with bears around, is part of Canada. Cottaging around the lakes in Ontario, listening to the buzz of the chainsaw and the hammer sound, is also typical of Canadian culture. Unless we provide time and opportunity for our newcomers to learn to live in our country and engage in activities that have become traditions in Canada, I am afraid that we’ll gradually lose parts of our cultural identity.

Forty-six percent of Toronto is foreign-born. And twenty-three percent of Canada is foreign-born. How can we not lose part of who we are with these numbers? But immigrants are welcome in Canada; immigrants built this country. It could be that our success with immigrants will cause our changing culture.

A Day at the Cottage. Idle Thoughts.

August 28, 2022

The lake was smooth, and I was sipping my first cup of coffee on the deck early in the morning. The grumble of a starting boat engine woke me from my meditation, which is usually to think of nothing. How inconsiderate, waking everybody up at 7 am. The large inboard/outboard ambled out of the bay and slowly coasted down close to the shore in front of me. I was having my second cup when I saw the boat coming back and then turning direction again, with a young male standing at the wheel but not fishing. That was surprising. What was he doing? Then an aluminum boat appeared and circled the other one and the two boaters talked with each other. I thought that was strange, a meeting early morning on the lake. It appeared to me the first boater was waiting for the other and just coasted on the lake until the other one arrived. The Ozark episodes on Netflix came to my mind where drugs were distributed to boats on a lake while a preacher gave a sermon to the anchored boaters. Oh, shut up. Your imagination is running wild. Probably just two friends from Toronto discovered that both have a place on the same lake and arranged to meet.

We came up to the cottage on Birch Island the night before, to relax after family visits and to eat up the leftovers. We did not have anything to carry over to the cottage and did not use the carts at the marina for moving stuff to the boat. But we saw the weekenders had begun to arrive and fill the parking lot. Disturbing was a couple of young people bringing, what looked like a huge sound system. Sound travels far on the lake and we do not cherish late-night parties. A worse scenario is when we see cases of beer carried onto the boats.

But it was a quiet night, and the morning was relaxing on the deck, punctuated by the two motorboats trolling now along the lake in front of me, with the two young people fishing. I decided to go for a walk on the island.

Walking, I came upon one nice cottage and was confronted by its owner standing on the path and bemoaning the loss of shade trees, providing privacy to her cottage.  She told me: “Ontario Hydro cut down my cedars that I planted fifty years ago”. I looked at the cuts that showed tree trunks of over a foot in diameter. Ontario Hydro maintains the right-of-way of the power line paralleling the path by cutting down vegetation along it. I empathized with her but remarked that at least we have electricity here.

With the heat rising by now, the lake beckoned me, and I returned to ponder a swim. My son-in-law brought me a swimming buddy, a red balloon that you tie onto your waist, so the boats can see you in the water. I blew up the swimming buddy, attached it to my waist, and jumped into the water, avoiding the wannabe water skiers.

Life on the water is, to me, the essence of cottage life on a lake. Kathy grew up in Wales on the waterfront close to Porthmadog in Caernarfonshire and I grew up in Hungary, where we spent our summers on the Danube. We both enjoy water-related activities and getting the cottage was a joint venture.

Another favorite activity is dinners with the family on the deck after a day of playing on and in the water. With long daylight and no mosquitoes until sundown, the deck provides the ideal space for freewheeling discussions on career choices for our grandchildren or how much our healthcare system sucks: wait a minute, we discuss both sides of the healthcare challenges we face today.

Tonight, the grandchildren prepared the meal and the third choice was tacos and burritos. It is interesting to me that although I do not cook much, all my children and grandchildren can and some even enjoy cooking. Quite a change from the old days. After the meal, the grandchildren washed the dishes, and under the threat of missing dessert, it is not democratic at the cottage. Sundown and the arrival of mosquitoes pushed us into the cottage. And we heard the loons on our lake providing the background music before the crickets took over.

One needs money and time for a cottage: cottagers are people, in my experience, with an established career and a family. Limited by the seasons and vacation time, people have cottages on our island that stay vacant most of the time. When I survey all this vacant real estate, I think that this is extravagant or perhaps indecent from a societal point of view. I really enjoy it though.