Indholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2023 i Cottage Life

New CL homepage Here at Cottage Life HQ, we’ve been redesigning the homepage of cottagelife.com. With a new and improved reader experience, you can stay up-to-date on cottage news, easily manage your subscriptions, and watch the newest Q&A videos. See it in May! LISTEN UP! Just in time for your cottage drive, a new season of the Cottage Life Podcast launches on June 29 and episodes will be released every Thursday. Michelle Kelly, editor of Cottage Life, is back in the hosting chair and diving deep into the cottage topics you care about. Subscribe on your favourite podcasting platform or listen on cottagelife.com/podcast. Fresh episodes dropping now Coming July 4, a new season of Merchants of the Wild. Six Indigenous adventurers are dropped deep into the rugged Gaspé Peninsula in…

We stand with the loons Thank you for putting the loon on the cover of the March/April ’23 issue and for sharing “Death of an Icon?” by documentary filmmaker Julia Nunes. CL is leading the way in opening what I hope will become a larger discussion on how we can protect the loon from disappearing on Canadian lakes. The article notes that declines in the loon population have been observed all over Canada, and the steepest decline is in the Atlantic provinces, where we have just finished a five-year project building a cottage in Nova Scotia. I believe the loons there have been markedly threatened by PWCs. These little machines are swamping loon babies and flooding nests. They are undoubtedly great fun for their human owners. But, if anywhere, they…

WHILE PLENTY OF cottagers aren’t at the lake when the winter roads are salted, the effects last into many a swim season. Road salt impacts the lakes and the creatures who make their homes there, as well as the trees along roads. Now, Friends of the Muskoka Watershed (FOTMW) are using citizen science to get to the bottom of the salty situation—which is significantly affecting their lakes in particular. Chloride in road salt is the most harmful component, says Dr. Neil Hutchinson, a volunteer director with FOTMW. The aquatic life in the Muskoka watershed is especially susceptible to the impacts of chloride because the lakes contain low amounts of calcium, which acts as a protectant. “So low calcium makes aquatic life more sensitive to road salt,” Hutchinson says. Although the…

The search Amanda and Mike VanderZee had big plans for their dream cottage. The Edmonton couple had inherited a lakefront plot of land about an hour outside of the city on Pigeon Lake, Alta., through Mike’s father after he had passed away in 2018. “It was a dream of Mike’s parents that became our dream,” says Amanda. With Amanda’s background as an architect and Mike’s as a property manager, they were both handy with tools and building plans—so they started saving and dreaming. (“We had a village of plans,” says Amanda. “And 3D renderings for them too.”) As they honed in on the design, even their then-10-year-old daughter, Laura, got in on the planning. “She set aside $60 and said, ‘This is for the lake, Mom,’” says Amanda. Then the…

IF YOU’VE TRIED to buy a boat in the last few years, only to watch your summer plans sink to the bottom of a 12-month wait list, take heart: 2023 is looking like a more normal year for boat markets. We spoke with boat dealers and industry experts across the country to get the scoop on availability, pricing, and what’s hot in 2023. The boating boom “When the pandemic landed on our shores, and we suddenly couldn’t gather, we saw gangbusters interest in boating,” says Jim Wielgosz, the interim executive director at the National Marine Manufacturers Association Canada (NMMA Canada), a trade association for boat, engine, and accessory manufacturers. “Many of those people were first-time boaters.” “No one could have predicted the surge of demand,” says Chris Perera, the president…

YOU CAN USUALLY find one of artist Kara McIntosh’s abstract paintings of Georgian Bay hanging above the living room sofa in her Pointe au Baril, Ont., cottage. But move to the dining room, and fine art quickly gives way to arts and crafts: the entire back wall is lined with glitter-covered paper plate awards earned by her three kids (now young adults) during summer camp at the nearby Ojibway Club. “One year, my daughter won the ‘Crazy for the Cliffs’ award because she was always asking to go cliff jumping,” Kara says. “Everyone’s a winner of some kind. And the older the awards are, the more washed out the construction paper has become.” These types of family memories were exactly what Kara had in mind when she bought the 2,350-sq.…

Masa Takei Freelance writer Masa Takei made a 180-degree turn when he pivoted from management consulting to writing and teaching full-time. “All I ever wanted to do was work outside,” he says. Masa lives in a small cabin in Haida Gwaii, B.C., where he serves on a search and rescue team and spends his free time tooling around on off-road motorcycles. “What I like to do is kind of what I find myself writing about.” In this issue, Masa ventured out to Ucluelet, B.C., to interview fellow artist Kamil Bialous about his off-grid retreat for “Between the Cedars” (p. 60). “I loved reconnecting with Kamil. We worked together on a CL story about surfing in Haida Gwaii in 2016,” recalls Masa, “but this time, he was my subject.” You can…

THROUGHOUT THE WINTER of 2020–2021, conservation photographer Carla Rhodes positioned a DSLR camera trap underneath her bird feeder. The result: delightful close-up shots of various furred and feathered friends, including the ones you see here—not to mention countless interesting observations about the creatures who roam the grounds of her Catskills, N.Y., home. “When the sun went down, deer mice would gather the dropped seeds, caching them in a stone wall near the bird feeder,” says Rhodes. “When day broke, an assortment of looters, from birds to squirrels, would raid the cached bounty.” The photos are part of a project called “Beneath the Bird Feeder,” which Rhodes hopes will inspire others to explore their backyards too. You can find it at carlarhodes.com…

WE ASKED COTTAGER Kamil Bialous, whose B.C. cabin we feature on p. 60, to share the can’t-miss spots in his cottage town of Ucluelet (which, fun fact, means “people of the safe harbour” in the Indigenous Nuu-chah-nulth language). Have a bite at Yayu Cafe (yayucafe.com), Kamil’s go-to spot for a plant-based meal. “The smoothies and bowls are so flavourful, you won’t even know they’re vegan,” says Kamil, who also swears by the pad thai and brownies. For dinner, head to Abbondanza Pizza (instagram.com/abbondanzapizza) for a delicious wood-fired pie (but call first to double-check they’re open). Shop local at The Den (thedenucluelet.com), a sustainable goods shop and refill store that offers local, purposeful, and curated items. Kamil hits it up for gifts, skin care, home accessories, and refillable home cleaning supplies.…

WHEN JOSH WILSON bought his Lower Buckhorn Lake, Ont., cottage in 2017, his mom gifted him a subscription to CL—and he hasn’t missed an issue since. “Like many cottagers, I see it as an absolute necessity, and I keep every issue in a dedicated Cottage Life pile,” he says. But John goes one step further: every year, he chooses his favourite cover to frame and hang on the wall. “It’s a 16-year project, and by the end, I’ll have a wall of covers, one from each year I’ve had the cottage,” he says. “It’s a fun tradition and will eventually become an awesome time capsule.”…

KNOW-HOW Spray balm GET MORE OUT OF EVERY CAN TORONTO ARTIST ALANA McCarthy, whose work includes outdoor murals, often sprays to add details over a base coat of brushed paint. “It’s difficult to brush a straight line over an undulating surface like a garage door,” she says. “But it’s easy with spray paint.” Some of McCarthy’s tips, she says, come down to actually following instructions on the label. It will tell you what materials your paint will stick to and how to prep the surface. 1 Shake the can well, for at least two minutes, to remix the binder and pigments inside—especially if the can is new, says McCarthy, since it may have been sitting on a store shelf for a long time. 2 Always use a respirator, even outdoors,…

DO YOU HAVE an old propane barbecue that isn’t working anymore, but you don’t want to send it to the landfill? Consider repurposing it into a handy-dandy wood-fired stove. Paul Whiston of Tecumseh, Ont., did just this, and friends and family rave about the results. The conversion works best with a small, portable barbecue, he says, but it could be done with larger grills too. First, Paul removed all the hoses and connections inside the old barbecue, as well as the dials, switches, regulators, and anything else that could catch fire. Once it was stripped down, he attached a cookie sheet to the bottom and drilled small holes into it for better airflow. He bent an old piece of sheet metal to use as a collar around the edge of…

IT STARTED—AS many great adventures now do—with a flyover on Google Earth. As an avid surfer, Kamil Bialous might have been doing reconnaissance on a new surf break. But this time, his interest wasn’t in the water. He and his partner, Urszula Lipsztajn, had long been scouting for a plot on which to build a pied-à-terre (a pied-à-mer, really) near one of Canada’s premier surf destinations, Tofino, B.C. Something he hadn’t noticed before had caught his eye, and he’d peered closer at his screen. “What are these forested lots here?” Over their six years of looking, their search had spread out to Ucluelet. Tofino and Ucluelet sit at opposite ends of about 40 prime kilometres of Vancouver Island’s west coast, each town at the tips of a section shaped roughly…

IT FEELS LIKE Christmas morning when longtime CL photographer Kamil Bialous’s images arrive at the magazine. We gather around the desk of our art director, Taylor Kristan, as they scroll through picture after stunning picture, each one looking like it’s been plucked from the land before time (see above for the beautiful proof). Kamil’s work has a magical quality, taking viewers through his lens to another world, a place where the vegetation is soft and thick and fifty different shades of mossy green; where the light flows over his subjects like oozy maple syrup on hot pancakes, adding a golden hue to each frame. When Kamil told us that he and his partner, Urszula Lipsztajn, were building a cabin on the edge of Vancouver Island, near Ucluelet, we knew immediately…

LOVERS OF LIVE music, take note: Gravenhurst, Ont.’s Tall Pines Music & Arts Festival is back! Taking place June 16–17 against the stunning backdrop of Lake Muskoka, the festival features some of Canada’s most celebrated bands—Blue Rodeo, Tokyo Police Club, and Serena Ryder are headliners—as well as live art installations, a local vendor village, food trucks, canoeing, and a kids’ zone. It gets better: we’re offering the Cottage Life community a 15 per cent discount on Tall Pines tickets. Visit tallpinesfestival.com, click “Get Tickets,” and use code cottagelife15 at checkout. Rock on!…

JOE NIMENS AND his partner, Erin Morano, live in what might be described in places like Victoria, B.C., Bluffer’s Park in Toronto, or almost anywhere in the Netherlands, as a float home. The couple, however, would choose a different term. Their 1,000-sq.-ft. dwelling, which is moored for much of the time in the Port Severn, Ont., harbour, consists of four 53-foot shipping containers that have been transformed into a home, a garage, a workshop, and outdoor kitchen. Rooftop solar panels generate electricity, a woodstove provides heat, an encapsulated polystyrene foam foundation keeps it afloat, and it has a self-contained septic system. A picture window affords a great view of the water. “It’s like a regular house,” Nimens says, glancing out at the vista. “The furnace goes on and off, we…

AH, THE COTTAGE. All that sunshine and fresh air. And trees, with their pollen. And stinging insects. And—be honest—a little mould in the basement. This stuff can get annoying for any cottager. But for a cottager with allergies, it can ruin precious lakeside time. And, thanks to climate change, many allergy sufferers are worse off than ever. “Tree pollen season starts later than it used to and can overlap with grass pollen season,” says Anne Ellis, a professor in the department of medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. “So if you’re allergic to both, late spring-early summer is not a fun time for you.” What?! The cottage is supposed to be fun! But don’t give up hope. If itching, sneezing, and wheezing are killing the good vibes this summer,…