Indholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2023 i Cottage Life

Coming to a screen near you Have you had the “talk” yet? Succession planning doesn’t need to be an uncomfortable conversation. Our expert, estate planning lawyer Peter Lillico, will help you navigate the unique challenges that come with the process. If you missed his presentation at the recent CL Show, fear not: we’re sharing his video seminar exclusively with our newsletter subscribers. So check your inbox for access! SHOOTING STAR What makes a winning photo? Get some great tips by looking at past photo contest winners on cottagelife.com/photocontest. All the images share one thing: they illustrate the best of cottage life. Turn to p. 76 to see what photos the judges picked as winners this year. Worried about rentals? The proliferation of short-term rentals across Canada has all levels of…

Read the mushroom I read, “In Search of Life Below” (Sept/Oct ’23). My family has always foraged for mushrooms in the woods around our cottage. My parents, who were Latvian immigrants, picked mostly slippery jacks. Fried up with onions and butter, they lived up to their name. My husband never eats the mushrooms—someone would have to drive us to the hospital if we were accidentally poisoned. When my sons became interested in foraging, things changed. We are always looking for mushrooms wherever we walk. But ever since my son experienced abdominal pains after eating foraged mushrooms and had to visit the ER, we stick with readily recognizable varieties. We forage for chanterelles, boletes, hedgehogs, and black trumpets, and we occasionally get lucky and find chicken of the woods. I was…

INDIVIDUAL COTTAGERS AND road associations that rely on private snowplow operators have seen contract costs spike over the last five years. Like everything else in the economy, wages, fuel, and vehicle expenses have increased. But high insurance premiums remain the biggest factor in sending snowplow costs upward. “My yearly premium can be $15,000 on top of the common general liability we are required to hold,” says Bob Barnhart, the co-owner of Barnhart Sand and Gravel in Dwight, Ont., who has about 140 customers and runs seven plow trucks. “And that’s if you can get the coverage at all. Some insurance companies do not want snowplow operators as clients.” The big driver of snowplow premiums is slip-and-fall injury claims. In an attempt to protect business owners who serve as occupiers and…

IF THE LAMINATE countertop in your cottage kitchen or bathroom has seen better days, here are three options for reviving the surface without a full-blown countertop replacement. Filling scratches and gouges Liquid filler, available in limited colours, works for scratches and small gouges. If your laminate is multi-coloured or the scratches are small, you may not need a perfect colour match, but chances are you’ll have to custom mix a couple of colours together. Apply a small quantity of your mix to a piece of paper, then let it dry to check the match. Use rubbing alcohol to degrease areas before you apply the filler. Painting This is for countertops that are too far gone for fillers. Some countertop paints create mottled stone-like effects, and these will hide imperfections best.…

MASS TIMBER IS a class of engineered wood product made from layers of wood that are glued, heated, and laminated under pressure. The pattern of wood layers and laminating processes can differ, but all mass timber products are engineered to be used as structural elements such as beams, columns, and panels. The most common variations are glulam (glued laminated timber), laminated veneer lumber (LVL), cross-laminated timber (CLT), and nail-laminated timber (NLT). Glulam and other mass timber products offer attractive, flexible solutions to provide strength and stability to cottage structures. Glulam beams, for example, can support the roof in open concept layouts. They’re also used as joists for floor framing, to construct open-tread staircases, or as headers over large window and door openings. The moisture-resistant resin in glulam adds durability in…

ONE MORNING LATE this spring, my three-year-old-son and I left our home in Halifax, bound for the family cottage on New Brunswick’s Northumberland Shore. Before we left town, however, I had to make good on a promise I’d made to him: new beach toys. His old set of plastic buckets and shovels was broken, so before leaving the city, we dropped by a dollar store for replacements. We weren’t disappointed. The seasonal onslaught of cheap beach toys was well underway; there was an entire aisle’s worth of plastic buckets, rakes, castle moulds, and sea creatures. Ten dollars later, we set out for the seashore with a set of fun-but-flimsy new toys, sure to be chipped, cracked, and in need of replacement again by summer’s end. When we arrived, the beach…

ON THE AUGUST day I visited, a watchful security guard presided over the gate at Beach O’Pines, a community of cottages near Grand Bend, Ont. Get past him, and gain entry to an exclusive stretch of beachfront and smattering of cottages that’s been coveted for nearly 100 years. Ambling over the bridge and into the criss-cross of paved roads, even the light seems to soften. In place of urban laneways, footpaths run behind rows of cottages, greenery cascading overhead and underfoot. The white sand beaches seem made for building castles. Tall, sun-bleached grasses rustle in the wind. The area is a mash of old and sprawling new. Rustic cabins share the roads with four-car garages. In one driveway, a vanity plate on a dusty Jeep Wrangler reads “Bass Lass.” Across…

The singular spruce grouse resides in brushy younger stands of dense evergreens across most of Canada, in winter nestling in midstory branches to eat, roost, and stay warm. The taciturn, sombrely attired “fool hen” blends in so well with its environs, its chief defence is immobility, even when it’s closely approached by humans. If forced, the statuette can fly more than 100 metres up and over the trees. In winter, the forest fowl binge resolutely on the short needles and buds of spruce and, especially, those of jack and lodgepole pine. They audibly snap off the foliage with a twist of their heads. Grouse dine at the trees highest in nutrients and minerals, possibly by discerning subtle differences in shade and taste. After a summer banquet of blueberries, leaves, flowers,…

Katherine Laidlaw Katherine Laidlaw got her start the way many journalists do: by editing her university paper. “It was meant to be an extracurricular for my law school application,” she says. “And I just never went to law school.” After working as an editor at various Canadian outlets, she decided to focus more on writing. “That’s really where my heart is,” says Katherine. In this issue, she wrote about Bernard Wolf and the history of racist real estate covenants in Canada (“On the Shores of a Lake Just Like Yours or Mine…” p. 54). “It feels like one of those stories that’s been swept away,” she says. “I still think about how recent it was that battles like these were going on. We like to think we’ve moved far away…

The search Kat Wong, a marketing director, always thought her first home would be in Toronto. She’d been saving up for a down payment since she graduated from university in 2012. When the pandemic hit, she was renting a one-bedroom apartment with her partner, Graeme Guthrie, who is a personal trainer, and she figured it was time to upgrade their space. Kat first thought about buying a larger condo (she’d front the down payment, and Graeme would pay housing costs). But she wasn’t happy with what she saw. “Places had $700–$800 per month condo fees,” she says. “And the den would be a room with a glass door.” By the summer of 2020, Kat had a new, fully remote job, and Graeme was taking some time off from training. This…

Don’t let Old Man Winter ruin your outdoor fun. Spend a little money, get the right gear, and solve your winter-weather woes. 1 PROBLEM Freeze and thaw cycles have made everywhere you walk an ice rink. 2 PROBLEM The cold prompts vigorous activity, which leads to sweating, which leads to body cooling, which leads to hypothermia. 3 PROBLEM Freezing temperatures have turned your hands into useless stumps that hang from your arms. 4 PROBLEM Snain. Huh? It’s snow combined with rain. And it leads to water trickling down under your sleeves every time you lift an arm to do…anything. Gross. 5 PROBLEM Ice pellets. Flying directly into your eyeballs. And that’s millions of amounts more annoying when you’re, say, speeding down the slope at a local ski hill. SOLUTIONS ON…

ONE OF LIFE’S quiet satisfactions is applying finish to woodworking projects—at least when the process isn’t fraught and the results are what you expected. Some finishes, especially film-forming ones such as polyurethane, can be frustrating. Hardwax oil, popular in Europe but not well-known here, is a game changer. When you apply polyurethane with a brush, roller, or sprayer, trying to build a thicker film sets the stage for runs. Removing runs is tedious. And no matter how cleanly you work, dust always seems to end up in the finish. Polyurethane does leave a strong plastic film that protects even high-traffic surfaces on floors and tabletops. However, when the finish wears, repairing it and blending in a new coat is a lot of fuss. If you use water-based urethane instead, it…

AFTER 50 YEARS of woodworking, I’m rarely surprised by new products. These wood wall tiles, made by Timber Tiles, are an exception. Cut obliquely from sustainably harvested Canadian hemlock, they feature a striking combination of blended end and face grain. Available in two shapes, and in a natural colour or dark stain, the machining of these tiles is spot-on, ensuring a well-aligned, great-looking pattern. They attach to drywall or plywood substrates with a bit of urethane construction adhesive and a couple of 23-gauge headless micro-pins. They don’t need any grout; instead, they’re made with an elegant ⅛" reveal around each tile. The tiles come pre-finished with an easily serviceable UV-cured hardwax oil by Saicos, which provides protection while enhancing the wood grain. They’re intended for vertical surfaces—not floors or anywhere…

IF SOMEONE HAD told you in late 2019 that a virus first spotted in China would create unprecedented demand for cottage real estate in Canada, would you have believed them? Because that’s what we saw: a mass exodus north during the pandemic. From 2020 to 2022, cottage prices across the country jumped an eye-popping 39 per cent, with waterfront properties reaching an aggregate price of $736,900, up from $498,111, according to Royal LePage. Limited inventory sparked bidding wars that sent prices well over asking. Buyers snapped up properties without setting foot on them, foregoing home inspections to make offers more appealing. And cottage rentals were booked 365 days a year. It was a good time to be a cottage owner. But then the fog of the pandemic cleared. Offices recalled…

take your pooch for a spin on skis THE BEST SKIJORING conditions arrive with the return of the sun. On the shortest days of the year, our subarctic town makes do with six hours of thin winter light. But come March, the afternoon temperatures crest above zero and meltwater seeps down, saturating the snowpack. The overnight freeze leaves behind a transmuted, slick surface—not quite snow, not ice, but something in between. On these days, I break for lunch early, don my cross-country ski boots, and put our two Siberian huskies into their harnesses, a task that will become all but impossible once we near the lake and their anticipation builds to a fever pitch. By the time I pull into the shoreside parking lot, I can hear the chaos in…

SUMMER HAS OFFICIALLY passed us by. Daylight Saving Time has ended, and every night it’s dark, really dark, at 5 p.m. In my house, we’ll haul out the SAD lights and undertake several unlikable yearly chores, ones we gleefully put off last spring: inventory of who needs new boots; trying to pair the single mittens stuffed into a basket in the darkest corner of the closet; servicing the furnace. Like so many other Canadians, we are hunkering down for the cold season. Perhaps the editor of a magazine that encourages its readers to embrace winter right on its cover shouldn’t admit it but, here is the truth: I am not really a winter person. I’m all-in on autumn, keen on spring, a summer fan, and a winter I’ll-accept-it-only-because-I-have-no-choice type of…

Gah! Talon to the face! Photo contest entrant Isabelle Marozzo grabbed her camera after a flock of common redpolls arrived at her Norland, Ont., property on a snowy, windy day. This pair is clearly having a disagreement—which is unusual, says Mark Peck, an ornithologist with the Royal Ontario Museum. “Redpolls tend to be very social and usually get along very well,” he says. So what’s up? “I have noticed them being aggressive at feeders when there is limited access to seeds or feeding perches.” Makes sense. Except, “I had feeders hanging on a clothing line, and in empty flowerpots on the railings on my deck,” says Isabelle. “There were lots of seeds out.” And the scuffle was brief. Huh. Well, “maybe it was just a grumpy bird whose personal space…

PRIVATELY OWNED UTILITY poles must be the most underappreciated part of getting electricity to the cottage, aside from maybe the bill. “For most private pole owners, if the pole’s standing and they have power, that’s good enough,” says Evan Binley of Central Utility Services, in Duncan, B.C. “We get panicked calls, though, when a pole’s on the ground and the utility’s about to cut the power.” Utilities inspect their own poles, but those on private land often get much less attention. Many cottagers don’t realize they may own parts of their power line—until they’re shocked by a four- or five-figure replacement bill. “Reach out to your utility,” says Shawn Martel, the general manager of the Electrical Safety Authority for Ontario’s eastern region. Hydro One customers, for example, can call in…

THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT Download the “FireSmart Begins at Home” app to assess your property’s wildfire resilience and get a list of actions you can take to reduce potential fire damage. For instance, you can: 1 Remove combustible debris from your roof and eavestroughs, and trim overhanging branches. 2 Clear a 1.5 metre non-combustible zone around your cottage, surfaced with soil, rock, or stone. Remove plants, debris, and combustible materials, and don’t forget to clear under your deck. 3 Close off any gaps along the eaves and screen vents with non-combustible 3-mm mesh to keep embers out.…

wildlife HONOURABLE MENTION owl on the prowl Stu McKay, Hecla Island, Lake Winnipeg, Man. How they got the shot “I’ve been pursuing this bird on camera for years,” says Stu, who enjoys photographing owls as much as he does the northern lights (p. 84). Stu waited for several hours to get this winning photo of Manitoba’s provincial bird, the great grey owl, on the eastern shores of Lake Winnipeg. “It’s illegal to bait owls in Manitoba, so I had to be ready to shoot at any moment. A lot of patience and some luck was involved in getting this shot.” What makes it a winner This owl is both captivating and frightening, appearing dead centre in the photo with its yellow eyes transfixed on the vole it’s tracking in the…