Innehållsförteckning för June/July 2019 från Cottage Life

Dear Cottage Life The wooden cover of the book at our cottage says “Guests,” but for as long as I can remember, it has been called “The Cottage Book.” The July 27, 1959, entry reads, “Mother locked me in the john for two hours! Mrs. Tyler released me. Regards, Dad.” It is my hope that this book will continue to bring joy for years to come. —NANCY HALL, VIA EMAIL FEAST YOUR EYES ON THIS I cook a lot, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a “larger than life” sausage coil (“Not Just Another Saturday Night,” May ’19). We had live lobsters once for my son’s birthday, which involved a day trip from our boat-access cottage. At least these two recipes are easy to cook. But the mushroom salad—19…

In case you missed the news back in the spring, Norway ceded the title of World’s Tallest Moose to Moose Jaw, Sask.’s Mac the Moose (but still claims to have the shinier and sexier statue). Whatever. Canada wins this round. But what if we went head-to-head with the rest of the world in these epic battles of big things? Size aside, let’s rumble. 1 Battle of the Giant Gnomes “Howard,” Saanich, B.C. vs “Gnome Chomsky,” Kerhonkson, N.Y. Winner U.S. Howard is the name for a really big statue of a tax attorney. 2 Battle of the Massive Fruit The Big Apple, Colborne, Ont. vs The Big Avocado, Duranbah, Australia Winner Canada. Avocado isn’t as amazing as the toast would have you believe. 3 Battle of the Monumental Balls Canada’s Largest…

Too-hot rooms are common in cottage country, and no amount of roof insulation completely solves the problem. What you really need is ventilation, and an openable skylight installed near the roof peak can deliver that. Open skylights boost ventilation throughout the whole cottage, allowing hot air to escape and cool breezes to enter more easily through all openings. Leaving skylights open an inch or two all day allows cool air to be pulled upstairs as hot air rises out the top. I’ve installed these in several cottages over the years, and they’ve always been the silver bullet for cooling hot lofts. Within a few minutes of opening them in the evening, your loft will get much cooler than it would with only windows. Worried about leaving skylights open as a…

We have all seen them at someone’s cottage (maybe even your own!): shelves loaded down with books or Cottage Life magazines that are valiantly doing their best to stay straight, but simply cannot. Shelves will invariably sag if the span is too great for the load or if the shelf material is simply not robust enough. If it’s the latter, and the shelves are not fixed, replace them. Harder woods such as maple will hold up far better to weight than softwoods like pine, though they will be almost double the price. If your shelves are fixed, the simplest solution is to add brackets (check hardware stores), though this requires a good, solid back panel that will hold a screw. If that’s not the case, and if the shelf unit…

WHAT POOP IS THIS? When we opened the cottage, I found these pellets—a little smaller than orange seeds—under a couch cushion and in some bedding [see p. 37]. Which creature would leave poop like this?—EMILY CRETZMAN, PIGEON LAKE, ONT. No creature. Because that’s not poop. “They are definitely seeds,” says James Eckenwalder, a botanist and the author of Conifers of the World. But we can’t blame you for not being able to ID them. No one we asked—at the Canadian Museum of Nature, the Arboretum at the University of Guelph, or the UBC botanical garden—was able to either. Not conclusively. There are almost 400,000 species of plants in the world, and a whole bunch of them have seeds. Even if we narrow this down to cottage country, “there are a…

“Small, simple, affordable, beautiful.” That’s what Halifax couple David Black and Heather Scott wanted in a cottage. The busy professionals—she’s a doctor, he’s a professor—purchased 3½ acres of oceanfront just south of Lunenburg, N.S., in 2005, and five years later, figured it was time to build before their teenaged children were launched. The couple wanted a true “retreat”—there’s no Internet, TV, or phone in the off-grid 720 sq. ft. cottage. The design, dubbed “the Shed Retreat” and created by Solterre Design in Halifax, is uncomplicated. The floor, wall, and roof assemblies are built in standard 2x6 stud construction and rest atop an insulated concrete slab that doubles as flooring. The exterior, clad in cedar shingles and medium-density fibre-cement board, boasts an uncluttered aesthetic. It’s a design to suit its purpose.…

It was the summer of 1950 when cottager Susan Dutton’s grandmother started the Juniper Island square dances on Lower Stony Lake. Back then, “everyone knew what square dancing was. And it was something fun,” says Susan. And today? The community still looks forward to the dances every summer. “I don’t think I’ve ever missed a year,” says Jill Trennum, who has attended the dances since age six and helped run them with her husband, Bob, for a decade. The family dances—every Wednesday night in July and August—have the best turnout. On these nights, you’ll find the island pavilion full of families and friends of all ages, as most children, barefoot and still in their bathing suits, try their best to keep up with the steps and the caller’s instructions. Live…

It spoke to him—so to speak. John Gillespie, who cottages on an island at Bay of Islands, Ont., was driving through a small town on Lake Erie when he spied a set of vintage wagon wheels for sale and snapped them up. “I just thought, What can I build here that’s neat?” he recalls. Soon enough he was scouring designs for traditional covered wagons and decided on a style favoured by sheep farmers in the 1800s. “I didn’t know anyone who had used one for a bunkie, but figured it would be a great place to put your head down on an island.” John ordered a canvas cover and ash bows from a supplier in South Dakota and did almost everything else himself, including crafting the body from hemlock planks…

Whenever you want to pull a rope taut—such as between two trees to create a clothesline, or across a load to fasten it tightly to a trailer or a boat—think of a pulley, and use this trick. Attach the rope at one end, and measure it out to the point where you plan to attach the other end. Before you pass the free end around that second tree or cleat, however, back up along the rope and use an overhand knot to make a loop. Continue wrapping the free end of the rope around the tree or cleat, then feed it back through the loop. Now when you pull on the rope, that loop will act like a single pulley and double the force with which you tighten; it will…

“AFTER YEARS OF LENDING MY TOOLS to cottage neighbours, only to have them returned dirty, broken, or not returned at all, I have given up on humanity’s ability to share stuff. Don’t people know how to borrow? Or am I just a reckless lender?” The simple answer to both your questions is an unequivocal yes. True, there are many people out there who are bad borrowers, but they only got that way by interacting with a reckless lender. A normal person, faced with damaged or unreturned property, will never lend anything to that borrower again and will likely hold a deep-seated grudge against the cheapskate villain for decades. Others will repeatedly lend stuff to the same sponger, always hoping for—but never getting—a better result. These people are reckless lenders. Also…

WHAT IS A WETLAND ANYWAY? The black bear, just out of hibernation, was gorging on protein-rich grasses in the Old Marsh on a tidal river in Nova Scotia when Harry Thurston saw it. He’d been observing what he calls the “pageant of life” on the marsh for nearly 30 years from his window. This was his first bear. “I’m endlessly fascinated by the pattern of use of the marsh by wildlife,” says Thurston, the author of A Place Between the Tides: A Naturalist’s Reflections on the Salt Marsh. “I feel privileged to witness that richness.” So what is a wetland, you ask? A marsh is one of five officially defined wetland types in Canada—along with swamp, bog, fen, and shallow open water (see “Wetlands Who’s Who,” p. 86). Defined as…

In January, Canadian brothers and adventurers Tom Schellenberg and Kyle Roberts strapped on two canoes and trekked for 19 days and up 11,000 vertical metres to base camp on Mount Everest. Naturally, we had questions. First of all, why? To raise money to build a short-term emergency mental health centre for women in Kathmandu, because Nepal has been massively affected by natural disaster. And why the canoes? Well, refrigerators would just look stupid. But seriously? Trekking to base camp two years ago, we thought, This would be the ultimate portage. Imagine if we had canoes up here. We used to do all the longest portages in Algonquin Park. What’s your park connection? As kids, we spent every summer there learning to paddle and portage in the wilderness. We both have…

THE PROBLEM Marc Savignac’s cottage north of Sudbury, Ont., has plenty of waterfront, but it’s too shallow for some of the fun stuff his kids wanted to do, such as having a rope swing into the lake. To compensate, he bought a water trampoline, but it didn’t deliver the bounce that it promised. The kids mostly used it for lounging. “They looked like a bunch of walruses sunning on an ice floe,” says Marc. “I thought, I have to do better than this.” THE SOLUTION A DIY two-storey floating platform, dubbed the Tarzan Raft, which includes a trampoline, a slide, a diving board, and a giant cargo net for climbing and relaxing. Unsurprisingly, it’s a big hit with his kids and all the neighbours’ kids too. “They bring chairs, sleeping…

What do you do when a noise bylaw officer arrives at your cottage wedding? “We just turned down the music and moved everyone over to the other side of the property,” says Jenny McAlpine, a wedding planner in Kelowna, B.C. Experts such as McAlpine have useful tips for couples who want to tie the knot at their favourite place, and for families hosting reunions or other big gatherings at the cabin. Number one? Plan for the fun party stuff, but don’t forget the all-important legal work. A PERMIT BY ANY OTHER NAME Depending on your province, you’ll likely need some variation of a special occasion permit (SOP) if you serve alcohol outside the cottage itself. Plan to sell the booze to help recoup costs? That will require a sales permit…

Rising from deep within the shade of mature broadleaf forests, a burst of rapid-fire birdsong builds to a ringing crescendo: “tea-cher, tea-cher, tea-cher, tea-cher!” The penetrating call is probably the most performed of any warbler song across Canada east of the Rockies. Yet you will rarely see its sparrow-sized author, the enigmatic ovenbird. ARRIVING first in mid-May—from Central America and the Caribbean—male ovenbirds tirelessly counter sing back and forth in the canopy to claim the best real estate. Indeed, the plump warblers actually spend most of their time strolling along the ground, gleaning beetles, caterpillars, and ants from thick leaf litter beds, against which their drab, olive-brown feathers are imperceptible. FEMALE ovenbirds appear a week or two after the songsters and quickly pair up with a mate. Over five or…

“My daughters were in a Polaroid phase and had the camera at the cottage,” says Susan Meiorin. “It developed from there. It’s a great way to see who’s been up to the cottage.” Each guest (even dogs) at her Drag Lake, Ont., cabin gets one shot, signed, dated, and posted. She doesn’t allow do-overs. “They’re like mug shots. It is what it is.” Share your guest “book” photos on Instagram with #cottagelifesub or email us at edit@cottagelife.com.…