Innehållsförteckning för May 2023 från Cottage Life

ROBERT LONGWORTH HAS been a cottager on Smith Bay, near Port Loring, Ont., since 1970. Like others on the lake, he’s made decades of treasured memories. A typical year is packed with community events: a New Year’s Eve party in January, then curling on Family Day weekend. There are March Break events for the kids and to celebrate Victoria Day. In the summer, one neighbour holds a pig roast; another, a fish fry. Yet, “even though we’re a close-knit community, there are people that you don’t necessarily see at the annual Labour Day corn roast,” says Robert, the founder of the Smith Bay Ratepayers’ Association. So why not come up with a way that the cottagers could, along with documenting their memories, share their stories and the history of their…

WE’VE GOT A couple of canoes at the cottage: one is a breeze to haul, but the other is a pain in the neck—literally. The easy one has a yoke—wood that spans the canoe and has a semicircle cut-out, allowing it to sit comfortably on my shoulders without crunching my neck. Having come across removable yokes during my online travels, I decided to build one for the other canoe. Removable is important here. I didn’t want to replace the existing middle thwart because the fasteners—concealed under a one-piece cap that protects them from the elements—would be hard to reinstall. Boring unnecessary extra holes in the gunwales is not a good idea, and an additional fixed cross-piece limits the usable space. Most removable yokes clamp onto the gunwales with custom-shaped metal…

WITH A BACKWARDS baseball cap on his head and a big, easy smile on his face, Andrew Szeto is sauntering along the “path” up ahead, talking about his plans for his next building project. He wants to put in a dock at his shared waterfront access on Lac Georges, Que., just a short walk from his tiny cabin in the woods. A few paces away, Andrew’s girlfriend, Amber Flokstra-Radema, has paused to cast her forager’s eye around the forest floor for any mushrooms that may be popping up. Their two large, jubilant dogs, Atlas and Spencer, are roaming through the knee-high ferns and moist, inches-deep moss. This stroll to the yet-unseen waterfront is more like bushwhacking. But just because you don’t know exactly where you are doesn’t mean you’re not…

LEGEND Make it bacon! Do it Make it bacon? You decide Don’t make it bacon! Don’t do it Season your cast-iron frying pan. It’ll work as well as any seasoning agent. Turn it into mousetrap bait. Mice are attracted to fatty foods, but unlike peanut butter, grease will go rancid without refrigeration. Use it instead of suet as bird feed. Commercial bacon contains preservatives that can become concentrated in the fat; suet cakes are safer. Make it a butter replacement. The only thing better than corn on the cob is corn on the cob that tastes like bacon. Dump it down the drain. Never! Ever! It’ll clog pipes and mess up your septic system. Turn it into homemade lip balm. Sure, if your SO wants to make out with a…

BIG NEWS If you were hoping to visit the Canadian Canoe Museum’s newly built digs this spring, you’re out of luck. Earlier this year, the museum announced that the opening of the facility at Little Lake in Peterborough, Ont., would be delayed until late summer or early fall. Construction began on the $40 million building in 2021. But Covid-related material shortages, including a lack of cement powder, pushed the expected date of completion back. The new facility—large enough to display the museum’s entire collection of more than 600 watercraft and 500 paddles—will be 65,000 sq. ft. (So they really need that cement powder.) HERE FISHY, FISHY What kind of goldfish lives in B.C., is the size of a football, and can reproduce three times a year by cloning itself? If…

WHETHER YOU’RE EDGE-GLUING two boards together, attaching solid wood strips to a raw plywood edge, or gluing joints, a bit of glue squeeze-out is a sign that you’ve applied enough glue to the connection. But when glue penetrates the wood grain next to the seam, it can create finishing problems. It’s much easier to prevent the glue from taking hold, rather than to try to fix the finish after you’ve applied it. It’s hard to avoid squeeze-out entirely, so many strategies require removing a tiny bit of the wood adjacent to the glue line. But don’t wipe the glue while it’s fresh and wet—that tends to force it into the wood pores, making the problem worse. Instead, wait until the glue is the consistency of putty; then you can easily…

WHEN TWO DIFFERENT metals are in contact with an electrically conductive liquid, one metal often corrodes faster than it would were it alone in the liquid. At the same time, the other metal corrodes more slowly than usual. Sometimes this reaction—galvanic corrosion—is useful, and sometimes it causes problems. Your cottage deck is a good example: ordinary steel or aluminum hardware degrades quickly in a pressure-treated wood deck. The wood, treated with copper, has enough water in it to create galvanic corrosion with steel or, especially, aluminum. Hot-dipped galvanized fasteners are safe in PT lumber—in part because the zinc coating corrodes preferentially to steel. If you’ve ever baked lasagna in a steel pan covered with aluminum foil, you may have noticed small holes in the foil, especially after storing leftovers in…

Q: Is there some way, some formula, perhaps, to gauge the age of trees without cutting them down and counting the rings?—Jeff Moore, French River, Ont. A: Yes, there is a formula, originally developed by the International Society of Arboriculture. It works because trees of the same species under the same conditions grow at roughly the same rate. Here’s how you can use it: measure the circumference of the tree’s trunk about 4.5 feet from the ground. Divide that by pi (3.14); this gives you the “diameter at breast height” (or the “DBH” in arborist lingo). You then multiply the DBH by the tree species’ typical growth factor (you can find charts online). This is a number assigned to each species that corresponds to how fast it typically grows. The…

THE SUBJECT I’VE chosen for this column, the environment, typically isn’t very popular. The proof is in our web traffic: anytime we post content about the climate crisis (still with me?), our click rates—the main metric we use to measure an article’s success—go down. I find this depressing. But I get it. Because more often than not, I avoid this subject too. I don’t blame our readers for skipping stories about an animal species disappearing, an ice cap melting, or a flash flood devastating yet another community. These days, it feels like we’re stumbling from one generational catastrophe to another, and the news is unrelenting. At a certain point—you could argue we’re well past it—avoiding this content is simple self-preservation—of our peace of mind and of the remaining hope we…

THERE’S A RIVER just across the street from my house. When I go outside in the morning, it smells and feels like I’m at the cottage. I love that. The waterway is called the Assiniboine, one of two major rivers that wind through Winnipeg. It’s of Indigenous origin, as many places are in this country. That doesn’t cross the minds of many Canadians. It should. The Assiniboine River’s name comes from the Assiniboine people, whose traditional lands in Canada were southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan. The word means “those who cook by placing hot stones in water.” It took only a few minutes to research that. Discovering the meaning of the word has strengthened what the river, and where I live, means to me. I think there’s a benefit in…

A SMALL HOLE or tear in your windsurfer or dinghy sail can often be temporarily repaired with a peel-and-stick patch—no need for a heavy-duty sewing machine. It’s a quick fix (if you have the right materials) and will prevent further damage until you can get your sails to a pro for permanent repair. I always keep some adhesive-backed sail repair tape on hand for emergencies. It comes in various widths, weights, and fabrics, including Dacron, ripstop nylon, and laminate (try to match your sail material). Sailrite, a sailmaking supplier, has a wide selection of repair tapes available online—be sure to buy the adhesive-backed kind. Most short tears, less than a foot or so, are simple to temporarily patch with sail repair tape. One exception is a rip in a high-load…

WHEN PATRICK POWERS went hunting for a cottage with his wife, Renee, in 2015, he thought they’d purchase an empty lot to build something from scratch. But when they viewed a one-bed, one-bath gothic-arched cabin on one of B.C.’s Gulf Islands, the couple was smitten. “I’m quite enamoured with A-frames, but the gothic arch has that rounded edge so that your second floor becomes more useful in terms of manoeuvrability,” says Patrick. “Additional headroom from the arch is far more functional than a straight A-frame.” The cabin, with a 600 sq. ft. footprint right along the shoreline, was built in the 1970s at a time when construction permits weren’t required in the area. “It’s effectively sitting right on top of the water. You can’t do that anymore,” says Patrick. (Buildings…

AS PEOPLE DRY off from their last swim of the day, the balls of dough are finishing their second rise. The dough is ready to be hand stretched, and the canned San Marzano tomatoes have been crushed, not pureed, so the slightly bitter seeds remain whole. You’re ready for the three very opinionated camps among your friends: sliced buffalo or fior di latte mozzarella, olive oil, and fresh basil for the Margherita purists; tomatoes, oregano, and garlicky sauce for the Marinara crowd; and a hodgepodge of prepped toppings for the kitchen-sink fans—who are planning to ignore your advice and overload their pizzas. Luckily, your new pizza oven only takes about 20 minutes to heat up, and it can blast each pizza to perfection in as little as two minutes, so…