![]() ![]() Its two storeys of chintz-decked bedrooms slept a dozen and, over those two weeks, became a hub for the network of family and friends I barely had time to see on visits back to Toronto. Dubbed Loon’s Retreat, that cottage seemed to me the very essence of the country I’d left behind. Barely a kilometre from our front dock, the body of the painter Tom Thomson had been found, inexplicably trussed in fishing twine. The ancient green house with its swooping screened porch sat on Gilmour Island at the southern end of a lake rife with history. To me, it was a destination as exotic as any assignment in Jerusalem or Tehran. One of my closest friends asked if I wanted to co-rent a cottage with her for two weeks on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park. It would be years and a posting to Washington, D.C., before I got the chance to put that longing to the test. “The rocks and trees,” I found myself saying, to even my own astonishment. She asked what I was missing, expecting a litany of family ties or old flames. “I think I’m homesick,” I ventured to a friend. It wasn’t until decades later, as a foreign correspondent in Paris, staring out the window of my first-arrondissement walk-up on a listless July afternoon, that I realized I was starved for something beyond that unrelenting cityscape. Even as a teenaged camper, then as a counsellor, I preferred to think of myself as a thwarted urbanite who was merely putting in time until I was allowed to hit the big city, where I would lead an impossibly romantic intellectual life. Later, at a girls’ camp on Lake of Bays, the wilderness tattooed itself onto my psyche, but I did my best to ignore it. Not just for a summer escape, but as a passport to belonging, firmly beyond the reach of a bookish girl from a fractured family growing up amid the orchards flanking Lake Ontario. You can listen to all of the episodes here.Īs a kid, I understood early: cottages were something other people had. Then, we listen to an essay that reflects on cottage life at the time of Canada’s 150th anniversary that will take you right to your piece of paradise. In season 4, episode 2 of the Cottage Life Podcast, we explore how cottage communities are adapting to the influx of both part-time and full-time cottagers. ![]()
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