Cottage. Cabin. Camp.

Whatever you call it, it means the same thing – an escape from daily life and a repository of special family memories.

I was introduced to cottage life as an adult, in my late twenties. My mother had never been the type to enjoy camping or “roughing it”. I think she preferred vacations during which she would be relieved of the burden of housework. Camping would require more of the same, except under worse conditions – blackflies, uncomfortable sleep and cooking over a camp stove. Travelling involved hotels and meals cooked by other people in restaurant kitchens. So, other than the one or two acquaintances who had cabins and occasionally invited me along, I was uninitiated in the rituals of a vacation home in the wild (which, for me, meant anywhere outside the city limits).

Thus, when my new boyfriend (destined to become my husband) invited me to his family cottage, I was delighted to accept this tantalizing trip to a new place with a new man. I had no idea it would be the beginning of a lifelong love affair – with the cottage. Or, perhaps more accurately, a conflicted relationship born of a city girl having a love/hate relationship with nature.

For a cottage is WORK! As I have instructed my boys in the weary voice of experience, nature abhors a vacuum – in this case, an unmaintained cottage. There is the constant struggle to stay ahead of the ants and mice. There are wasps’ nests to be removed annually from under the eaves. Over the years, we have had to evict a renegade bat, a wayward gecko and a confused chipmunk, all of which we found to be poor cottage companions. Not to mention sightings (and hearings) of rattlesnakes that inhabit the area around our cottage. And that’s not all! Trees mess up the septic bed and cause the toilet to flood or menace the electrical wires. The bricks in the chimney pop out and threaten the newly shingled roof. The water pipes break or the pump springs a leak. The driveway develops ruts and consequently floods, threatening to maroon our cars – and us! The litany of potential catastrophes, contractors needing to be hired, and bills to be paid never ends.

The cottage sits on Canadian Shield on the shore of a small Muskoka lake. It is a modest dwelling, only distantly related through the shared traits of water and wilderness, to the million-dollar “country estates” on the shores of Lakes Muskoka and Joseph. My parents-in-law purchased their piece of paradise in the early 1960s because the landscape – with its water, untamed nature, and abundant birch trees – reminded them of their native Finland. I expect the first thing they built, before having a cottage proper, was the sauna.

My in-law’s names, Margaret and Albert, still hang in the place of honour over the front door. My father-in-law died three years before I met his son, but his presence looms large over the place: the chandelier that he made out of a ship’s wheel dominates the main room, while port and starboard lights decorate the hallway – a tribute to his years in the merchant marine following the Second World War.

The “creation story” of our family cottage also carries his thumbprint. The family lore is that he saw the four-bedroom wood cottage at the Home Show in 1971 and decided to purchase it. There was one problem though: it was the “floor model” that was on display. If he wanted it, he had to have it out of there by midnight on the last night of the exhibition. He rounded up some friends and they unceremoniously tore apart the pine planks, breaking a few in the process, and loaded them onto a trailer and drove the mess to Muskoka. It took him months to put the jigsaw puzzle back together. He decided, in his wisdom, that his family only needed two bedrooms, so he sold the wood for the other two bedrooms to a friend on the same lake. My father-in-law undoubtedly loved a good deal and clearly he wasn’t afraid of hard work.

To this day, the cottage is the perfect snapshot of the early 1970’s as decorated by my mother-in-law: orange curtains, a brown throw rug and striped furniture in the main room. Another room features yellow gold curtains that cover an entire wall. Yes, I have contemplated redecorating – pretty much every trip there – but the fact remains that the nylon fabric has held up perfectly over the past 50 years. Unsurprisingly the moths and mice aren’t interested in disturbing the snazzy décor and I’m not sure anything that I purchase today could ever endure through the cold of winter and heat of summer the way these “vintage” textiles have.

That is not to say there haven’t been other improvements made over the years. In 2003, with the anticipated arrival of Son #1, I convinced the father-to-be that we needed to renovate the kitchen as I could no longer stand the brown laminated cupboards and ancient fridge that smelled of mold. He reluctantly acquiesced. With Son #2 on the way, I pushed my luck again and negotiated an extension to the cottage so that we could continue to host friends without having to pitch tents. We upgraded the bathroom and added two bedrooms. What my father-in-law had so cunningly sold for $50 in 1971 cost us $50,000 to replace in 2006!

But for all the work and worry, the cottage is ultimately a happy place. I have fond memories of my mother-in-law enjoying her time there, collecting wild blueberries, going to sauna in her Finnish tradition, and gossiping with the girlfriends she often brought along for company. After my parents moved to Toronto in 2009, they and my sister would join us at the cottage during the summer and we would drive to Bala to picnic beside the falls while my kids and their father would clamber together over the sun-kissed rocks. Even in his early eighties, my father would delight in swimming across the lake and back – giving both our hearts a good workout until he was safely back onshore. Other sepia-toned vignettes: my best friend’s then three-year old son (now a Masters student!) letting out a series of Pocahontas-inspired whoops at 7 AM and the subsequent shushing by his parents while my husband and I, still child-free, valiantly tried to sleep through the commotion; Son #1 sitting in the bottom of his father’s canoe with only his little sunhat showing above the gunwales; Son #2 pulling himself across the kitchen floor on his tummy while learning to crawl and de facto functioning as a human Swiffer; my goddaughter growing from a golden-haired toddler into a lovely young woman over the many years of cottage holidays; countless visits from European family and friends, near and dear. And all the cottage rituals: fireworks, campfires, roasting marshmallows and making s’mores, inflating and fighting over each year’s newly purchased floaties, unexpected power outages, board games, music and dancing, trips to the local town for ice cream cones and yet more food. Meals prepared, wine bottles emptied, and conversations had – some remembered better than others depending on the number of wine bottles involved.

• 

After my husband and I separated, we continued to meet at the cottage so that our kids could experience family life there: rides together in the canoe, gathering kindling for bonfires and bathing with their father in the sauna. Their father continued to love the cottage and, having retired early, would spend days at a time there during the summer. For my part, I was grateful to still be able to visit the cottage, a place I had come to love over the years.

And then unexpectedly, shockingly, my husband died at age 57 of a massive heart attack while out for a walk in Toronto on an early spring day in 2016. The will stated his estate be left to his sons, but the cottage wasn’t mentioned explicitly. Legalities when minors are involved are complicated. My lawyer told me the easiest thing to do was simply to sell the cottage. She was likely correct. But I knew without a shadow of a doubt that my children’s father wanted it preserved for them. The estate trustee was also given the advice to sell the cottage by the estate’s lawyer, but he was equally clear on my husband’s wishes. It took some time to work out the details, but all parties were able to come to an agreement and now the cottage sits in trust for my children. In the interim, the estate trustee and I jointly manage different aspects of maintaining the cottage until my children reach the age of inheritance and take over their father’s great gift to them.

So now as I stare out over the yellow kitchen curtains to the lake while washing the dishes by hand, I think what heaven on earth my boys have here. May they treasure it and with time make their own memories.