Canada Letter: Picking Berries, Playing Cards, Jumping in the Bay

The Times’s recent Canada-related coverage with back stories and analysis from our reporters along with opinions from our readers. View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Friday, July 6, 2018 [NYTimes.com/Canada »]( [Picking Berries, Playing Cards, Jumping in the Bay]( By CATHERINE PORTER Last week, we asked you to share images and memories from your cottages (or camps or cabins). Ian is supposed to be on vacation this week at his cottage so I — Toronto bureau chief of The Times and die-hard Georgian Bay cottager — got to sort through the responses, vicariously traveling to serene spots around the country. Here is a sampling, lightly edited: [Scott Powell’s favorite cottage routine is drinking coffee on the breakwater and looking out over Lake Winnipeg near Dunnottar, Manitoba.] Scott Powell’s favorite cottage routine is drinking coffee on the breakwater and looking out over Lake Winnipeg near Dunnottar, Manitoba. Scott Powell I have sat by the shore of Lake Massawippi in Quebec at least once every summer of my 62 years. My morning ritual is to get up just before dawn to meditate on the screened-in porch as the birds wake up. I then make my first cup of coffee and take it back out to the porch to watch the ducks float past. If I am lucky, the heron stops by. Annis Karpenko I grew up spending my summers at camp on an island on the British Columbia coast, Texada. My grandparents built it overlooking a bay that partially emptied with the tide and clams squirted their whereabouts to be dug for dinner. When I was in my 50s I gathered family and friends to kayak on the open ocean coast and finally to build a cabin in the coastal wilderness. It was built with cedar logs, escaped from commercial log rafts finding resting places on our beach. [Lou McKee kept a daily journal at this camp in British Columbia and illustrated the shore life she observed.] Lou McKee kept a daily journal at this cabin in British Columbia and illustrated the shore life she observed. Lou McKee Lou McKee, author and illustrator of Klee Wyck Journal: The Making of a Wilderness Retreat Declaring one favorite cottage routine forces me to choose between picking the wild blueberries that are so essential to a real Canadian experience and playing Hearts at night by the light of the propane lamps. All of these wonders deliver you into the embrace of an earlier century, when life was slower, nature close at hand, and social ties paramount. Tracey Jordan, Lake Duborne near Blind River, Ontario [Chris Sieberling and his siblings have returned to Ontario’s Lake Superior since the 1950s. This is the view from their 95-year-old cabin.] Chris Sieberling and his siblings have returned to Ontario’s Lake Superior since the 1950s. This is the view from their 95-year-old cabin. Chris Sieberling My husband’s family rents land from the British Columbia [Sechelt]( Indian band. He, his brothers and father built a beautiful A-frame cabin in the 1960s. We have daily encounters with crows, sea gulls, a long-resident eagle family, seals, and the occasional sighting of a whale or sea lion. The extended family all sleeps together on the floor and upper level with the elders meriting the one bedroom. Sandra Hunt, Montreal One of the most often heard popular songs in the 1950s was “Wir kaufen uns ein Häuschen, ein Casetta in Kanada” (We’ll buy us a little house, a little house in Canada …). This was, of course driven by the flood of refugees — including my family — into a bombed-out West Germany with little housing for themselves. But the dream was not only housing; it was a cottage on a lake. It embodied the view of Canada most Germans still have today. Ingrid Hurtubise, Marietta, Ga. My log cabin was built in 1903, on an island just outside Ontario’s Algonquin Park, by three American industrialists as a place to send their families in the summer to escape the heat and pollution of the Midwest. Sadly for me, I must sell it. The reality is that it’s lots of work keeping up a heritage-like building, keeping the solar electric and water services running, fueling myriad wood and propane, stoves, heaters and fireplaces, stewarding three acres of beautiful trees. Farewell, Peace Island. Manfred Humphries, Quebec [Manfred Humphries’s cottage in Algonquin Park, Ontario, comes with solar power, an outdoor shower, outhouse and floating platform for the local loons.] Manfred Humphries’s cottage in Algonquin Park, Ontario, comes with solar power, an outdoor shower, outhouse and floating platform for the local loons. Manfred Humphries Our summer place was called the cabin. Friends who grew up 30 miles away had a bungalow, and my brother-in-law grew up near Halifax and went to the camp. Rona Cameron, who grew up in Cape Breton and lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Ours is in Waterton Lakes National Park. It was built in 1927 by an Anglican primate. We sleep on the glassed-in porch, feet from the lake. Cabins here seldom change hands, but ours — somewhat regrettably — is now for sale. The park is changing rapidly and soon, I would think, such properties will be for only the very wealthy. Jillian Lynn Lawson [The view from Jillian Lynn Lawson’s cottage in Waterton Lakes National Park.] The view from Jillian Lynn Lawson’s cottage in Waterton Lakes National Park. Jillian Lynn Lawson When there is a blow with rain from the east, things get wet. Heat is the fireplace. Bedding is sleeping bags. A bath is a jump in the bay. There is no electricity. When we are asked to describe the building, the term “hunting shack” seems best. Alan Weimer, Georgian Bay near Parry Sound, Ontario Alan, like many cottagers in Canada, is American. It seems both incongruous, given how embedded cottages are in our Canadian national psyche, and perfect, given how entangled we are with our neighbors. It was by design: The government advertised the sale of cheap crown land in American magazines, like Rod and Gun, as far back as 1926, with the hopes that the tourist windfall would help small-town economies sagging from shuttered log mills. Interestingly, in the 1970s, Canada was experiencing its first real surge of patriotism, and many politicians seized on the fact that Americans — who were “taking over the economy” — owned 14 percent of cottages in Ontario. In 1974, a 20 percent foreign-buyers tax went into effect in Ontario, foreshadowing the debate that grips much of Vancouver and Toronto today, with a different foreign buyer in mind. Learning all this from [Peter A. Stevens]( a history professor at Humber College in Toronto, gave me a dizzying sense of déjà vu. Once again, Canadians are becoming patriotic as our American neighbors move to withdraw from our economy. I spoke to many Canadians this week who are mounting their own personal “boycott America” campaigns. Others, meanwhile, argue that we should be reaching out and not entrenching, particularly on a person-to-person level. It makes me wonder what kind of conversations are happening now, across docks around the country. “I am so grateful that Canadians have been willing to share your beautiful country,” Alan, whose family is from Michigan, wrote in response to last week’s newsletter, “and your friendship.” Upset? Insulted? Heartbroken? We want to know how Canadians really feel about increasingly becoming the target of President Trump’s ire. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s official response has been to introduce counter-tariffs while also renewing engagement efforts, reaching out to businessfolk and politicians across the United States. To some degree, that has been working. As my colleagues Coral Davenport and Ana Swanson [reported this week]( carmakers, soybean farmers and oil and gas companies are denouncing President Trump’s tariffs and shifting positions as bad for their business. Do you think that’s the right strategy? If not, what do you think would be? Please let us know [here](. Screen Time Our colleagues at Watching have [delivered the July batch]( of recommendations for Netflix subscribers in Canada. The offerings include Craig Gillespie’s faux-documentary of the unhinging of Tonya Harding, “I, Tonya,” as well as “A River Runs Through It,” which the reviewer, Scott Tobias, says is like seeing Robert Redford’s “persona in light: serene, morally upright, environmentally conscious and impossibly golden blonde and handsome.” On the Bus New York Times subscribers were so enthusiastic about the Stratford trip with the theater editor Scott Heller and the critic Jesse Green, we’ve booked [another bus]( for July 14. Tickets are 125 Canadian dollars for Times subscribers. One Last Thing I’m just a pinch writer in this space. But since I’m here, I wanted to point you to The Times’s new [Dispatches]( begun just over a week ago. If, like me, you love to feel like a stranger in a strange land, you will enjoy settling into [Rick’s Café]( in Casablanca, or checking out the [Darkness Fighters’ dragon boat]( a visually impaired team competing in Hong Kong’s annual regatta. Trans Canada [John Fluevog Is Cool Again. Maybe He Always Was.]( Linda Dyett wrote a rich, layered piece about John Fluevog, the Canadian shoemaker known for his last name taken from his family’s historical Norwegian hamlet, Fluevaagen — and footy creations she describes “like a Baroque-Rococo-Victorian-’20s-mod-grunge shoe museum exhibit gone slightly amok.” [Protests Shutter a Show That Cast White Singers as Black Slaves]( The topic of cultural appropriation flared again in Canada this week, when the Montreal jazz festival canceled the show “Slav,” our Montreal correspondent, Dan Bilefsky, reports. [More Remains Found Near Home Used by Suspected Canadian Serial Killer]( Your usual newsletter writer, Ian Austen, was supposed to be vacationing at his cottage this week, but still filed an article about the grim discovery by the police of more human remains, believed to be victims of the accused serial killer Bruce McArthur. HOW ARE WE DOING? We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to [nytcanada@nytimes.com](mailto:nytcanada@nytimes.com? subject=Canada%20Letter%20Newsletter%20Feedback). A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for over a decade. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten. LIKE THIS EMAIL? Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up [here](. ADVERTISEMENT FOLLOW NYTIMES [Facebook] [FACEBOOK]( [Twitter] [@nytimes]( Get more [NYTimes.com newsletters »]( | Get unlimited access to NYTimes.com and our NYTimes apps. [Subscribe »]( ABOUT THIS EMAIL You received this message because you signed up for NYTimes.com's Canada Letter newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Manage Subscriptions]( | [Change Your Email]( | [Privacy Policy]( | [Contact]( | [Advertise]( Copyright 2018 The New York Times Company 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018