Yellow Page listings for “cottage country” services include animal clinics, appraisals, construction, dentistry, design, electrical, environmental, flowers, inspections, internet, paving, property maintenance, repairs, steel docks, stone, towing, trees, recovery, windows and doors.
This generic term, enjoying ever wider currency in distinctive Muskoka, even by locals, was not coined here. When city folk discussed plans, one option with allure was “heading north for the weekend.” For middle class urbanites, simply “going to cottage country,” as an alternate expression, covered a brief escape from the city. The destination could be just about anywhere, like “moving to the suburbs.”
Going to “cottage country” was an apt term for many. They were, indeed, heading straight for cottages. Their lived experience in Muskoka (or elsewhere) was by water, on a dock, in a boat, orbiting their summer house, wherever found. In Ontario parlance today, this generic tag covers a huge swath of the province. A number of those Yellow Page “Cottage Country” services, listed in Muskoka, aren’t based here.
Muskoka towns and established communities, thousands of year-round inhabitants, and industries, farms, schools, libraries, courts, hospitals, newspapers, theatres, craft studios, churches, and radio stations all mesh with financial institutions, helping services, transportation systems, service clubs, trades, sports, main streets, and stores. Generations of summer cottagers, or “part-time” Muskokans, interacted with this reality and depended on reliable locals in place and familiar with things. It was a mutual dependency, for locals needed seasonal residents to survive financially.
There is a connection between the “cottage country” expression gaining popular usage and this economic link becoming more attenuated. City folk bring tradesmen from the south and furnish their new summer places with on-line orders. The LCBO’s decision-makers in Toronto relocate their monopoly stores to better serve customers cutting travel time to their cottages. The Internet lets people remain isolated in their own cultural bubble, wherever they are.
For decades the differences between year-round and part-time Muskokans were bridged by human necessity and mutual dependence. That link evaporates in today’s fluidity and ambiguity. The “cottage” is less about a slapping screen door or a simple picnic on a rocky promontory, more about high speed wireless connections and urban living in a rustic setting. Those who recently came to the Norwood or Capital theatres now have Netflix at the cottage instead.
Muskoka’s long been much more than a collection of cottages, its lure far beyond cottage culture. Visitors and seasonal Muskokans arrive at estate homes, grand resorts, summer camps, bed-and-breakfasts, hotels, motels, cabins, camper parks, tents, sleeping bags under the stars, and yes, thousands of cottages.
Calling distinctive Muskoka by the commonplace moniker “cottage country” dilutes the District’s identity and does disservice to our diversity.
Tourism Minister Mélanie Joly’s big-budget new program to draw foreigners will bring more visitors to a greater variety of Canadian locales. As a coveted destination, would travellers hoping to discover Canada opt to park themselves in generic middle class “cottage country,” or experience unique “Muskoka”?
Because the economic stakes are high, the trajectory we’re on is vital. Names are the pegs of history, and calling Muskoka mere “cottage country” diminishes both the scope and nature of this District’s full and proven potential.
