Roughing It Like a True Canadian (Yes, We Pay for This!)

Roughing It Like a True Canadian (Yes, We Pay for This!)

Let me explain something about being Canadian—specifically a Torontonian—that might sound completely bananas if you’re from, say, anywhere else.

Every summer, without fail, we pay actual money to drive for hours (in traffic, because everyone else is doing it too) to stay in small, creaky wooden cabins that proudly boast such luxury features as… basic electricity, questionable plumbing, and the gentle hum of mosquitoes dive-bombing your forehead at 2 a.m.

We call this “going to the cottage.” But don’t let that charming little word fool you. We’re not talking about lakefront villas with infinity pools and catered meals. No, no. We’re talking about roughing it. This is glamping’s awkward cousin who wears Crocs unironically and thinks canned beans are a gourmet side dish.

My American friends are baffled.
“You pay for this?”
“You drive hours to voluntarily not have a dishwasher?”
“You left the city to use a composting toilet?”

Yes, dear friends. Yes, we did. And we’ll do it again next weekend, too.

I once spent an entire summer “up north” (that’s what we call anything above Barrie) with a single goal: to learn how to waterski. I brought all the gear: gloves, ropes, swimsuits engineered by NASA, sunscreen that could deflect UV rays from Saturn. None of it helped.

You know what did help? Falling on my face a hundred times and laughing so hard I swallowed half the lake. Because when you’re out in nature, where you can’t check your email or DoorDash a smoothie, you remember who you are. You’re not your inbox. You’re not your Wi-Fi speed. You’re just… you.

That’s the real magic of the cottage.

The bug bites are real. The back pain from the so-called “bed” is real. The sound of loons calling across the lake at sunrise is so beautiful it’ll make you cry into your instant coffee. And every year I return, I bring a notebook and a plan to write. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I just stare at the water and remember what silence feels like.

And that, my friends, is where a lot of the magic in my books begins.

So yes. I paid to sleep in a wooden box in the woods with no air conditioning.
And I’ll pay again. Happily.
Because that’s how Canadians find their stories. One mosquito bite at a time.

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