Document generated on 10/01/2021 2:32 a.m. Ontario History A Timeless Place: The Ontario Cottage by Julia Harrison Brian S. Osborne Volume 106, Number 1, Spring 2014 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1050726ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1050726ar See table of contents Publisher(s) The Ontario Historical Society ISSN 0030-2953 (print) 2371-4654 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Osborne, B. S. (2014). Review of [A Timeless Place: The Ontario Cottage by Julia Harrison]. Ontario History, 106(1), 131–133. https://doi.org/10.7202/1050726ar Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2014 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ book reviews A Timeless Place: The Ontario Cottage By Julia Harrison Vancouver: The University of British Columbia Press, 2014. 308 pages. $32.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-77482-608-2 (www.ubcpress.ca) ike many Ontario readers, I have a Lpersonal perspective on this volume. I arrived in Canada from Colorado in 1967 and, within a year, we had bought a “cabin” on Brule Lake in northern Fronte- nac in the Land of Lakes cottage country. What followed turned out to be a mythic backwoods experience and construction project, a family infatuation and mythic place, a financial drain and profitable -in vestment. It introduced me to the history of eastern Ontario and a perspective on Canada that still haunts my imagination and scholarship to this day All of this and more resonates with terms, as an iconic place with all of its am- the several themes of Julia Harrison’s most biguities and contradictions. But, as sug- recent volume, A Timeless Place: The On- gested above, her findings resonate with tario Cottage. A professor of anthropology other cottaging realms, at least in Ontario. at Trent University and author of an earlier Harrison’s rich insights deliberately work, Being a Tourist: Finding Meaning in avoided the “traditional participant ob- Pleasure Travel, Harrison has embarked servation” method to avoid “bartering on a new intellectual odyssey. It moves her the goodwill” of cottager-friends. Rather, away from understanding the rationale she favoured a strategy of semi-structured of international travel to seeking insights interviews, informal conversations, and into modern leisure strategies at home. In e-mail interactions with some fifty-four particular, A Timeless Place explores the Haliburton cottagers. Other sources were “meaningfulness of the cottage experience” the materials produced by such advocacy and why it “generates such strong emotion- groups as various cottage associations, as al attachment and commitment.” Defining well as articles in the magazine, Cottage Life, herself as essentially a “non-cottager,” she and relevant sections of The Globe and Mail turns to Ontario’s Haliburton region, the and National Post. But, just like every well- “poor man’s Muskoka,” to reflect on, and constructed cottage, this literary structure to expose, the “deeply held meaning” of is “well-studded” with theoretical insights the post-World War II cottage in symbolic, from a range of scholarly authorities from social, cultural, personal, and even moral Heidegger to Halbwachs, and well deco- OH autumn 2014 inside pages.indd131 131 05/03/2014 9:37:36 PM 2 ONTARIO HISTORY rated by artistic flourishes from such fictive ity” (A personal recollection: “Not bad for writers as Ondaatje, Purdy, and Atwood. a professor, Dad!”) So, as Harrison presents With the aid of these perspectives, Har- it, these remembered family rituals of pleas- rison herself constructs a rich interpretation ures and “penance” can constitute “a com- of the core-beliefs and contradictions, of plex social, cultural, and political—thus the practical realities, values, and symbolic implicitly exclusionary—practice.” life of the “cottage aesthetic” and “cottage As for the representation of a pan-Ca- feeling.” Central to this critique is her iden- nadian identity, Harrison argues that the tification of three categories of cottagers: profusion of flags in cottage country sug- the traditionalists (modest structures, con- gests a “nostalgic nationalism” that encap- cerned with feeling, traditional recreation, sulates the “iconic Canadian landscape” romantic association, “real” cottagers); the of the popularised images of the Group of socialites (modern comforts, entertain- Seven and the “golden age” of historicised ments, amenities, consuming the experi- Canadian development. But are these codes ence); the transients (temporary visitors, changing in mid-21st Century Canada? voyeurs of place and experience, ignorant of Are there different expectations of modern “cottage culture.”) This analysis is grounded Canada? For the past sixty years or so, as- on a firm foundation of such theoretical sumptions about gender and class, family underpinnings as “sense of place,” “layered and community, nation and race have been landscapes,” “memoryscapes,” and “karmic fundamental to constructing the percep- connections.” But Harrison goes further. tions of life at a Haliburton cottage. But, She explores how the “cottage is entangled as Harrison puts it, “Change is swirling with community, at both a very local and around life at the cottage.” So what’s hap- a national level,” and even contributes to pening! “what it means to be Canadian.” That is, First, perhaps future generations may understanding how the Haliburton expe- have to re-construct their traditional im- rience defines the meaning of being Cana- age of what is a “real” cottager and even a dian in terms of place, history, and world “real” Canadian as the formerly dominant citizenship. “traditional” cottager is challenged by the At the local community level, for some, growing ethos of the “socialites” and mon- the cottage serves to help “narrate ‘family’ ster structures of nouveau riche. Secondly, into being” through a rage of cottaging ritu- Haliburton like so many other cottaging als: the kinetic experience of driving to and regions has been “a place of whiteness” from the summer location; the practised whereas modern Canada is a place of ra- exercise of putative masculine and femi- cial-cultural diversity and so many of the nine roles; ritualised barbecues and camp- new Canadians are not connected to Can- fires, water-sports and communal games. ada’s mythic metanarratives of place and But there is another view of this experience history. Thirdly, what about the “presump- touted by traditionalists to be the material tions of the normal heterosexual family” in anchor of identity. Harrison demonstrates a new world of gender relations? Fourthly, how, for some women, it was a stressful the traditional genre de vie of cottages that prison of routine and responsibility, and, favoured healthy bodies only is being chal- for some men, their strategy of escaping lenged by an aging populace? from the demands of their “real” careers All of these alternative concepts of cot- was a challenge for their “primal masculin- tage life and others have been proposed in OH autumn 2014 inside pages.indd132 132 05/03/2014 9:37:36 PM book reviews Harrison’s excellent historical and socio- happening now at the macro-level. While logical study, A Timeless Place, but others the significance of the ageing of Cana- come to mind as well. First, while the Abo- da’s population is related to the booming riginal presence is alluded to in a historical mega-cruise boat industry and winter va- context in the introduction, their contin- cationing in the American and Mexican ued presence is ignored. The concerns of “souths,” is there something else going on? the “Idle No More Movement” are echoed Perhaps some Canadians at least are tran- in recent developments such as the recent scending their former fixation on a mythic Algonquin Agreement with the Province fur-trade, lumber-minerals economy, for- of Ontario that is on the agenda of so many ests-iceberg rationale of national identity. cottagers’ associations throughout the Ot- Perhaps they are embracing and enjoying tawa Valley. Similarly, the concerns of the the culture—and climate! —of an emerg- Mississauga throughout southern Ontario ing cosmopolitan and trans-national iden- reflect the recent Supreme Court decision tity. Even if that’s far-fetched, it beats the on the legality of the Royal Proclamation joys of an outdoor toilet and another ren- of 1763. No longer an historical footnote, dering of “My paddle’s keen and bright”! the Aboriginal population are reasserting But thank you, Professor Harrison, for their presence as the First Nations as rec- launching my flights of fancy with your ognised by King George III. thoughtful and provocative scholarship And then there’s the issue of cottaging and imagination on the history and future and the post-modern age. Given Harrison’s of such an important dimension of On- expertise on trends in contemporary tour- tario’s recent history. ism demonstrated in her previous book, Being a Tourist, I would have welcomed Brian S. Osborne her expansion on her thoughts on what’s Professor emeritus, Queen’s University The Nature of Empires and the Empires of Nature: In- digenous Peoples and the Great Lakes Environment Karle S. Hele editor Waterloo Ontario, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013. $85.00 hardcover. ISBN 978-1-55458-328-7. $49.95 digital. ISBN 978-55458-422-2 (www.wlupress.wlu.ca) t first blush this work appears very Island First Nation workshop. Each essay Asimilar to Professor Hele’s 2008 ed- is assigned its own chapter. Several of the ited volume: Lines Drawn Upon the Water: participants appear in both works and of- First Nations and the Great Lakes Borders fer similar subject matter.