Ontario Cottage Country

An outdoor recreational guide to Ontario Cottage Country. Includes GPS compatible outdoor recreational maps and information on the outdoor recreational opportunities available in the area. Covers the area of Ontario from Lake Ontario north to the Ottawa River, North Bay, Lake Nipissing, Sturgeon Falls, French River Provincial Park, and Burwash, and from Georgian Bay, Stayner, Shelburne, Orangeville, and Brampton east to Deep River, Barrys Bay, Bancroft, and Belleville. It includes Muskoka, the Kawarthas and Haliburton areas, Lake Simcoe, Algonquin Provincial Park, and the northern and eastern portions of the Greater Toronto area.

North of the heart of Ontario's scenic Muskoka District are the Almaguin Highlands, a loosely organized collection of villages, townships, and municipalities. In the mid-1800s, the region was home to loggers and farmers, as well as seasonal residents in simple cottages and camps. Since then, the impact of economic globalization and government policies has transformed the countryside into a luxurious recreational, residential, and tourist destination. John Michels investigates change in the Almaguin Highlands, exploring the modern faces of cottaging, tourism, agriculture, forestry, and economic development initiatives. He shows how years of neoliberal policies have displaced agriculture and logging as the principal sources of employment in northern Ontario, generating tension and unexpected alliances between tourists, residents, loggers, farmers, developers, and governmental officials over the proper uses and meanings of rural space. The repercussions of this new service-oriented countryside include increased youth outmigration, decreased full-time employment opportunities, and an ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor. A rich and detailed study based on long-term interviews and fieldwork, Permanent Weekend critically explores the catalysts and outcomes of gentrifying rural areas.

An outdoor recreational guide to Ontario Cottage Country. Includes GPS compatible outdoor recreational maps and information on the outdoor recreational opportunities available in the area. Covers provincial parks (Indian Point, Wassaga Beach, Massasauga, Awenda, Kawartha Highlands, and others), the southern tip of Algonquin Provincial Park, Georgian Bay Islands National Park, the Trent-Severn Waterway, and the areas near Barrie, Orrville, Huntsville, Orillia, Peterborough, Gooderham, Haliburton, Port Perry, Gravenhurst, Lindsay, Newmarket, Collingwood, Bracebridge, Parry Sound, Moon River, and Muskoka.

As Julia Harrison's first summer of living in Ontario approached, she became aware of the culture of the cottage. Friends talked of nothing but languid afternoons on the dock, but Harrison marveled at the investment of money and labour that the idyllic escapes demanded. Curious about the rich and passionate meaning these places seemed to hold, she studied cottagers in the Haliburton region over the course of seven years. Thoughtfully and engagingly written, A Timeless Place considers the family cottage as a place where memories are treasured, national identity is celebrated, spiritual balance is restored, and a few dark secrets are kept.

An updated guide to the twenty top canoe trips in Ontario's Kawarthas, Haliburton, Muskoka, and Georgian Bay regions, including detailed route descriptions, maps showing all access points, important river features and accurate portage lengths.

The cottage is a powerful image of rural Canada. This image, however, often ignores the rural community that surrounds it, producing a geographically and socially divided landscape and creating friction between cottage owners and rural communities. Cottage Country in Transition is a wide-ranging exploration of the interaction and evolution of these two communities.