If your family’s been in Ontario for at least a couple generations, then chances are somebody has a cottage.

“A cottage?” you say.

Yes, a cottage.

Ok, so it’s really just a little log cabin by a lake in the woods – and some of you may know these as camps, or maybe the more pretentious term “summer home” – and some cottages really are “summer homes” – complete with satellite TV, multiple bathrooms and gourmet kitchens. Not that ours is anything more than a little log cabin with no phone line and an ancient and quirky oven.

Point is, little lakes are actually so ubiquitous here that pretty much everyone has a cottage on one. And that is a wonderful thing, because here in central Canada it gets as hot in summer as it gets cold in the winter. So if you drive a couple hours out of town into the bush, it gets colder, and there is much in the way of swimming, naturing, beering and merriment.

So at the cottage is where we spent our Canada Day long weekend. Much swimming, naturing, beering and merriment was had, indeed.

I am pretty thankful that Liam is now a real grown-up with a normal nine to five job that allows for the kinds of extravagances like extra – long weekends at the cottage.