It is time to summer somewhere. That's a well-known notion. Everyone wants to go somewhere where the skies are big, the lakes are clear, and the air smells of Eastern White Pine.
We are into the next 2 generations of cottagers. A big boom started in the 1950s. My grandfather built a cottage near Killbear Park in the late 1950s. The landscape there was beloved by many immigrant Germans.
Before they took to cottage country, it was inhabited by the wealthy or the eccentric. The eccentric would be equivalent to off-the-grid types today. Rustic, rudimentary living. Often with the facilities of the 1920s and 1930s - no electricity, a refrigerator with a block of ice, and an outhouse. Or maybe a generator, so they'd have some electricity.
But a lot of decades have passed for cottage country to fill up. Today cottage country is more in the realm of luxury living rather than rustic cabins. There's high demand for cottages that are built for the four seasons. Multiple offers and high prices.
In Southern Ontario, we have many places within easy reach. However there are many people to reach them. Ontario has 10 million residents. That's a lot of swimmers and boaters.
How well-off do you have to be to own a cottage today? The average price of a Muskoka cottage is $737,890 in 2022. That's up from $653,000 in 2021. So I guess you need to have more than a little extra money. And remember that's the average of all the cottages on all the lakes, not just the Muskoka Big Lakes. - which are Lake Joseph, Lake Muskoka and Lake Rosseau. So once the money has been spent, what next?
The next thing is how long is the commute and how bad the traffic is, or isn't.
And then how peaceful is a cottage? With the jetskiers, motor boats, the power mowers, and so on all competing on the weekend.
And would you relax? Or would you be maintaining that "cottage" house, the dock, the boat, and so on?
It doesn't seem to matter, though. The dream of that glorious sun sparkling on the lake as one skims the water in a motorboat. That is quite an experience.
Today's pictures give that sense. They were taken in the Kingston area where Lake Ontario's shores get rugged and rocky with the granite terrain of cottage country.
According to a New Scientist article in early 2000s, women really do look fatter on television, while men look more hunky, say researchers at the University of Liverpool. They investigated differences between 2D images such as TV pictures and 3D images produced using stereoscopic cameras.
It is a perceived wisdom in the broadcasting industry that TV cameras make people look about four kilograms(10 lbs) heavier than they are.
Another article says: "Your eyes are placed on your face horizontally, so you get a 'widescreen' view of the world," he said. "TV—specifically, NTSC—is nearly square (4:3), so you are significantly modifying your view of the world, not just by 'zooming in' and isolating the TV in your view, but also by changing your entire perspective." Watson said that it's not hard to see how your brain might try to compensate for this by stretching things out a little, therefore making people look wider.
And other articles say that any camera will have this effect. To highlight the way that focal length can affect the shape of the face, Business Insider's article showed a person's head in a series of nine portraits at 20mm, 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, 70mm, 105mm, 150mm, and 200mm. Take a look at it HERE. This is known as the Hitchcok zoom with it expanding out. That article says that the best way to avoid extra pounds is to use 88mm to 135mm lenses. I am right on it.
I found this wonderful Georgian Bay scene in the archives.
