Breaking the colour code

Do you remember the first time you stepped foot in a cottage? I do. It was just a few weeks after the first time I heard what a cottage even was. I was 19.

I wasn’t born in Canada—I moved here from Sudan when I was 12 years old. I didn’t speak English, and I spent the majority of my adolescence trying to understand what life here entailed.

So when a friend invited me and a few others to her family cottage in Ontario’s Thousand Islands one summer, my first question wasn’t, “What weekend were you thinking?” It was more like, “Uh…sure… What’s that?”

I may have struggled with the concept that was explained to me—apparently, some Canadians have a whole second property that is dedicated almost entirely to just relaxing—but nothing could prepare me for the reality: my friend’s cottage was a beautiful, full-sized home that sits on—are you ready for it? An island. It’s the only home on that island. My friend’s family owns an island. I wasn’t even aware this was a thing a person could do.

Over the next decade or so, after spending memorable weeks at friends’ lakeside places, I’ve come to love cottage time, and I’ve begun to think of it as a part of my identity and my aspirations. But as an immigrant, is cottaging something I can fully own?

When people talk about cottaging as a quintessential Canadian experience, they almost invariably mean the white Canadian experience. The Cottage, as an idea,