Relaxing Away From Home
Canadian cabins and camping
First Nations, Inuit and Métis people have lived and travelled in nature for many generations. When Europeans wanted to do likewise, starting in the mid-1800s, let’s just say they didn’t exactly understand the Indigenous concept of travelling light. They headed into the wilderness using horses and canoes to carry heavy canvas tents, iron stoves and sheepskin sleeping bags.
By the late 1880s, church and community groups were organizing camps, often to give city kids from poorer families some fresh air and exercise. Rich city dwellers from Vancouver started heading to lodges and vacation houses on the North Shore, now a neighbourhood right in the city; from Halifax they trekked to the beautiful South Shore of Nova Scotia.
Around the same time in Ontario, people living in areas such as Haliburton and Muskoka realized the land was terrible for farming, but offered peace and beauty around the rocky lakes, so many of them started resorts. Wealthy Torontonians packed trunks full of china, silverware and fancy clothes, and took the train north, often bringing servants. When the resorts started filling up, the owners built separate little wooden cottages for guests, many of whom then bought property and built their own vacation homes.
After the Second World War, governments started building highways. More ferries appeared, making short ocean trips easy. Suddenly ordinary families could drive to new places, and many could even afford to buy land and build a summer place.
People who had been towing their vacation home since the 1920s could now easily get their recreational vehicles
— also known as campers or RVs — to campgrounds. Where you could once only canoe to some campsites, now you could pitch your tent right beside your car. On the island of Newfoundland, it became even easier to go gravel-pit camping — taking your camper or tent to a pretty spot around a pond or, yes, in a gravel pit, on public land.
What do Canadians call a vacation house that’s often located near water? That usually depends where you live. In Quebec and parts of B.C. you’d call it a chalet. (It’s a cabin in other parts of B.C.) In northern Ontario and many places in Atlantic Canada, you’d talk about going to your camp. In southern Ontario, it’s a cottage. And in most of Manitoba, people just go to the lake.
If the family could afford it, mothers and children would often spend the whole summer at their vacation property while fathers stayed in town to work, joining their families on weekends. In the 1970s, women began to work outside the home in larger numbers, meaning many family vacations were shortened to a week or two at a time. People started buying snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles so they could get to their vacation spot all year.
Even people who didn’t own a getaway could easily get to a beach for a day or go hiking, fishing or canoeing. The number of people visiting provincial and national parks shot up by the 1960s as backpacking boomed thanks to better, lighter equipment.
Summer camps for kids also took off in popularity. If their camp was just for people of their faith — Jewish groups, Sikhs, many Christian churches and others still have their own camps — or for girls or boys only, say, or for kids with health problems, it was a place to spend time with others like you for a week or two.
In many parts of Canada, rich Americans were the first to build summer homes. They came — and still come—to beautiful lakes and oceanfront spots in Cape Breton, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, and B.C.’s Okanagan region, among others.