A conundrum in cottage country
On Lake Huron and in Muskoka, residents largely recognize they can’t stop city-folk from heading to their cottages — but that doesn’t mean the ‘stay home’ sentiment has disappeared
SAUBLE BEACH, ONT.— As a smallbusiness owner and year-round resident of a town that attracts tens of thousands of visitors in warm-weather months, Jason Schnurr embodies the COVID-19 cottage country conundrum.
His businesses — three surfwear shops in this Lake Huron town, population 800, and one in nearby Port Elgin — rely on tourist dollars. And those primarily come from the pockets of GTA daytrippers looking for sun, fun and a break from urban congestion.
Yet Schnurr isn’t oblivious to the potential risk that a visitor could import COVID-19 into an area locals believe has remained largely free of the virus, or the impact an outbreak would have on its limited healthcare system.
“Most of our cases, from what I know, have come from travel,” he said this week standing outside his Jack n Jill’s Surf Shop, steps from the windy Lake Huron shoreline. Like other beaches around Ontario, this one is closed under the province’s emergency order at least until the month’s end. This week, Premier Doug Ford stepped back a bit from last month’s urgings that people must avoid any kind of travel, including to second homes and cottages around the province.
With the approaching Victoria Day weekend — considered the unofficial start to summer — Ford held a conference call with about 200 mayors in cottage country to tailor the messaging about the coronavirus crisis in Ontario’s recreational playgrounds.
Those listening in reported a consensus: There’s nothing that can be done to stop people from heading to their cottages. But that doesn’t mean the “stay home sentiment” has disappeared.
The past few months have been friction-filled for some shoreline municipalities faced with the prospect of property owners self-isolating away from their principal residences.
One mayor ordered the water shut off to discourage seasonal residents from visiting, and public health officials in southwestern Ontario have either banned or warned people to stay away or face a $5,000 a day fine.
Some residents have taken matters into their own hands.
A woman from Burk’s Falls, north of Huntsville, started an online petition asking the government for “stricter measures and/or fines” to restrict nonessential travel of cottagers to their seasonal housing in Muskoka and Parry Sound, “where limited resources exist.” She did not respond to the Star’s request for comment. Anonymous online comments added to the bottom of news stories about the coronavirus in cottage country capture an element of what some might not say in public.
“Barricade the 5 main entrances into town and have people show their driver’s licences … if not in town address, send them home,” read one comment on a local news site. “You wait in line to get in the grocery store and you wait again in a long line to pay. You will be competing with visitors for the chance to buy food,” warned another commentator.
(There continues to be widespread — yet unsubstantiated rumours — that some grocery stores in Muskoka will soon require shoppers to present identification before entering to ensure permanent residents have access to essential items.)
This past week, Simcoe Muskoka’s chief medical officer of health told reporters there was nothing he could do to stop the coming invasion.
But the health unit’s website continues to strongly suggest people should “avoid heading to your cottage or seasonal residence.” It included a list of the “potential harms associated with travelling to and using your cottage, even for a day.”
Those who ignore “this strong message” are urged to follow public-health measures such as physical distancing, staying inside their cottage, and not purchasing food and medications in their own community.
Terry Glover, mayor of Lake of Bays, says what he’s hearing from some of his area’s 3,000plus full-time residents is, “let’s continue to take this slowly. If you have to come up, come up, but if you don’t have to come up, don’t come up.”
In summer, the population of his township, which includes 100 lakes in Muskoka, grows to more than 11,000 and includes the hamlets of Dwight, Baysville and Whitney, located near the entrance to Algonquin Park. Although there have been no major altercations between locals and city interlopers since the lockdown began, he admits nerves are frayed.
“I try to tell people your anger and frustration is at the virus, it’s not each other, but because you have so much time to think, you’re looking for somebody to yell at,” he said.
“I’m also clearly walking the middle of the road saying, ‘Look, we’re all in this together, just be nice, can we be kind and compassionate to each other, and calm as we can be.’ ”
Back at Sauble Beach, South Bruce Peninsula Mayor Janice Jackson acknowledges the pandemic “has certainly created a divide in many municipalities right across Ontario, and beyond, and so that’s something we’re trying very hard to avoid that, because we are one big family, and have to get through this together.”
She said this sitting on a bench facing the water as a large black SUV with tinted windows drove slowly past. Jackson waved, for a moment thinking it belonged to the private security outfit hired to uphold provincial orders, such as the ban on shortterm rentals, failing to practice social distancing or walking on the beach.
With Victoria Day weekend approaching, Jackson says she’s “quite worried” Sauble Beach will be “inundated” with cooped up, COVID-weary urbanites wanting to visit this “beautiful place.”
The May long weekend isn’t like Canada Day or the civic holiday in August, but if the weather co-operates, “we could easily see10,000 people come up here.
“I hope it snows,” she laughs.