My Not So Lazy Summer

How I learned to love our family cottage-chores and all

- Matthew Hague

FAMILY

I REMEMBER THE EXACT MOMENT when I decided that I would never go back to my family's cottage ever again. It was August 2000. I was 16 and sick of our annual trips from Toronto to the dusty, drafty old place in Quebec's Laurentian Mountains.

My grandfather was also getting to me. In my mind, he ran the place like a boot camp, setting out a strict daily regimen for me, my brother and our cousins. Between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m., we had to be out of bed and in the frigid lake for our pre-breakfast swims. Then, after choking back flavourless bowls of porridge, we played tennis, swam some more and did chores.

In the afternoons, as the adults had tea or cocktails, we were expected to sit silently and listen to their tedious chit-chat. We didn't have cable TV. We had to be in bed by 10:00 p.m. That might not sound rough, but to my 16-year-old self, it was torture.

Right before going up that year, I had seen a documentary about ritzy Palm Beach, Florida. It confirmed my suspicions that there were better places to spend a vacation. I was so dazzled that, one morning, post polar bear dip, I cheekily announced to my grandfather that someday soon I would visit Palm Beach (with what money, I can't say). I wanted to know how it felt to swim in warm water. I didn't mean it as a direct, outright rejection of the cottage, but he took it as such. He scolded me for being rude. I'd betrayed a deep and offensive ingratitude for the beauty all around me.

I took his words as a challenge. Instead of coming back to the cottage, I promised myself I would explore the world, be my own person. The next summer was the first time in my life that I didn't make the trek.