My Retreat

Relaxing at the cottage shouldn’t leave you with a guilty conscience. In this episode we visit three retreats that have found very different ways to minimize their environmental impact. In Ontario we’ll visit a tiny cottage on a tiny island that is 100% off the grid. On Vancouver Island we’ll go to Tofino where a cottage actually hugs the trees. And in the BC interior there is a Bed & Breakfast where you can eat organic food while you watch the birds beside a rushing river.

Cottages in the extreme… from a mountain top chalet near Whistler BC, to a Cottage that’s half in, and half out of the water. We go to the extremes for this episode of My Retreat. We’ll even stay a night at the most Southerly Bed and Breakfast in the country: The Wandering Pheasant on Ontario’s Pelee Island.

Just because you are a land-lubber, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the life of a sailor. In this episode we visit a place that, using boat technology, offers one of a kind round treehouses that hang in the forest in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island… you can commune with nature up in the trees!! We’ll also visit an American couple who found their way to Pelee Island, Ontario by ferry and turned a dump of a building into their fun-filled summer cottage. And finally, we’ll visit the shores of Mazinaw Lake near Bon Echo Provincial Park where one very quirky city boy had a Japanese style cottage built on a property that you can only get to by water. And the boat ride there is as much a part of the cottage experience as staying in this unique getaway!

A weekend at the cottage actually starts in your own driveway. A lot of people fight traffic and gridlocked highways for hours to reach their retreat. We’ve found some people that have a little more fun along the way. In this episode we visit a round summer home on an island in BC that you can only reach by helicopter. We also visit one stylish couple that found a poolhouse an hour away from home and turned it into a stylish shangri-la..And in PEI, we found an architect who moved an old church onto his property and turned it into a beautiful cottage..now you can sleep and play in the steeple and make as much noise as you want!!

For this episode we found three retreats that each have a century of history. There’s a unique community less than an hour from Toronto that boasts everything Muskoka has to offer, just minutes from the big city; a lighthouse in PEI that still functions and offers you a place to sleep along with the local ghost. And a lake house in Ontario where the flowers that surround it are older than the occupants. All 3 are unique and full of history.

Time at the cottage is all about Family… but what happens when your four kids grow up and need their own place. One by one this family has spread out building new cottages on the same lake they grew up on… It’s as if the entire lake is their retreat. Also in Ontario we meet a man who built a 4 season retreat...he makes maple syrup there with his dad and in the spring is teaching the kids...who enjoy this place all year long.