Upper Canadians will insist that Canada’s modern cottage culture began in wealthy Ontario after the Second World War, but cottage life as we know it today was in full swing in New Brunswick decades earlier.
In Ontario in the early 1800s there was a peculiar sort of summer getaway going on, where wealthy elites would pack up their servants and make their way to vast lodges in the woods in summer.
This sort of thing was exceptionally rare at that time in New Brunswick. Here, people prefered to get away on shorter trips, taking steamships along the rivers, and stopping for picnics.
Canoeing was extraordinarily popular by the mid-1800s in New Brunswick.
Famous British author Juliana Horatia Ewing described her and her husband Alexander’s first attempt canoeing in Fredericton in 1868 as:
“Really the most fascinating amusement we have tried yet. On the water the cool breeze freshens one up. Gliding about close to the water, all the trees are just bursting into green, and the water reflecting everything exquisitely, all kinds of birds flitting about and singing unfamiliar songs. This canoeing is really a source of great pleasure, and will more than double the enjoyment of summer to me.”
Immediately after her first taste of canoeing she began to make ambitious plans for a long distance trip:
“Next month we are thinking of going up the river to what they call “Grand Falls” –they say it’s the next best thing to Niagara– by steamer, and then paddling our way back by stream. It is about 80 miles. Of course we would do it in bits – stopping in places and sleeping.”
She would end up abandoning her big canoe trip halfway after being caught in a thunderstorm.
Roads back then were infrequent and inaccessible so for the most part expeditions out of the city would be done by rail or steamboat.
For the Frederictonian who was less ambitious than her, a common canoe trip in the mid-1800s was to take the train to Fredericton Junction then paddle back to town on the Oromocto River, stopping for picnics along the way. It made for a long day, often starting out at 9am and getting home at around 10pm.
A couple decades later the province was much wealthier, and people had more leisure time.
In the 1890s “camps” appeared near the larger cities where not only elites but also the burgeoning middle class could go to get away.
One of Fredericton’s earliest –and most famous– camps was built in 1895 in Springhill, where the Bucket Club is now, named “Camp Comfort.” Notably it featured a network of treehouses linked by wooden bridges built high up among the branches.
Within half a decade of Camp Comfort’s construction, at least 11 other camps were built around Fredericton.
In 1897 court reporter Frank Risteen wrote a 12,000 word long Fredericton tourism brochure called “The Celestial City,” which prominently featured Camp Comfort.
Noting that camps were often for members only, but would welcome strangers “if they were good fellows,” Risteen wrote:
“These camps are mostly built of logs after the most approved woodland pattern, with a large open fireplace at one end; the bill of fare included the inevitable pork and beans; the leading social spirits of the younger generation are sure to be represented there; the scenic surroundings are delightful; and a day spent in one of these rustic retreats will long be remembered.”
Evidently attention spans were longer back then, because after City Council and the city’s four newspapers mass printed and distributed Risteen’s 48 page long tourism brochure it attracted attention across Canada, including drawing praise from the Toronto Globe newspaper.
The tourism brochure’s whimsical language might sound rather over the top to modern readers:
“The Fredericton girl is a flower by the dusky wayside. She is ice cream in August and sunshine in April. She is a ripple of laughter on the river of time. She is the frosting which Heaven has spread over the dreary cake of Life.”
Across the rest of Canada modern cottage culture only began after the Second World War, but New Brunswick was actually something of a pioneer in that regard.
In the 1920s the provincial government invested heavily in building roads, and launched an ambitious and successful campaign to attract American tourists to the province.
The new roads made isolated lakes and rivers accessible, but newspapers in the early 1920s were already complaining about cottage country around Saint John being too built up and busy.
Interestingly, Saint John writers in the 1920s firmly stated that cottage culture began in the Summer of 1908, though it is unclear why they are so insistent on such a curiously specific date.
It’s probable that the newly accessible invention of the automobile had become increasingly prolific in the half decade before in the Port City, which potentially made private cottages in the Greater Saint John region more accessible.
In 1923 the Saint John Sun newspaper wrote: “It progressed slowly at first, but every year brought about an increase in the number of cottages being erected and summer camps sprang up like mushrooms along the lower Saint John river. They have sprung into existence and acquired a large summer population and grown almost beyond recognition.”
With the construction of the new roads, the steamboat began a speedy slide into obscurity.
In 1923 the Telegraph Journal reported “one by one these queens of the river have disappeared, burned, or sunk. Some half dozen little steamers still ply to destinations along the main stream or its tributaries and no more pleasant way of spending a summer day could be devised than a trip on one.”
Back then, newspapers devoted a remarkable amount of space to the social activities of local residents.
The Telegraph-Journal in particular would spend whole pages describing where New Brunswickers would go to the cottage, and who got invited along as guests.
In these lengthy columns we can see by the end of the 1920s that New Brunswickers were traveling all over the province to their cottages. It wasn’t uncommon for Saint Johners to have cottages as far away as Madawaska or the Acadian Peninsula.
Cottage culture, in a very modern sense, was clearly alive and well in New Brunswick in the 1920s, perhaps significantly earlier than in the rest of Canada.
