Christmas At The Cottage

As seen in The Toronto Star

 

Eleven years ago, Tom and Darcy Wefers and their two-year-old son, Straun, embarked on what would become a tried and true family tradition - celebrating Christmas at the cottage.

 

Back then the road leading to their log veneer cottage on Big Cedar Lake near Burleigh Falls was impassable due to deep snow and icy conditions. But that didn’t discourage the Wefers.

About ½ km away they would park the van, which was bulging with bulky winter clothes, cumbersome cross-country skis, lots of festive food, fixings, and of course, Christmas decorations and presents.

 

Tom would trudge through knee-deep snow to retrieve the trusty snowmobile with its add-on caboose.

 

“I made several trips back and forth with that caboose,” Tom recalls, “When I loaded up the presents I felt like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. I had a tower of Christmas presents strapped down with a bunch of bungee cords.”

 

Today, the process is much easier. For the last five years, a group of Big Cedar Lake cottagers, including the Wefers, have had the road plowed for the Christmas holidays.

 

Accessing the cottage is just one of many challenges faced by families who celebrate the holiday season up north. And all of them, it seems, have a story to tell.

 

Lindene Kaufmann, her husband Raymond, and their three children began celebrating Christmas at their 600 sq. foot pine cottage “with no plumbing and no amenities of any kind” 20 years ago.

 

“I used to melt snow to get water,” Lindene says. “And I can tell you, it takes a lot of snow to make one little cup of water.”

 

Lindene would set a big pot on the stove, adding more and more snow until she had at least one full bucket. The whole process took about an hour. Five years of snow melting later, she’d had enough.

 

“Then we got an ice auger. We’d cut a hole through the ice and fill two huge garbage bins with lake water. We did this for 10 years, until we finally got a well, and now we have running water.”

 

David “Lub” Latimer has been celebrating Christmas at his family’s cottage with his parents and two brothers for about 35 years. His father passed away two years ago, but that hasn’t stopped the family, which has grown to include spouses, partners and children, from making the annual trip to cottage country.

 

“Going to the cottage over Christmas has been a regular thing for my family. We’ve driven up through blizzards on Christmas Eve,” he says.

 

Located near Minden on Gull Lake, the Latimer’s six-bedroom cottage features an open concept kitchen, dining room and living room, and sits atop a bluff overlooking the water.

 

One year the Latimers had a power outage during the cooking of Christmas dinner. Luckily, their cottage sits right next door to a children’s camp called Kilcoo, which has been owned by the Latimers since 1955.

 

“We took the uncooked turkey down to the camp lodge and finished it in the gas oven. After it was done, we packed it up and hauled it back to the cottage through the snow. We lit some candles and had the fireplace roaring. Christmas dinner worked out just fine,” he says.

Impassable roads, ice augers and half-baked fowl? ‘Why would anyone subject themselves to this?’

 

For the Wefers, Kaufmanns and Latimers the answer is immediate and unequivocal: Nothing – absolutely nothing - beats celebrating Christmas at the cottage.

 

All say it’s a magical experience made more charming by pristine natural surroundings; the frozen lake glinting like scattered diamonds, tree limbs heavy with powdery snow, wildlife tracks and sightings; the smell of fresh, crisp air mixed with burning wood fires. And the icing on the fruitcake: family traditions.

 

For the Wefers, food is a major tradition over the holiday season. Christmas Eve dinner, for example, is a tribute to Tom’s heritage with traditional German fare.

 

“We have Hasenpfeffer, which is wild rabbit, and my father prepares a couple of other German dishes, herring salad and a pressed smoked salmon,” says Tom.

 

“But we also buy a box of oysters that we eat with champagne and cocktails as an appetizer,” adds his wife Darcy. “We shuck oysters and serve them on a silver platter sitting atop of a bed of snow, which we scoop from outside.”

 

On Christmas Day, the Wefers cook a traditional Canadian Christmas dinner with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, peas and potatoes.

 

“I guess you could say we do a lot of eating!” Tom laughs.

 

Cooking a large meal in a small space comes with its own set of challenges. The Wefers’ 900-sq. ft. cottage has a kitchen with an old, apartment- sized oven, complete with a non-functional thermometer.

 

“I use a supplemental thermometer,” explains Darcy. “And as for the tight space, all I can say is you have to like the people you’re cooking with.”

 

She also recommends being organized, neat and, above all, creative. “In the winter we put food outside to make room in the refrigerator.”

 

To work off all those calories, the Wefers (including Tom, Darcy, their sons Straun, 13, Troy, 6 and the grandparents) partake in another Christmas tradition, pick-up hockey. On Boxing Day, the lake comes alive with other families who drop by to shoot a few pucks.

 

“We have all types of skill levels playing,” says Darcy. “From big guys who have played some serious hockey to little kids who can barely stand on their skates. Even my 60 year-old mother plays; she tends goal wearing boots instead of skates, and uses the biggest shovel she can find in place of a hockey stick.”

 

The Kaufmann family tradition is equally theatrical. Every year Lindene buys fleece or flannelette pyjamas for her grown kids and grandkids, which they all wear when they play charades on Christmas night.

“We change into our new pyjamas after dinner when everyone is feeling full and just wants to get their tight jeans off,” Lindene chuckles.

 

“We always pit the boys against the girls. But every year it’s a fight to get the guys to play. When they finally agree – after a lot of begging - they really get into it and they don’t want to stop. It’s not unusual for us to start at 9 pm and keep playing until 5 am the next day,” she says.

 

David “Lub” Latimer says every year on Christmas Eve his parents would read him and his brothers a “rag tag version” of The Night Before Christmas.

 

“Even as we got older we continued to do it. And if one of my brothers or I wasn’t up there, we would call in and my parents would read it to us over the phone. Now my wife, Beth, and I, read it to our kids (twin boys, 3 1/2 year-old TJ and Charlie, and 1 ½ year-old daughter Brooke) “It’s the same ragtag version my parents read.”

 

With years of happy memories and firmly ensconced traditions, would any of these families actually consider celebrating Christmas in the city?

 

Lindene Kaufmann says, “We did once. Three years ago we built a new house in Belleville and moved into it at the end of November. Since we were so busy with the move, we decided to have Christmas there instead.

 

“But it was the worst Christmas ever! It just wasn’t the same being in the city with all the commercial distractions. The kids were concerned that we were going to stay there for future Christmases but I said, ‘definitely not.’”

 

Tom Wefers shares Lindene’s sentiments. “Celebrating Christmas at the cottage is an opportunity to escape the city and the normalcy of everyday life. It’s an incredibly special experience.”