A Timeless Place: The Ontario Cottage

by Julia Harrison

Overview

As Julia Harrison's first summer of living in Ontario approached, she became aware of the culture of the cottage. Friends talked of nothing but languid afternoons on the dock, but Harrison marveled at the investment of money and labor that the idyllic escapes demanded. Curious about the rich and passionate meaning these places seemed to hold, she studied cottagers in the Haliburton region over the course of seven years. Thoughtfully and engagingly written, A Timeless Place considers the family cottage as a place where memories are treasured, national identity is celebrated, spiritual balance is restored, and a few dark secrets are kept.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780774826075
Publisher:	University of British Columbia Press
Publication date:	09/06/2013
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Julia Harrison is a professor of anthropology at Trent University and author of Being a Tourist: Finding Meaning in Pleasure Travel.

Table of Contents

1. An Introduction to the Cottage

2. The Cottage: A Special Place

3. Community, Nature, Modernity, and Nationalism at the Cottage

4. Time and Order at the Cottage

5. The Cottage Body

6. Family at the Cottage

7. Gender at the Cottage

8. Privilege at the Cottage

Notes
References
Index

What People are Saying About This

Sally Coleco

An entertaining, well-written, accessible book that explores the iconic status the cottage holds in the imagination of many. Basing her work on extended interviews with cottagers, Julia Harrison finds the cottage to be an archive of memory as well as a project to recover idealized childhoods of innocence, health, and connection to imagined nature. A Timeless Place will be read widely.

From the Publisher

"An entertaining, well-written, accessible book that explores the iconic status the cottage holds in the imagination of many. Basing her work on extended interviews with cottagers, Julia Harrison finds the cottage to be an archive of memory as well as a project to recover idealized childhoods of innocence, health, and connection to imagined nature. A Timeless Place will be read widely."—Sally Coleco, author of Rainy River Lives: Stories Told by Maggie Wilson