01-01 Cottage Life - John Bulloch

The basics of how climate change is impacting water was learned as a boy at our summer cottage. Lake water evaporating and warming during the summer months. Walking 200 yards to get fresh water from a well. Viscous storms following heat waves. Six feet of shoreline disappearing.

It was 1943, and my parents bought a cottage on Lake Simcoe about an hour north of Toronto. And it was when I first learned some of the basics of water. Stuff important today as the climate warms.
Canada is a nation of lakes, and can provide a wonderful summer cottage life for those who can afford it. Luxurious mostly, with purified running water. A summer life for the kids and a retirement home for mom and dad.
No one would believe cottage life 75 years ago. But that time of my life is not unlike life in so many developed nations today facing drought and coastal erosion associated with climate change.
Love the photo of the young children in Mali, that have to walk a mile a day to secure fresh water. It reminds me of myself at that age walking 200 yards everyday to carry water from an artesian well. This is well deep down that sends fresh, cold water under pressure to the surface without any pumping.
Once we got electricity life really changed. Now we had pipes laid out into the lake and water pumped into the cottage. Not for drinking, but for cooking, washing and showers. No more taking a bar of soap into the lake to bathe.
Then, instead of an outhouse, we built a septic system to handle waste water and sewage. In so many parts of the world, properly treated sewage can be used for agriculture. The recycling of waste water is a global issue.
The biggest lesson from my childhood was seeing what happens after a prolonged heatwave. It usually was a vicious storm with waves six feet high. If they happened early in the summer when the lake water was still high, the storms could wipe out up to six feet of your shoreline. Once our whole front lawn disappeared. Then we built a lake front of monster rocks.
Sounds like those atolls in the South Pacific where storms are sending salt water into their fresh water aquifers.
Perhaps the most unforgettable experience of living on a lake was ice fishing in the winter. Those 30-pound Lake Trout followed the smelt which come close to shore to breed.
And how about hundreds of men cutting ice using large hand saws and dragging it away in horse driven wagons. Everyone had ice boxes in those days. What fun at the cottage when the ice man arrived carrying a block of ice on his shoulder.
And, the next day it was milk and butter and bread. It was war time and no one had trucks that used gasoline. My two kid brothers and I loved to pet the horses.