It’s considered a quintessentially Canadian tradition: Pack up the car with too much food, load up on bug spray, throw a canoe on the roof rack and sit in bumper to bumper traffic until…sigh, you can finally exhale on the dock at the cottage. But look around at those faces stuck in traffic, or in the boats whizzing by on the lake, and those faces are very likely to be white. Is the tradition of going to the cottage really a Canadian experience reflective of this country in 2019? How does the idea of relaxing on a piece of land in the wilderness sit with us at a time when racism and colonization is being discussed more and more, and housing prices are through the roof? Toronto writer Elamin Abdelmahmoud unpacked all of this in an article for Cottage Life. He joins us on The Big Story today, just in time for the long weekend.
Guest: Elamin Abdelmahmoud, writer, editor, Buzzfeed