Muskoka Cottages: For The Stupidly Wealthy Among Us

The Economist this week ran a story about the future of cottage country in Canada when the average cottage in Muskoka has now risen to over $8 million. That's six zero's at the end of that eight!

What the article doesn't indicate is that the Muskoka's have always been the cottage country for the wealthy only - at least in my memory - and that this is not the norm across the country. Semantics, maybe, but an important distinction lest anyone reading it think that cottages are that inaccessible right across the board. It does refer largely to cottage country just beyond the cities edge: and not the far North of places like Ontario and British Columbia.

The funniest - and scariest part - of the article comes from a comment in the online article posted by a self-identified American who suggests that if Canada is running out of prime lakefront real estate, the solution is to use our hoards of "hydrocarbon money" and, quite simply, build more lakes artificially. And he refers to, get this, China's ability to create artificial lakes and mountains in the lead-up to the Beijing Games as an example of how this can work.

Huh...