ABSTRACT
“Place” and “landscape” are powerful conceptual tools for exploring interactions between people and their environments. This chapter focuses on an exurban analog and classic frontrunner of green sprawl: central Ontario’s “cottage country.” The appropriation of this territory of lakes and woods—chiefly by residents of nearby metropolitan centers—is increasingly characterized by processes of transforming landscapes of weekend leisure to full-time home settings, as summer cottages are converted to year-round dwellings. The material effect of the ideology of nature is strongly exhibited here.
