ABSTRACT
When I was a young boy, growing up in Toronto during the post-war years, my parents owned a summer cottage in a small community about 45 miles north of the city on the shores of Lake Simcoe. The community consisted of around fifty families, each with its own cottage on its own plot of land. It also included a children’s day camp and a common beach, the use of which was restricted to members of the community and to hired camp staff (who were not members of the community). The previous owner of the tract of land occupied by the community had sold it off in lots to the cottagers on terms that constituted them as a collective decision making body for certain purposes.
