There’s a chunky dinner bell hanging by the door of a small cabin on Sproat Lake, B.C., that reminds Victoria Huntley of her childhood in Ontario. It looks like a cow bell—a serviceable design that hasn’t changed much over time. Like the cabin itself, the bell is reminiscent of a different era: one that’s low tech and serene. It’s exactly the vibe Victoria wanted for the two-bedroom getaway that she and her husband, Jon Ronkai, never planned to own.
The Cove Cabin sits next to the couple’s four-bedroom cottage—the OG Cabin—but it occupies a more forested, recessed part of the shoreline. The Cove Cabin was previously owned by an elderly neighbour, but Victoria was struck with familiarity when first visiting the place. “My grandfather built a similar cabin by hand on Lake Muskoka,” she says. “My parents had to sell because of a health issue in our family. It was the right decision, but I’ve always missed it.” Victoria is from Toronto, and Jon is from Guelph, Ont., but they both moved to B.C. in 2006.
They met in Vancouver in 2013 as working professionals—Jon in finance and Victoria in interior design. They planned to stay in Vancouver, but the city’s outrageous housing market changed their trajectory. “We were looking at tear-downs in East Vancouver that we would barely be able to afford, never mind renovate or build on,” says Victoria. They grew discouraged by the area’s overpriced real estate, where bidding wars over sub-par inventory frustrated their dreams of home ownership.
By August of 2015, the couple had been house hunting for a year and a half and had welcomed a baby boy named Charlie. Needing a vacation, Victoria and Jon, along with Jon’s parents, Barb and Zoli Ronkai, booked a cabin on Sproat Lake. The lake is located mid-way up Vancouver Island off the Pacific Rim Highway—famous for its dramatic end-point destinations of Tofino and Ucluelet. At a smidge under 38 square kilometres, Sproat is large and deep with a clarity of water reminiscent of gemstones.
Its surface reflects hectares of coastal Douglas fir and western hemlock that sweep upwards into the surrounding mountains. “I remember pulling up and nursing Charlie in the car while the guys unloaded. Jon and his dad had gone into the cabin, and when they came out, they told me the place was a dump. I was so tired I almost cried,” says Victoria. “Then I went inside, and it was so beautiful. The view from the living room of the lake and the mountains was jaw-dropping.”
Victoria and Jon were taken by the cabin as well as the lake, so much so that they made a lighthearted comment to the owner about loving it enough to buy it. The conversation led to a serious private offer when the owner decided to sell six months later. Still tired of looking for the perfect house in Vancouver, the couple decided to shift focus and invest in the slower pace of island life.
They bought the cabin in July of 2016 and spent three years commuting on the weekends from Vancouver before eventually settling permanently into a home a few hours down-island in Victoria, where housing prices were significantly lower than on the mainland. “Jon is a contrarian, so the idea of being in a housing bubble in Vancouver was awful for him, even though he loved the city,” says Victoria. “To me, the island purchase was a way of nesting and being closer to the Ontario cottage life that I had been missing.”
Even with two young boys (Frankie was born in 2021), a house in Victoria, a place on Sproat, and busy careers, the cabin next door was always on Victoria and Jon’s radar, especially as the occasional partygoer stumbled across their property when their neighbour’s young adult grandchildren were visiting. But they never expected it to go up for sale. When the owner’s daughter approached them in 2022 to ask if they wanted to buy it before she put it on the market, the offer felt like it couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Months before, Jon had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and the prognosis was serious. Still in his 40s and with their youngest in diapers, the news hit hard. “It made for a dark year,” says Victoria. “We kind of swung between hope and hopelessness, depending on the week or latest clinician.” But the cabin, which shares a driveway with their cottage, came with a beach and a bay that the original owner had allowed them to use. The shallow, sandy cove was a perfect place for kids to learn to swim, and with no neighbours on the other side, they’d have the cove to themselves.
It was already intimately connected to their property—a beautiful piece of land in its own right that abuts more forest edged with granite cliffs that locals have long used for jumping. Buying it would give them privacy and space to house guests at a time when friends and family were so critical for emotional support. “The Cove was such a gift while Jon was in treatment and ever since,” says Victoria. “It has allowed us to be surrounded by the people we love and have them nearby for dock hangouts and boat rides, without everyone having to share a bathroom.”
Despite the stress, Victoria and Jon quickly came to see the cabin as more than an acquisition—it was an agreement between them to set their sights on the future—one with Jon in it. “For me, the thinking was, if this goes sideways, and Vic is left with the kids, what does that mean for them to have all this capital tied up in two cottages and me, the main earner, gone?” says Jon. “So that was stressful. But ultimately, we decided we were going to approach it—and approach life— like I wasn’t going anywhere.”
While the couple had no plans to significantly change the cabin, especially with Jon in treatment, they tackled some updates to make the space more inviting—primarily applying fresh paint and removing carpets that had seen better days. Soon, though, their little touch-ups turned into bigger projects—new cladding and soffits on the exterior and cosmetic improvements to the interior that included refacing the walls and kitchen cabinets; adding a matte black paperstone kitchen counter, and installing trimless windows and sliding doors to replace the old windows overlooking the 400-sq.-ft. deck.
“We both feel the project came at a great time, although at that point, we felt overwhelmed,” says Victoria. “But it gave us control of something when we felt at the mercy of Jon’s health.” Victoria—who has worked as an interior designer since 2012 and now runs Victoria Huntley Design—had not yet significantly renovated any of her own spaces. She also knew the design would have to reflect her and Jon’s family roots wherever possible.
“The cabin was a long-standing dream project that brought together our history,” she says. “I knew I didn’t want it to be too West Coast modern. In Ontario, I feel like they really embrace tradition. I love that. I wanted that classic, deeply wooded Muskoka cabin feel, where you see the boughs of trees out your window as well as the lake.” Nostalgia is evident in the cabin, where four-year-old Frankie loves using the record player to play classics by Dolly Parton in front of the woodstove.
The cedar walls are warm and unpainted, and the sensibility of the place is one of hand-me-downs and vintage treasures. “In my childhood circles, cottages weren’t furnished with shiny new pieces—rather you’d retire your well-loved furniture and bring it up to the lake,” says Victoria. “While there were a few investment pieces, we were careful to keep the overall mood warm, handmade, relaxed, and approachable.”
Following Jon’s diagnosis, he regularly drove three hours from their home in Victoria, even in the midst of treatment, to oversee the Cove Cabin project, jumping at the chance to spend quiet evenings in front of the fire with books or in the cabin’s spacious bathtub. Now stable, Jon is coming up on a year post-treatment and the cancer has not returned. “In the words of my surgeon, it’s good news, but I’m not out of the woods yet,” he says. “But having the space has brought a level of peacefulness to our lives that I’m really grateful for.”
Writer Susan Hollis lives in Victoria, B.C. This is her first story for Cottage Life.
This story originally appeared in our Early Spring ’26 issue.
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