You would be forgiven for thinking Henrietta Southam is giving you a master class in parking a boat. From behind mirrored aviators glinting in the sun, she eases her sleek NauticStar into the marina and allows the side of the hull to meet the dock with the subtlest air-kiss. “I learned to drive a boat before I learned to drive a car,” says barefoot Henrietta from behind the wheel, as we pull away and begin the trip across the water to her pink island cottage.
You’d also be forgiven for thinking Henrietta is any one straightforward thing: a boldface name in Ottawa society coverage or the award-winning designer of sophisticated urban interiors or a speedboat wizard or someone who looks a lot like Claudia Schiffer. But to spend time with Henrietta at her cottage on Big Rideau Lake, Ont., 100 km southwest of the nation’s capital, is to understand that she has made an art of defying pigeonholes; she’s the captain at the helm of an ongoing adventure, the narrative of which, like the cottage she occupies here, is a constantly evolving creative experiment.
The Big Rideau is the largest body of water in the 200-km Rideau Canal that runs from Ottawa to Kingston. The lake is 100 sq. km, 32 km long, dented by coves, and dotted with dozens of islands, of which Henrietta’s one-acre domain, a 10-minute boat ride from the village of Portland, Ont., is one. The island’s main dock is nestled at the back of a natural cove, with two outcrops acting as arms ready to envelop incoming boats. “It feels like this anthropomorphic hug,” says Henrietta of entering her harbour. “When you dock, even during a storm, there are no waves.”
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
The deck wraps around three sides of the cottage, offering spots for Scrabble, coffee, or reading. The patio furniture, from West Elm, is elevated by a ’70s sheet set—Henrietta never misses a chance to add a pop of colour or a pattern.
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
Her bichon frisé, Nova, bounds from boat to shore, where the feeling of being sheltered by design extends throughout the island—from its waterfront cedars providing boughs of privacy to the outdoor clawfoot tub with discretionary curtains to the loon nest that welcomes its returning occupants year after year.
“The more the world falls apart, the better this place becomes,” says Henrietta, who bought the property in 2013. In Ottawa, she runs Henrietta Southam Design and her elegant interiors have been recognized with notable accolades, including nods from the International Design and Architecture Awards. She has also pursued photography, had her writing published in magazines and anthologies, and served as a stylist to politicians (hint: there was much talk of one client’s socks). Later this year, she’s launching a 12-part design podcast called Wild & Ragged as well as an online shop featuring her limited-series locally made furniture. But when she’s here, she tries not to work. “I call it reconnection by disconnection,” she says. It’s not unusual for Henrietta to come up on her own, but it’s also common for the 1,200-sq.-ft., four-bedroom cottage to host up to 11 people, including her three kids and her partner, Peter. The only dress code is: no shoes. “You’re not an island person if you don’t have bare feet at all times,” says Henrietta. “You have to get used to walking on pine needles and rocks.”
Crossing the threshold into the cottage is a multi-sensory event. The smell is cedar, the shapes are a harmony of antique and ’70s-inspired design, the palette is, quite possibly, every colour, and the overall effect is calming and provocative. This isn’t just a cottage; it’s an experience. A massive granite fireplace grounds the space in its Canadian roots and the rest of the living area reveals an array of treasures from Henrietta’s family, travels, and interests in art, design, photography, history, and literature. Welcome to the museum of Henrietta.
“This is the space I didn’t interior design,” she says. Instead, her cottage is an organic expression of her, which has come together gradually over the past 13 years and continues to evolve.
While it remains to be fact-checked, it seems likely that this is the only place on earth in which all of the following reside: a nine-foot, 19th-century Hungarian dowry chest; a sculptural wooden light fixture from Toronto-based design company Brothers Dressler (“probably one of their first,” says Henrietta); a Gio Ponti lamp, which Henrietta thinks represents the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Rome; a multitude of duck decoys; several Inuit lithographs (gifts from her father); a Fred Iyak Trimble sculpture of a musk ox; two marbleized wood columns from a church altar; and three pagoda-style lamps with hand-drawn rice-paper panels that belonged to Alanis Morissette.
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
The shelf holding the copper mugs is a 200-year-old family heirloom from Norway.
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
The cornhole board came with the cottage and dates back to the ’50s, as do some of the sheets, which are “buttery soft,” says Henrietta.
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
The secret to Henrietta’s style is patience: her vast collection has been amassed over time. In it, you’ll find East German ceramics and a “preposterous” number of duck decoys she has found at local antique shops. She even thrifted candles from the ’60s.
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
Henrietta has an eye for funky kitsch, often in the form of interesting lamps: the Marbro Harlequin figure and the Thai carved women, for example (next photo). She goes with whatever draws her eye, but it works together “because it’s all good stuff,” she says.
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
The lanterns, along with the outdoor tub, were given to Henrietta by a friend who had purchased the singer’s former Ottawa home with the condition that any items left behind not be sold. Some of the treasures come from Henrietta’s family, and many were carefully collected over the decades, when she lived in Miami and New York, when she often drove through antiques-goldmine Hudson, N.Y., and during her casual browsing of local antique shops. “You could say I followed Marie Kondo’s advice,” jokes Henrietta, “because I find joy in every piece here.”
Throughout her cottage, her family history is conveyed with curated artifacts. A hallway is adorned with hats that belonged to her mother, Gro Mortensen, an Oslo-born artist, who loved to say that she had “une tête à chapeaux” (a head for hats). One of the bedrooms—dubbed the Mummies room—features portraits of female ancestors: her Norwegian maternal grandmother, whom she refers to as “Mormor,” and her namesake paternal grandmother, Henrietta, as well as her mother and maternal great-grandmother. A corner of the dining room holds a collection of family photos of her three children, Leonardo (29), Orion (26), and Charlotte (17), and her mother and father, Hamilton Southam, who died in 2019 and 2008, respectively.
Last year, Henrietta hung some of her mother’s still life paintings next to the hearth. “After they’d been in boxes for years, I just put them up and thought, Perfect,” she says. The small-scale works are unframed and offer a clue about the cottage: we’re celebrating art, but we’re not going to be too fussy about it.
For every Inuit lithograph there’s an Ikea rug, for every unique piece of antique furniture (see: ventilated pie cupboard) there’s a set of sheets that came with the cottage. Because, even if a cottage is an art gallery, it can also have a ping-pong table, an outhouse, an enviable selection of rom-com DVDs, loads of board games (“being a great Scrabble player isn’t a must, but it’s not a bad idea,” says Henrietta), a firepit, and an atmosphere that ensures one is going to have fun. This is a place for hosting a big Thanksgiving spread as much as it’s a place to curl up on the sofa and munch M&Ms. “And it’s not a cottage if there isn’t a box of KD,” says Henrietta.
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
Henrietta (right, with daughter Charlotte, partner Peter, and pups Nova and Hugo).
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
Henrietta’s family has had homes on the Big Rideau for close to a century, and she first came to the lake with her parents when she was a week old. Hamilton was a diplomat, a war hero, and the founder and driving force behind Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, which opened in 1969. Hamilton was also the grandson of William Southam, founder of the Southam newspaper chain. He spent summers at his island compound known as Bending Birches, and so did Henrietta and her brother, Gordon (who liked to call it Burning Bridges or Burning Britches). Even after their parents divorced in 1976 and Gro took the children to live in London and then Paris, the siblings still returned to the Rideau each season. Hamilton once described this time in an essay in the Ottawa Citizen: “We went to the Rideau Lakes every summer, tennis in white trousers, meals in green blazers, the staff as numerous and devoted as ever, food and flowers arriving every weekend by steamer from Smiths Falls.” It was a privileged retreat that attracted celebrity guests such as Marlene Dietrich, David Niven, and, in the mid-’90s, Sam Neill (who Henrietta had trouble placing outside of the Jurassic context for which he was known at the time). But as much as the adults created a refined atmosphere, Henrietta and Gordon created their own unruly fun. They ran through the woods, played “wild croquet,” built boats and forts of scrap wood, and, every summer, marked their arrival with the same inaugural ritual: they’d run down the dock and jump in the water with all their clothes on. “What did I take from that experience?” says Henrietta. “It was my father’s appreciation for beauty and his commitment to sharing it with others.”
After his death in 2008, Henrietta continued to spend time on the Rideau at Gordon’s island cottage, but she was ready for something new. “This lake is really my home,” she says. And she wanted a place of her own on the lake to share with others.
In April 2013, Henrietta came across a listing for an island for sale. “It was on the Rideau Realty website, and I had been trawling that page for years,” she says. She immediately called the agency and was told a visit couldn’t happen yet because they didn’t have a boat in the water that early in the season. But Henrietta had a solution: they could use her brother’s boat, which was quickly removed from winter storage for the occasion. And so a couple of days later, she and Gordon were the first to visit the property. “We walked in and my brother just looked at me because there are so few islands with cottages and none of the families sell,” recalls Henrietta. “I went back to the marina with the realtor, and I gave them a cheque for the deposit.”
Henrietta wasn’t able to meet the asking price so she tried another tack. She wrote a letter to the three sisters selling the cottage, which had been in their family for 40 years. She explained what the lake meant to her and made them an offer—an invitation to stay at the cottage two weeks of every summer for five years. Henrietta understood the value of being on the lake to people who had grown up there, as she had. The deal worked and she took possession in June. Henrietta says she’s “a huge bath person.” Her friend and neighbour, Peter Whitmore, who has since passed away, built the platform for her. The cast iron tub came from Alanis Morissette’s former home.
The cottage was built in 1973 by the sellers’ parents from a Sears mail order kit. It fits together like a popsicle stick construction, with interior walls of slotted cedar planks, which give the place its woody fragrance. Over the years, Henrietta has made a few upgrades: the blue kitchen with marble counters and the sole bathroom have both been renovated, windows have been replaced with double-glazed upgrades, and she’s rebuilt the massive, wraparound deck, creating two extra-wide staircases that provide “theatrical” features as well as practical seating. But she has chosen to preserve the cottage’s original patina and charm as well as some books and furniture that were left behind by the previous owners.
Henrietta has also chosen to maintain the cottage as an internet-free environment. “This is where I read,” she says. While it is connected to electricity from the mainland, thanks to underwater cables, the cell service is spotty, and islanders must rely on CDs and DVDs to provide electronic entertainment. When they want to watch something, they turn to the movie library and everyone piles into one of the guest rooms, which houses the TV and a bunk-bed.
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
Henrietta says she’s “a huge bath person.” Her friend and neighbour, Peter Whitmore, who has since passed away, built the platform for her. The cast iron tub came from Alanis Morissette’s former home.
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
Henrietta’s lacquer bed frame contrasts with a colourful quilt. She has some from childhood, and the rest are from vintage shops. “Never wash them,” she says. “Just use sunshine and the outdoors to make them smell good.”
Patterns, pine needles, and patina: step into designer Henrietta Southam’s Big Rideau Lake cottage full of eclectic treasures
Being on an island, the cottage itself is, in a way, protected against change thanks to the extra effort it takes to do, well, everything. Note: island living is not for the faint of bicep strength. Every trip to and from land is engineered to maximize its potential to transport necessities: groceries, drinking water, firewood, laundry, leaf blower. Henrietta applies her skills in doing as much maintenance as she can, like repainting the deck. But she’ll bring in tradespeople for future jobs, and her partner, Peter, will install an outdoor shower on the platform next to the Alanis tub. She’s been thinking a lot about passing along her Big Rideau expertise to her kids. When asked by her mother to describe the lessons she’s learned, Charlotte replies, “You taught me to drive a boat cautiously, tend a fire safely, tie nautical knots professionally, sail a boat breezily, play backgammon winningly, and never leave our garbage behind.”
Island living is a skilled endeavour. It’s also a tradition that has been part of Henrietta’s family for as long as cottagers have been coming to this lake. And she hopes that, when they’re ready, her children will conduct their own bold and creative Rideau adventures, just as she has.
Until then, Henrietta’s collection will keep evolving, as will her need to find ways to display new acquisitions. “I was just in Mexico, and I saw these beautiful stuffed, hand-embroidered animals. I couldn’t help but buy a pink giraffe and a blue whale,” says Henrietta. “I think they should go on the coffee table, except I had the impression that Nova’s really going to take a shine to them. So I won’t know until I’m there.”
Writer and editor Dominique Ritter is still making her way through a long list of rom-com recommendations from Henrietta.
This story originally appeared in our Early Summer ’26 issue.
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