In the spring of 2022, my husband began building our cottage on some land we bought 90 km outside of Montreal. Gray is a professor, and he had that one summer to get the job done before getting back to work in the city. It was a group effort: he had friends come help for a few days here and there, and my stepdad, Rick, helped hang the rafters. I helped sheathe and cover the roof with long black sheets of ice-and-water shield. We had an aging camper parked at the jobsite so that family VIPs like Rick (and, who am I kidding, me) could sleep in a semi-proper bed, but our crew, bless them, mostly slept in tents. We had a very fixed budget. It was enough to dig a well to supply water to a sink and a tub, and enough to install electricity, but some creature comforts were beyond us. Take, for example, a septic system: tens of thousands of dollars towards a cement box for excreta? Why go into debt, when an outhouse would do the trick, at least for the foreseeable?
So Gray and his friend Nico set about building an elegant latrine. They installed a small, stained glass window above the door. A well-built outhouse is a joy to use, but even the finest outhouses are best kept at a discrete remove from the house itself. Ours is about a 20-metre walk from the front door—certainly not too far. Many of our guests, like us, are in their forties or fifties. A good number of us have given birth vaginally a time or two. First thing in the morning, there are certain muscles in the middle-aged human’s body for which a 20-metre walk is simply not an option.
For this reason, when you spend the night at my cottage, you are welcome to participate in the first step in our morning routine: peeing in the yard.
Peeing in the yard is not mandatory, but it’d be a lot cooler if you did. Nature is the original gender-neutral bathroom: everyone is welcome. As hosts, we respect your privacy; there are many corners in the yard where
you cannot be seen from inside the house. (Needless to say, the nearest neighbours are well out of view.) We also appreciate the need for toilet paper—I keep a roll right by the front door, and you can toss it directly into the firepit after use.
This morning routine separates our friends into those who’d happily return, and those for whom one visit is more than enough. I don’t blame my friends who don’t want to pee in my yard, but I feel extra-close to those who do.
For my two sons and, no surprise, many males who visit, this morning ritual is a welcome opportunity to turn peeing into a competition. For the six (give-or-take) months that snow or heavy frost covers the ground until at least noon, contests for how far one can pee off the front step are, if not encouraged, basically inevitable. Lovers’ names have been written in the snow. There is a special kind of esprit de corps that comes from peeing outdoors in minus-twenty. Many of my friends have shared this, thanks to our cottage.
Would we rather have an indoor bathroom, with a flush toilet? Absolutely, someday. It’s on the list, along with ziplines through the woods (a line item the kids insist on prioritizing) and an ATV for hauling firewood. When we can finally afford a septic tank, I’ll feel like we’ve graduated to a different kind of cottaging, one that is perhaps easier to grow old in. I’ll be grateful to all our friends who gamely took part in our routine for however many years it ends up lasting. Who knows—maybe they’ll be wistful for the pre-septic cottage. Maybe we’ll all keep peeing in the yard out of habit. I won’t mind at all if we do.
In our Aug ’25 issue, Montreal-based Kathryn Jezer-Morton wrote about the many ways the vibe of cross-border cottaging has changed. Her new book, The Story of Your Life, explores how social media influences personal storytelling.
This story originally appeared in our Summer ’26 issue.
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