Let’s rent out the cottage, you said. Or build a private road with the neighbours. Or bike down that old trail and swim off the rocks. What could possibly go wrong?
But that was before the irresistible force of your (possibly) gormless notion slammed into the immovable object of someone’s territorial instinct—and a corner of cottage country flipped from peace and quiet to peace bonds and litigation. Surprised? Don’t be. Court documents are filled with handshake agreements that end in obscene hand gestures, not to mention dueling roadblocks and allegations that Milo the dog trespasses to “do his business.”
“We’re talking about cottages that people have made big sacrifices to purchase. They’ve put their heart and soul into maintaining them, often for their kids and grandkids,” says Meg Holden, an urban studies professor at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University whose research includes neighbour relations. With this level of emotional and financial investment, “there’s a key need for some level of control.”
That’s why cottage conflict can make even decent folks snap like a frayed bungee. Is the all-night karaoke party at the rental next door rolling into its second evening? (Oh good: “Ice, Ice, Baby.”) Are trespassers wandering on foot or ATV, or is Milo on a business trip (again)? Why won’t the guy down the road pay his share of road maintenance dues? And for Pete’s sake, there goes that kid on the PWC again, making the dock pogo like it’s at a Ramones concert. Aaagh!
In an ideal world you’d deal with these annoyances in an amicable way, well before they escalate into Big Fights. As Ian Keay, a managing partner with MKC Law Office in Peterborough, Ont., says, “reasonableness rules the day.” And it’s true, reason, empathy, and tact may just save the day—not to mention nudge your cottage community a little closer to that ideal world (see opposite page).
But when all else fails, “you’re going to find yourself in a lawyer’s office, or, worse than that, in a courtroom,” says Keay. So you need to know your rights, understand the other party’s concerns, and get a rough guide to the legal ground that you’re treading on.
Disruptive renters
The legal principle Nuisance: “Interference with the claimant’s use or enjoyment of land that is both substantial and unreasonable.”
When renters change faster than the price of gas, influencing tenant behaviour is a challenge. Ditto for lax owners: to them, you’re just an address beside their investment.
Still, it’s important to try to talk things out, not just because it might work, but to prove you’ve done your best to resolve things in a neighbourly way. Ask to have a chat with the owners, says Jana Samolesky, a professional mediator with Winnipeg’s non-profit Mediation Services. If you get the green light, be prepared to hear out their issues—needs, fears, hopes, concerns, and values—as well as expressing your own. If nothing else, rental owners should want good relations with neighbours for business reasons alone, so look for areas where your interests align, or you can find agreement. Building an amicable relationship could help you influence expectations for renters and gain an ally in dealing with problem tenants.
Likewise, if the vibes are good and the short-term tenants are receptive, try a similar (although more brief) approach with them. “Support them having a good time and enjoying their rental,” says Samolesky. Maybe you can point out fishing spots or vouch for the best chip truck. In return, “Share your plans for the weekend. Maybe you’ve got a new baby, and you want to catch up on sleep,” she says. “Humanize the situation, as opposed to telling them what to do.”
If the neighbourly approach fails, what levers do you have to adjust the owner or rental agency’s costs and benefits? Can you change behaviour by raising the cost or reducing the benefit? The typical solution is to threaten “financial impediment,” says Oliver Cooper, a partner at MKC Law Office. “You want to make it so the income they’re deriving is impeded by your actions.”
Cottage Q&A: Should we disclose that we’re renting out the cottage?
A next stop is your municipality’s short-term rental (STR) bylaw. The Town of Gravenhurst, for example, licenses rentals; demands tenants meet standards regarding noise, parking, outdoor burning, and pets; and allows officers to mete out fines for offences. If you’re having problems with an STR, talk to the bylaw department.
If that doesn’t work, a civil court claim for nuisance offers the most obvious recourse. You could, for example, seek compensation for your loss of use and enjoyment and an injunction to halt the rental operation. But nuisance is fact- and context-dependent. Are you annoyed by kids squealing and cannonballing off the dock? Tough. The court will likely see that as “typical behaviour for summer cottaging,” says Cooper. On the other hand, if your once-placid lake now hosts something resembling a weekly Hell’s Angels convention, you could be on to something—if you can back up your argument. Video, audio, and photo evidence; witnesses to the offensive behaviour; and email exchanges (in which a party actually admits to wrongdoing), are all examples of material that could support you in a court case.
Water encroachment
The legal principle “If the watercourse is navigable, the bed of the watercourse is Crown land by virtue of the Beds of Navigable Waters Act.”
The water may feel like it’s yours, intrinsic to your cottage experience and wrapped up with your identity. But with very few exceptions (such as when you’ve dug your own personal canal or pond), it’s not legally yours. In other words, you usually can’t post a No Trespassing sign and tell boaters to get lost.
Even so, you’re not completely without recourse. Irked by the kid on the PWC? Post a No Wake sign, available from boating education group Safe Quiet Lakes, and report problems to the marine policing authority. SQL chair Diana Piquette says the complaint will help police target patrols and enforcement. And if you’re concerned about your neighbour’s dock jutting into “your” water, check out municipal setback rules. The Township of Carling, for example, demands a six-metre setback from the dock, with the lot boundary extending 30 metres into the water on a straight line.
Feel like neighbours are encroaching on your space? You’re not alone
For really vexing circumstances, such as rented houseboats throwing massive parties in your cove, you could consider a nuisance claim. But “as a practical matter, the complainant will have great difficulty to identify the name and address of a perpetrator,” says Minden, Ont.-based solicitor and barrister Donald Lange.
Oliver Cooper agrees. “You may not like it when someone anchors a sailboat in your little bay, but the water is the water. You don’t own the water—you own the land leading up to it.”
Trespassing
The legal principle Trespass: “Unauthorized entry upon land in the occupation or possession of another.”
Trespassing is so nuanced that we can only scratch the surface here. The federal Criminal Code offence of trespassing at night is fairly cut and dried: it outlaws anyone who “loiters or prowls at night on the property of another person near a dwelling-house” without a lawful excuse. (Very film noir.)
Check out your provincial trespassing law, too. Typically, when property owners post a sign on their land (No Trespassing, Private Property, or, in Ontario, a red circle 10 cm in diameter), unauthorized visitors are legally required to leave when asked to. (Posting signs also helps reduce your liability if a trespasser gets injured on your property.)
The catch: some “trespassers” have a right to be on your property. Is the shoreline road allowance still in public hands? If so, anglers can pull up a canoe and cast a line. Some Crown Patents offer the same right, and a section of Ontario’s Public Lands Act protects portages that were in place before the land transferred from the Crown to a private owner.
Private roads, paths, and trails get even trickier. Ontario’s Road Access Act protects private roads that offer the only route to a cottage. To close that lane, you need a court order. There are also deeded rights-of-way that allow area landowners to access properties over your land, and “prescriptive easements,” prescribed by tradition or custom, stemming from 20 years or more of consistent use.
Cottage Q&A: Can I post “No Trespassing” signs?
So when a new owner closes the path that’s been in use for decades, long-time users can sue to retain access. If you’re the newbie, “you don’t know how long people have been walking this path, and that means you don’t know what you’re stepping on,” says Ian Keay. “It could be a hornets’ nest. Or it could be nothing at all.”
Finally, when launching a civil suit over trespassing make sure it’s worth the court’s time. Remember Milo? The (real) mutt was in the middle of a Nova Scotia dispute between lakeside neighbours (Forgeron v. Garner). They volleyed multiple allegations of trespass and nuisance at each other, including the claim that Milo was set free “unleashed and to defecate” on the neighbouring property. The judge ruled Milo’s owners took “reasonable steps” to control the dog, but “were not one hundred per cent successful.” Claim dismissed.
Reluctant road sharers
The legal principle Unjust enrichment: “There are three requirements to be satisfied before an unjust enrichment can be said to exist: an enrichment, a corresponding deprivation, and absence of any juristic reason for the enrichment.”
Conceived with a handshake and born of necessity, private roads always seem like a good idea. But no matter how you divvy the maintenance costs, it’s hard to satisfy everyone. “One common objection is why all users have to pay the same amount,” says Lange. “Why should user number one have to pay the same amount as user number 20 way down the road?” That’s when, he adds, unwritten deals suffer “issues of enforceability in the courts.”
Chris Winter, the chair of the Mississippi Lakes Association’s Roads Committee, recommends heading off this problem with a written deal. Legal advice helps (and is vital if you’re incorporating a large, private road system), but it doesn’t have to be fancy. “The most practical method is to get all the members to sign an agreement that they have a shared responsibility for road maintenance,” says Winter, who has 34 private road associations in his cottage area. “After everybody signs it, if one person decides to be a deadbeat, you go to Small Claims Court. When the judge sees that, it’s almost a slam dunk.”
The usual argument is that the reneger has been “unjustly enriched” by dodging the maintenance bill. As long as the claim is filed within the “limitation period”—in Ontario, that’s within two years of discovering the problem—Small Claims Court offers a relatively user-friendly (and typically lawyer-free) venue for pursuing debts up to $35,000 in Ontario. “If you have a deadbeat and you’re interested in the legal system,” says Winter, collecting through Small Claims “is not that onerous.”
Does our road association need insurance?
There’s a drawback with the adversarial approach. Long after legal settlement, both parties frequently remain bruised and angry. As Meg Holden says, “there’s no judge or tribunal that can change the attraction you have to ‘your’ property.”
More collaborative dispute resolution, says Samolesky, is like a muscle: the more you use it, the stronger it gets. “Conflict is a normal part of being social creatures.” By solving spats, we “invest in strengthening relationships and community,” she says. When Mediation Services clients were surveyed, 70 per cent reported they “have better relationships and are enabled to engage more positively with conflict in their lives.”
That said, you aren’t always going to happily settle a big fight. “Sometimes, the only real solution is for one person to sell and move away,” says Lange. “I have seen this happen.”
Ultimately, the only attitude you can fully control is your own. If you can’t “win” or “solve” the dispute, how will you navigate that? “Are you going to focus on what’s driving you crazy,” says Samolesky, “or are you going to look at the sunset?”
Conflict resolution tip: shift your attitude
When your buttons are pushed, it’s easy to jump to negative conclusions. Like the guy doing the pushing is a malicious jerk, out to ruin your weekend.
Not so fast, says mediator Jana Samolesky. It’s natural to cast yourself as the victim and the “offender” as a villain, but when you lock into adversarial roles, you’re headed for what Samolesky calls an escalating “attack/defence spiral.”
Instead, “shift from judgement to curiosity,” she urges. “There’s always more to the story.” A respectful conversation can help you learn the other person’s narrative, and in the process, find options for compromise or agreement. So that trespasser? Maybe she’s the niece of the folks three doors down, looking for the path to the marina. Once you provide directions, you’ve transformed a potential conflict into a new relationship.
Another classic conflict trigger is what Samolesky calls “missed expectations.” Maybe you know the lake’s unwritten code of behaviour—the expectations. But newbies and renters never got the memo. No wonder they tick you off.
Build trust and community understanding by sharing the memo, helping people connect with one another. The Muskoka Lakes Association distributes a 15-point Good Neighbour Code (including this pledge for karaoke singers: “I will not inflict my taste in music on my neighbours.”) The code stems “from input from board and general members,” says Erla McCaig, the MLA’s general manager.
6 ways to make peace with your neighbours
Conflict resolution tip: know when to call a lawyer
Don’t call a lawyer unless you need to call a lawyer. Sometimes you do.
“You call your lawyer when you’re totally fed up, and you’ve exhausted other more reasonable measures,” says lawyer Ian Keay. “You’ve talked to the other party, you’ve written to them, you’ve contacted the municipality. You’ve exhausted other avenues.”
But in a legal battle, “nobody really wins, or they do so at a cost,” says Ben Poole, an associate with HGR Graham Partners in Penetanguishene, Ont. “Things become expensive quickly.” And once you threaten legal action, kiss the friendly neighbour relationship goodbye. Probably forever.
It’s best to think of your lawyer as an experienced guide to terra incognita—someone who knows the pitfalls and the areas marked “here be dragons.” Before embarking on a pricey and potentially unpredictable journey, you need someone who can offer at least a rough idea of the difficulties you could face, and ensure you really, really want to do this.
Meanwhile, consider less-confrontational solutions (hint: mediation) and more cost-effective enforcement (a.k.a. your local by-law department). If there’s municipal jurisdiction, most cottagers “want the municipality to do something because that doesn’t cost them anything,” says Keay.
Finally, whether you want to go to court or not, a “demand letter” may help force a resolution. This is the classic request to “cease and desist” an activity, failing which you will seek legal remedies. You could write one yourself, but a letter on a legal firm’s letterhead is probably more impressive. The recipient could call your bluff, of course, but both demand letters and a court summons have nudged disputes towards a quicker settlement at less cost.
This article was originally published in the August 2025 issue of Cottage Life magazine.
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