| Sumario: | This article draws upon recent studies of anti-modernism to explore the relationship between consumer culture and family cottaging in Ontario during the quarter century following the Second World War. It examines both the actions and ideas of actual postwar cottagers, as revealed primarily through oral history, as well as the representations of cottaging that appeared in postwar newspapers and magazines. Using these diverse sources, the article establishes the symbolic importance of summer homes during this period and illuminates the extent to which cottagers themselves sought to embrace the simple life. The evidence indicates that cottagers' relationship with consumer culture was marked by ambivalence, as summer homes provided a means of both escaping and fulfilling the prevailing ethos of materialism.
|
|---|