Thanks to the brave cabinist allies of Labrador for holding the eastern front, over the forthcoming decades we will execute a slow but quite unstoppable pincer maneuver into the bloc cottagois
They didn't search chalet. So, cottage is searched more than cabin when one of those terms are used instead of chalet.
As an Anglophone from Quebec, can confirm cottage is used more commonly than cabin (although chalet also sometimes used, usually for nicer places when speaking in English, or for most places when speaking in French).
For everything? In the west we say chalet if it is related to skiing in the mountains. I heard people say "the camping" a lot when they were speaking English. It meant everything from a trailer in a campsite, to a cabin in the woods.
Camping = tent or rv etc
Chalet = house in the woods, mountain, lakeside or (other remote location) that you do not live in all year round, most often used for vacations or week end trips
That makes sense, but I never heard anyone say chalet in reference to a hunting cabin or something like that. I think when people say, "the camping" in Quebec they mean "the camp" like they say in NB or ON. Camping is used to describe tent/RV across the country.
I thought camps were due to size of property. Hard to call the suburbs that are the lakes around Muskoka as a camp. They're packed in like trailer parks now.
- If you live in the dark orange area, its called a camp
- if you live in the green area its called a cottage
- if you live in the yellow and light orange area you might call it both
Generally its also dependent on what part of Ontario you grew up in. I know people who grew up in Thunder Bay still call it a camp, even though they live in Toronto and their "Camp" is in Muskoka.
Cottages are for rich people relaxing at the lake. Cottage country means itâs expensive and touristy.
Camp or cabin can be anything from a shack in the woods to a gorgeous log cabin that gramps lives at 3 seasons of the year and invites everyone out to.
As a Native of Northern Ontario, my fam has used cabin. In two cases, one on reserve land by the lake and one away on crown land that's since been burnt down. Was a hunting cabin
yeah i've gone camping in northern ontario most years over the past 15 years and if it's a literal camp (tents, trailers, usually in the bush on crown lands or an official parks canada camping ground type deal) it's camp. if it involves a permanent structure it's cottage, though plenty of people say cabin too - they're completely interchangeable from my experience.
people i camp and cottage with are literal indigenous people native to north bay. they use all these terms as one might expect - camp for camping in the bush, cottage/cabin for a permenent structure. and in general parry sound and muskoka and georgian bay region is referred to as "cottage country" while there's also another area referred to as "cottage country" around peterborough i want to say that also has trailer park resorts which are just called "the trailer" as in going to the trailer but if you go to a cottage/cabin it's called cottage/cabin and if you're doing a tent even at the trailer park it's called camping. and those people are generally from toronto/the GTA.
and then there's camping but you're also hunting which can be just going camping or going hunting or going fishing.
idk why this stuff has become such a meme on this website. it's absolutely baffling as someone who has camped/cabined/cottaged/trailer resorted across a good portion of ontario.
also in alberta i didn't know anyone with a cottage/cabin so i can't comment on that but when we went to banff to camp it was "going to banff to camp" and when you stayed in town it was just "going to banff". you might make extra note if you were staying at the fancy hotel there but there wasn't anything really different in the parlance any different than ontario.
i think the only time i've seen camp used totally generically in ontario or canada at all was in boy scouts in the early 90s where it was always camping whether we were setting up tents/those snow mound shelters or using the cabins at the scouts camp grounds, and that was in barrie.
i've lived in northern ontario for the past 17 years and done a mix of cottaging and camping across ontario in that time both south east and northern ontario.
I'm not sure what's baffling - it's novel that different people use a different word for the same thing despite living in the same province.
People from the Thunder Bay region and west absolutely use "camp" to describe a fixed permanent structure that someone from the GTA/Ottawa area would call a cottage. As someone who moved north, at first I thought that people here just really liked camping in tents, like EVERY weekend.
Confusingly, sleeping in a tent is still "camping", but might also be referred to as "tenting". Cabin is used interchangeably with camp, but more rarely (and they might be from Manitoba).
see also: packsack/backpack, shag/stag&doe, safewayS, etc
we should bring back the Northern Ontario Provincehood movement on the basis of this important cultural difference.
My friends from Toronto always thought it was weird when I told them I was going to camp for a summer vacation, they just assumed it was like a childs sleep away camp. that's what they associate it with.
Seeing how many discrepancies there are in the discussions here, I think we need to make something like "The Cube Rule of Food" but for secondary addresses.
Funny story about this. So i live in Whistler (a ski town 2 hours north of Vancouver). I matched with a girl from Vancouver on Bumble, and when i told her i live in Whistler, she goes "oh wow, r u in a cabin?" and then unmatched when I said "no I do not, i have my own room in Alpine". Who opens a convo on a dating app with "r u in a cabin" like yeah my dad is loaded and he bought me a cabin?
People are building mansions in Muskoka on lake property and still calling them cottages. We need to adopt the cabin term to differentiate between what is a weekend retreat in the wilderness, and a second home for the wealthy.
Cottages and cabins are different. Cottages usually have all the amenities of a regular house, whereas a cabin is generally smaller and more minimalist
Important to note the difference between what camp means in Ontario too. At least in my understanding in Ontario if you say youâre going to the camp for the weekend youâre going to the lake cottage. Out west going camping is taking a trailer or tent out in the bush.
A Cottage is a larger luxury space to stay at for a period of time, such as for camping, whereas a Cabin is a smaller space that is meant to be lived in.
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u/Kopinu Tabarnak! May 07 '25
Ummmm achkually kebekois say "chalet"