MOUNTAIN HOME
A COTTAGE OFF THE SHELF KYLE CHAPPELL
The Backcountry Hut Company’s simple, zero-waste designs bring new meaning to “prefabricated”
words :: Kristin Schnelten When you’re in your early 30s and haven’t yet owned a car or home—and certainly not a boat—buying a small island doesn’t seem the obvious place to start. But for one busy Ontario millennial, it made perfect sense. “My friends have a place nearby, and I grew up visiting that cottage,” he says. “I was lucky enough to be re-exposed to Georgian Bay again a few years ago, and I thought, I hope one day I can have a place here.”
When those family friends gave him a heads-up about an island listing, he acted fast. But the path to cottage life wasn’t as clear-cut as the property purchase. “I had never built anything at that point,” he says. “My inexperience led me to hope I could buy a home like I buy a pair of jeans: You just walk into a store, buy this thing, and it works!” Internet sleuthing revealed you actually can buy a cottage off the shelf—sort of. What he discovered was the Backcountry Hut Company (BHC), a B.C.-based start-up specializing in sustainable, prefabricated, flat-pack cabins with transparent
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