The sound of lapping water always sends me into a delicious stupor. Add to that the persistent ding of sailboat masts and you have a moment of perfect communion. At its best, that’s the feeling the reader will get from Mad About the Bay, a book of Georgian Bay cottage reminiscences co-written by the husband and wife team of John Fraser and Elizabeth MacCallum.
Clearly, though, the shimmering digital paintings of photographer William Harris are the book’s raison d’être. Using the latest imaging techniques, Harris upends the horizon with the click of his mouse, dragging red and blue granite veins across summer skies or burying the sun under layers of purling water. By manipulating the delicate spray of his inkjet printer, Harris offers a mesmerizing take on an iconic patch of real estate made famous by the Group of Seven.
More than once, however, the spell of the artwork is broken by the writers’ hokey allusions to chatty wildlife and hikes down well-worn paths. Beholding the blasted pine and primordial shore, our guides turn jaunty, monocled, and Arcadian. Fraser and MacCallum are better when they avoid the reverent and stick to anecdotes about cottage life: dozes on the dock, toes stubbed on the Shield, berry picking, and barometer tapping.
Mad About the Bay