to the canoe to line it up with the overturned seat and to attach the chair armrests to the canoe thwarts. Then, getting back on the dock, I would untie the canoe from the dock cleats, before going around and pulling on the hoisting ropes to flip both the chair and canoe over and onto the dock. The half-hour process complete, my wife would wander down with her book and a sandwich and say, “Hey, I was just about to sit in that chair!”

      The Cottage Duel

      Okay, it’s not really the same as pistols at fifty paces, a good old medieval joust, or a bare-knuckled boxing match in the school playground, but, at the cottage, it is a fair means of settling disputes. Insults have been cast, a challenge is made and accepted, and the duel begins. The combat sometimes lasts for only a few brief seconds. Other battles can take fifteen minutes or more. The winner stays dry. The loser suffers an embarrassing dunking in the lake.

      We call it gunnel bobbing, a canoe-based balancing act akin to lumberjack log rolling. The two combatants paddle out into the bay, one climbs up on the stern, the other on the bow, both face each other with feet firmly planted on the canoe gunnels. The idea is to shake and bob and wobble the canoe around to throw your opponent off balance. When you see you’re getting the upper hand, you go for the kill — a couple of hard shakes has them tumbling into the surf.

      For us, gunnel bobbing had become a somewhat forgotten sport. Canoes were used for more practical purposes, like paddling around on a quiet evening or heading out on a multi-day trip. We were going through an old box of snapshots, which we had discovered stored away at the back of a cupboard at the cottage, when we came across some goofy photos of us as kids, gunnel bobbing out in the little bay on my brother’s cedar strip canoe. After commenting on the horrendous styles of our circa 1979 bathing trunks and bikinis, our kids were excited to have discovered another way to have fun at the cabin. A tournament was arranged: it would be sister against sister, sister against brother, and cousin against cousin. The “All World Cottage Gunnel Bobbing Championship” was at stake.

      My past experience made me resident expert, coach, trainer, and judge. When coaching new combatants, I always stress the point that it is unwise to try to hang on when a dunking is inevitable. Refusing to face certain defeat usually just means that you tumble into the canoe instead of into the refreshing water. That can hurt — so, when you are losing your balance, the best strategy is to jump clear into the lake.

      It is a lesson that stubborn boys, in particular, are slow to learn. This is especially so when they are paired with their obnoxious sisters: they must win at all costs. So it is with my son’s first competition. He does what I warned against and topples into the canoe upon losing his balance — one leg in the boat and one in the lake, his tender acorns cracking on the canoe gunnel. Boys, of course, hate to smack their nether-regions, while at the same time they get a kind of perverse giggly pleasure out of falling in such an uncomfortable manner. All onlookers of the male variety groan and grimace and hunch over in discomfort when bearing witness to such a tragedy. With his pale face contorted in instant agony, my son teeters slow-motion overboard and into the lake. The cool water obviously plays a hand in hurrying his recovery.

      In the end, one of the male cousins is crowned champion. With this knowledge, I unwittingly extol the virtues of the male athlete as superior to that of the fairer sex. I, too, I point out, was a hero in my day. Having heard enough, my wife challenges me to a duel.