The Owners
We met in 2019 at a wilderness lodge in the middle of the Australian outback, the kind of job that comes with a staff bunkhouse and no cell signal. We were both there for the same reason, we loved hosting people, and we loved being somewhere wild.
When the season ended, we didn't go home. We bought a van and made it ours for weeks at a time, working our way along the coast, taking hospitality jobs and small property gigs wherever we landed. The job was always the same wherever we went, make travelers feel like they belonged, and give them the kind of tips only a local would know.
One day, on Moreton Island, we sat on the beach and wrote down our dreams. Not the kind you forget by dinner, the long kind. Tiny homes. Small spaces built around nature, where people could gather and make memories worth returning to for years. Harrison even had a tiny home building job lined up in New Zealand, until covid changed that plan. Stuck in Australia, we built our first ever small space instead, a tiny office for a family member, learning as we went.
That dream didn't stay still. We moved to the Netherlands for a while, then four years ago to Canada, where Harrison trained as a carpenter. The tiny homes turned into cabins in our heads, a dream we are still building toward, piece by piece. Around that same time, Harrison's family sold the cottage he grew up visiting, and something in both of us wanted that back, a place that belongs to the people who love it, not just a property.
For now, that dream lives at Meer Cottage. A private point on Wollaston Lake, built for slowing down and for bringing friends and family together, with a few Dutch touches folded in alongside the Canadiana. It isn't the finished vision. It's where the vision currently lives while we keep building toward the rest of it, most weekends, mostly with sawdust in our hair.
Why Meer Cottage
Meer is the Dutch word for lake. It also means more. So the name carries both at once, a lake cottage, and more of what actually matters.
It's a small nod to Ellen's family in the Netherlands, sitting right alongside the old Canadiana pieces that were already here before we were, the snowshoes, the wooden skis, a kitchen table that's clearly hosted a lot of long dinners. Two places, folded into one.
What We're Building
Meer Cottage isn't the finished picture, and we're in no rush for it to be. Right now it's old Canadiana style, built for winter as much as summer, with a bit of Dutch worked in here and there, because that's genuinely who we are.
Because if meer means more, that's really what we want this place to give you. More time on the dock. More swims in the lake. More books finished on the couch than you meant to read in a weekend. Somewhere you actually want to keep coming back to.
Over the next few years, we're hoping to build toward more of that feeling too, a proper retreat corner. Maybe a sauna. A cold plunge. Someday a bunky, so more people can stay at once. Slowly, and mostly by hand, the same way we've built everything else so far.
For now, it's ready to be enjoyed exactly as it is, a place to slow down with the people you trust most. If you've found your way here, you're probably already part of that.