FOREST, FERNS, AND LOTS OF BUGS. Mike Kelar’s first memories of his family cottage on Otter Lake, Ont., are of a rugged wildness. There was nothing else there in 1978. Mike was five years old, and his sister, Karen, was eight, when his parents, Stan and Raija, purchased an empty, three-acre lot near Parry Sound.
In the following years, the Kelars built a series of small structures on the property—a sauna first (a necessity—Raija is Finnish), then
