25 Montreal cottages for undy three hundy

We immigrated to Canada from Poland when I was 3 years old. I had a bowl cut and liked to speak a pretend language I fancied sounded like French (I still do this in Montreal as an adult but minus the bowl cut). It was Toronto, where most people are immigrants, and I didn’t think much about my Canadian identity. Until I got a whiff of real Canadiana. I always had a sense that my family didn’t exactly have their fingers on the pulse of Canadian culture. I wasn’t going to school on my donkey with a babushka scarf on my head or anything, but I did get sent with kielbasa-pickle sandwiches in my lunch bag. Things were always just a bit off. Though I would kill for one of those sammies right now.

One summer, my best friend invited me to her grandmother’s cottage. It was a smallish wood cabin that was a shrine to Canadiana kitsch. It was filled crocheted toilet paper cozies, mallard duck wallpaper trim, ruffled flowered curtains and framed instructions in the toilet praising the Lord and simultaneously instructing people on excretory etiquette. It was a magical place. We found a stack of her grandmother’s old comics under one of the beds. Misogynist cowboys romancing perky-bosomed beauties who were probably just very polite lesbians trying to mind their own business and tend to their horses. Everything in the cabin was an eclectic collection of authentic Canadian cottage life starting from the 1940’s. It was like a tiny museum. Entering into this world, I felt like I was a VIP Canadian being let into a charming cult.

The cult of Canadian cottage country still charms me. Which is why I tend to obsess over cottage real estate. Did you know that within 1-2 hours of Montreal, you can get a lovely waterfront cottage for a few hundred thousand dollars? That seem so reasonable, particularly if you were never really born with reason.

Well, if you are unreasonable like me but like to have reasonable appearing unreasonable goals, don’t I just have the thing for you? Or maybe 25. Yep, here are 25 cottage waterfront properties near Montreal for you. All under a reasonable $300,000. It’s so affordable you could probably just scrounge some change together that has fallen in the cracks of your La-z-boy recliner sofa to buy one of these things. Think of it as a sensible ticket into a charming cult. The reason abounds.

You should probably be listening to the Twin Peaks soundtrack as you do this.

Your dreams begin here:

*Please note I accidentally edited half of these photos with the photo shop express watermark logo in them and I will literally die if I have to redo them again. Just thinking about it makes me dry heave and I’m just not gonna do it. Good luck not focusing on them now.

$199,000. Adorable on the outside, loggy on the inside. Sprinkled with some houseplants that deserve their own Instagram account and a stone fireplace that screams lumberjack chic.

$248,000. This one is better than my actual house. I would need to get my teeth bleached so I can do a lot of adult laughing while I host sophisticated barbecues.

$230,000. Have you seen the views? Well you can very easily, because have you seen the windows?

$269,000. I always thought the 2nd little pig got a bit too much criticism for his stick house.

$239,000. That fireplace is the perfect spot for binge-reading Archie Double Digests. But my favourite spot would be at the breakfast bar, heckling my husband while he makes pancakes.

$234,900. Respect to all the houses that look like they have cartoon faces.

$299,900. Another cartoon house face. I can't stop seeing them now. I challenge you to figure out how they fit it all into such a cutie-pie house. Also, I challenge you to figure out the attic stairs.

$259,000. Hands down winner of most ornate mouse hole door in Quebec.

$279,000. This looks like it would smell really good like the back right corner of Home Depot where they do their lumbery things.

$204,000. Some giant human beaver literally built this in a river, then put Polish poster art in it. Was it me? I feel like it was me.

$189,900. This is a perfect place to write your first novel about physician burnout.

$169,900. This one comes with an indoor BBQ and bedside oxygen tanks. As long as you have a carbon monoxide detector, the hypoxic brain damage should be minimal. Also get insurance. Too cute.

$199,000. Have you every watched Twin Peaks? If you haven't, stop what you're doing right now and watch the whole series. Then come back and reenact it in this log cabin. Never sleep again.

$129,000. Total bargain. Throw in some vintage furniture pieces and make it look like some whimsical pinterest caravan.

$186,000. If you enjoy a nice view, of both nature and the twins sleeping in their bunkbeds, this one's for you. I hope you don't have severe osteoarthritis of the knees, weirdo, cuz there be stairs.

$149,900. This looks like it's been preserved in a 1978 time capsule. If you dressed in vintage clothes all the time, people would think you did this on purpose.

$234,900. Invite 5 of your laziest friends for some serious reclining action. Who's the laziest boy?

$225,000. This one checks all the boxes and also two pillows and a blanket.

$149,000. Having your feet sticking out into the living room when you lay down to sleep is sometimes worth it if there's a beach bargain involved.

$100,000. The guy who built this house must go through tubes of toothpaste very quickly. I would probably just keep going and paint the walls all white and bask in my design genius.

$289,000. This is so seriously cute, it's not funny.

$123,500. I had an ex-boyfriend who used to write surrealist plays about belligerent 19th century cowboys. This would have been a perfect setting for them.

$139,000. Do you like communicating with aliens? Good, because that's probably what solar panels actually do, plus there's a very suspicious looking alien ghetto blaster under the television.

Bring your tin hat.

$269,900. You'll notice there's a Buddhist Monk in the corner of the living room who oversees the furniture choices. He singlehandedly invented Scandinavian mid-century Victorian.

$249,000. This cottage clearly knows what it's doing. I am going to put a pretend offer on it in my dreams tonight.