Sheridyth MacNeill’s first plan for a cottage in the Hebrides, on P.E.I.’s North Shore, collapsed due to an error at the bank.
But her son Jason, only in high school at the time, assured her things would work out.
“I was all upset, but my son said, ‘Mom, whatever’s to be is to be,’” says MacNeill. “He was so right. It ended up being a better situation for us because that happened. But a heck of a lot more work.”
It was the late 1980s. MacNeill was a music teacher, and the school year was busy. It wasn’t just the classes. She also had private students and was recruited to perform at weddings and funerals and other special events.
“People calling me all the time,” she recalls. “Finally, I said to Errol, ‘You know what? It would be lovely to have a summer place and get away from all this.’”
They bought a lot in the Hebrides, then a relatively new development, and put in a bid on a ready-made cottage that could be moved there.
But the bank error meant the funds didn’t arrive and they lost the cottage. They still had the lot, however, with its view of the dunes at Cavendish Beach across New London Bay, and they regrouped. They got a copy of the plans for the cottage they had lost and recruited a carpenter, Wilfred Trainor.
Trainor recommended an expansion: three bedrooms instead of two, more windows, the building a little wider and a little longer.
Trainor needed assistants and MacNeill’s father, who was retired, volunteered. Errol’s brother, also retired, stepped in, and Errol helped out as he could on evenings and weekends. He was fussy about the build, says MacNeill, and her father liked to tell the story of what happened when he was caught putting in nails too far apart.
“Wilfred came up and pulled them out,” she says. “Dad said we went through more pounds of nails. The wind will blow everything down, but it will not blow this cottage down, because it’s got tonnage.”
The whole project was a lot longer coming together than a ready-made cottage would have been. That first summer the walls were unfinished, with the fibreglass pink insulation showing between the studs. Pine board panelling went up the next year.
“We didn’t even have doors. We had curtains hanging,” says MacNeill. “If somebody went into the bathroom, we’d all sing a song so we couldn’t hear the poor soul in there.”
It took eight or nine years to completely finish the inside, she adds, but the result is more what she wanted. It’s a compact space, cozy with its pine board panelling and blue-grey kitchen.
Over the decades, she watched the little cottage community in the Hebrides grow. It now has its own clubhouse. There have been community potlucks, regular golf games, and endless hours looking out at the sea.
“It’s been a great haven.”