Cottage Life Television - 163 episodes (11 seasons)

Creator/Producer/Director/Editor

Cottage Life Television came to me as I was standing waist deep in Lake Simcoe trying to fix a clogged footvalve. It was late October and the water was very cold and I wanted to fix the damn thing as soon as possible. Why not a television show that showed people how to fix their footvalves? Of course there was more to cottage living: family, friends, water sports, land sports and food shared time with the long list of chores. So CLTV was born.

Cottage Life magazine was a year'ish old when I approached them with the idea and the rest is history. CLTV captured life at the cottage one story at a time. Mini-documentaries about interesting people and places in cottage country.

We aired on Global, Baton (CTV), PBS, Life, HGTV and Craig. We always controlled some (if not most) of the advertising and we created some innovative advertising strategies for our sponsors that involved the some or all of the other Cottage Life media.

Through the years we enjoyed partnerships with Ford, Tim-BR Mart, Kraft, Coleman. Nikon, Canadian Tire and a dozen other national advertisers. They helped us afford a show that was at times difficult to produce. If we had produced CLTV according to the traditional television business model the series would never have lasted as long as it did.

Our host was Linda Armstrong who started out as Linda Manjuris until after a few years we decided to get married. Our crew consisted of some of the most qualified (and hearty) soles ever to step foot in a tin boat on a stormy night.