Yes, Shane Hollander’s house on ‘Heated Rivalry’ is technically a “cottage”
Blame Canada!
Hope you packed your water shoes and an ungodly amount of burgers for the grill. We need to talk about Shane Hollander’s multi-million dollar cottage on Heated Rivalry.
The season finale of the whirlwind Crave Original series delivered a much-needed break for Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), one of the hottest fully-clothed sex scenes I’ve ever seen–a discussion for another time–and important steps towards a future together. But the star of the episode, titled “The Cottage,” was the cottage itself.
It’s in the woods; but if you were picturing something that Goldilocks might have stumbled into, you might be confused. This is not a cottage in the sense that it looks like a hobbit lives there. There’s no thatched roof. It’s not “an over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go” situation. What the Canadian hometown hero has is basically a waterfront mansion. There are so many windows, it’s practically made of glass!
I simply must defend Shane’s right to call the place a cottage.
That said, ridiculous as it sounds, he is correct. He’s not being weird. This is just a thing in Eastern Canada and, at least, parts of the Northeastern United States. “Cottage” basically just means a vacation home near water. We know it’s silly. Deal with it. There are actually whole regions in Canada, especially in Ontario, called “cottage countries” where a lot of people vacation. It’s kind of like the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Fire Island in the United States, just with more lakes and ponds than oceans and beaches.
As stated above, Americans rock with #cottagelife too. Yours truly is one of them! Listen, I get that it’s stupid. My family also calls our New England vacation home a “camp” in addition to cottage, but never a cabin or a lake house. It’s normal to me, because I grew up with it, but pretty dumb if I step ourside of my own experience. Ours is nowhere near as luxurious as Shane’s sexy getaway. But it doesn’t look like a gingerbread house either. As a person of cottage experience, I recognize that this is a confusing parlance.
Justice for the stupid Canadian wolf bird!
While we’re on the subject of North American cottage living, I also simply must rush to the defense of a perfect dichromatic bird who never did anything wrong in their life: the loon.
In the Heated Rivalry Season 1 finale, while sitting by the fire (a normal cottage activity that normal people do at a cottage) Ilya gets spooked by the sound of a waterfowl. Again, I am on Shane’s side. Loons are neither terrifying nor stupid. They’re beautiful. So what if the loon wail sounds kind of like a howl? They make other musical sounds too. Loons do a lovely tremolo, like the one Shane imitates, and another call that sounds like a yodel. Who cares if they’re territorial and therefore dangerous? So are Canadian geese, and those things sound stupid. I love loons. Canadians love them so much they put them on money. Loons rule!
(featured image: Sabrina Lantos)
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