Welcome to Go Home Bay

Introduction

Go Home Bay is a 120-year-old community consisting of 180 cottages whose families are committed to preserving the special environment that surrounds us. Many of our current families are direct descendants of the 1898 founding Go Home members.

Members of The Madawaska Club of Go Home Bay enjoy, and are responsible for 1200 acres of unoccupied land and islands, which create a wonderful environment for outdoor pursuits such as rowing, paddling, sailing and exploring. This is the only cottage community in Georgian Bay with this unique, shared private wilderness.

An annual fee per site pays taxes on these acres of deliberately unoccupied land and supports many community activities such as a well stocked summer library, community picnics, and the year round presence of a caretaker.  If desired there are also summer sailing courses, Yoga classes, summer regatta, art and woodworking.  

Vision and Values

Go Home Bay was established with the humble belief that a simple lifestyle enhances the soul and that each soul is a guardian of our low density, shared environment.

Clean water, uninterrupted shorelines, open spaces, pristine environments. Our common goal is to surround ourselves with quiet and give ourselves the opportunity to pause and restore within the confines of an understated environment.

To this end, it’s our common practice to consider our community as we make decisions about our personal space.

To protect our vision of simplicity, the Go Home community hired a planning consultant in 2006 to develop consensus around what we want our community to look like in the years to come. The plan is designed to visually enhance our view of the natural shoreline and limit the visual impact of buildings upon the land. It retains the atmosphere of simplicity our forefathers introduced 120 years ago.

We ultimately agreed on land development rules that:

Limit visual impact of all buildings

Direct square footage maximums on docks, cabins, and main cottages

Require set backs from the water

Single-storey footprint

Suggest low light alternatives bright lights inside and outside cottages

Our Go Home Community Plan is embedded within the Georgian Bay Township’s Official Plan and forms the basis for building permits or development whether it be a new deck or dock or a tear down and new cottage build.

more to come

This is the start of a publicly-available set of web pages that are intended to inform the external community about Go Home Bay, and help prospective cottage buyers understand the nature of this unique community and the values shared by our existing cottagers.

If you are interested in joining our Go Home Bay community, and would like specific information regarding membership and/or sites that are currently on the market, please contact the club Secretary.