As cottage season opened this summer, ripples of the recession reached the shores of Lake Sim­coe, Georgian Bay and other points north. Some city folk were selling the cottage to make ends meet, but many other not-quite-retirement-ready urbanites decided to cash in on the city house instead.

These are middle-class Torontonians, usually in their mid- to late 50s, who looked at their dreaded RRSP statements and started to specu­late about their lifespans. They calculated how many years their savings would last and began to think about where they could find the most comfort for their money.

David and Susan Luxmore were living in a leased North York condo after selling their Mis­sissauga home in 2007. Though David’s job as an engineer was secure, the couple, who are both 57, found themselves re-evaluating their options and re-imagining their future when the crash came. They could stay in the city and work for another five years or retire to their Wasaga Beach cottage now. “The recession gave us an oppor­tunity to explore,” David says, with characteristic boomer opti­mism.

Cottage country is adapting to the influx. Collingwood has seen a spike in 2009 building permits, almost all of them related to residences for the retired or semi-retired. In Port Hope, a school has been converted into condo units popular with the over-55 set—a telling demographic detail—and a developer in the Village of Haliburton is planning a transitional condo with an in-house medical clinic. Wasaga Beach is expanding bus service for the car-averse or the recently licence-less, and a town mandate for sidewalks in all new subdivisions will create scooter-friendly “walkable blocks.”

“A lot of people are busier here than they were in the city,” says Peggy Breckenridge, mayor of Tiny Township, on Georgian Bay. “Instead of working away at one job, we’re on two teams, three committees and six boards.” Breckenridge, another GTA expat, is reviewing whether money once spent on T-ball should be redirected into such senior activities as bocce and curling.

Her boating buddies, Judy and Bob Galloway, sold their suburban home for $670,000, bought a 2,000-square-foot waterfront townhouse in Victoria Harbour for $500,000 and socked away the difference. Judy misses trips to Pusateri’s and the vintages section of her former LCBO, but she and Bob are devoted to their new community; they’re both involved in doctor recruitment efforts (golf tournaments) in nearby Midland and curling club fundraisers. As Mayor Breck­enridge—whose council consists of five trans­plants and zero long-time locals—says, “People who moved up from the city are running things now.”