Summer in Muskoka

About the Book

A Memoir of the Potts Family Cottage 1961–1998

Summer in Muskoka describes the maturing of a family’s response to the rugged wilderness of Muskoka, a summer vacationland just north of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, as they summer there over a period of thirty years. It also describes the evolution of Muskoka from a cottage semiwilderness to a high-class resort. Finally, the book explores this family’s growing relationships with each other as they cope with the isolation of this most beautiful of Canadian summer vacationlands.

John and Madeleine Potts married in 1939 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

John Michael

About the Author

DR. Potts was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1941, the second child of five. She attended parochial schools in Toronto, then high school at Loretto Abbey, a private girls’ convent school also in Toronto, graduating in 1960. She then attended the University of Toronto where she earned her honors BA, an MA, and an M. Phil. 20 (master of philosophy) degree, all in English literature. She also earned partial credit for a PhD at the University of Toronto which she then finished at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, in rhetoric and discourse theory. She earned her PhD in 1980. She taught in the English Department at the University of Texas at El Paso from 1970 to 1998, specializing in Shakespeare. She also taught English literature survey courses, Western cultural heritage, freshman English (she was director of freshman composition for five years), and courses in the graduate program in rhetoric and discourse theory and professional writing.

Dr. Potts retired early, in 1998, and currently resides in Clearwater, Florida.