Vladimir and Alina Matus started building their landmark dwelling in Alexander Passage over 50 summers ago
— Story and photos by Art Kilgour —
Every time we boat to our cottage near the western end of Alexander Passage, we pass an architecturally unique cottage that sits prominently on a small island, almost in the boating channel. It’s a Bayfield landmark at island A880-1.
Once, a child visitor to our place asked his mother as we motored by the unusual structure, “Mummy, is that a cottage or a church?”
Although it’s not immediately apparent, the cottage is designed around a simple, compelling shape: the hexagon. The concept is both practical (easy to erect), environmental (in harmony with the outdoors, the sun and the cosmos), and artistic (with an intriguing natural form, like a beehive).
The owners and builders of this modern cottage are Vladimir and Alina Matus. They bought the vacant island in 1972, just north of the much larger island A850, and started building the following year.
Vladimir was born in Czechoslovakia in 1936 and moved to Canada in his early 30s. He’s an architect by training and practice (in Toronto), now in his 90s, and the two of them have laboured for decades to build their island getaway. Alina’s career was as a high school history teacher; she is now in her 80s. They both enjoyed outdoor sports like scuba diving and flying when they were younger!
They gave me a fascinating tour of the 1,000 square foot cottage one sunny afternoon in 2023, and I also interviewed Vladimir by email in early 2024. Here’s an edited version of our conversations.
What brought you to Bayfield Inlet?
I met my wife Alina while helping a friend build his cottage in the Twelve Mile Bay area. My wife’s parents were cottagers there from the 1950s, so she grew up in Georgian Bay.
As a newcomer from a landlocked country, I was fascinated and overwhelmed by the beauty of Georgian Bay and its islands. It was hard to imagine a receding, one-mile-high glacier slowly carving the granite base, leaving behind all these beautiful inlets, islands, lakes and channels. I dreamed that my future wife and I could eventually have our own island cottage somehow.
You told me that you were alerted to the island sale by Don Ord of Hangdog in 1972. Did it take you long to make the purchase decision?
No, just three hours. We saw the island in late autumn when Don was rushing to close his marina. We liked the location and the views and had no reason to delay until spring. We could begin construction as soon as the ice went out. This one-third acre of rock and trees was all that we could afford — It cost $3,000.
Where did your radical cottage design come from?
It was an idea I had during my university years, the late 1960s. A colleague and I proposed a prefab design for affordable housing to a competition, using individual units on a grid — either rectangles, triangles, hexagons or octagons — which could be combined into larger living units.
For the design of our cottage, I selected a hexagonal grid. This shape has unique geometry, allowing “close packing” and better-allocating activities and their connections. That’s why honeybees use it, instinctively.
We built the cottage unit by unit, over many summers. This method allowed us to progress within the limits of our available time and resources.
How many hexagons make up your cottage?
About eight! The main building is a cluster of four hexagonal modules, each one a 16-foot diagonal, plus two modules with 8-foot diagonals (the bathroom and the staircase). The guest cabin or bunkie is a separate module behind the main cottage, another 16-foot diagonal, connected to the main building by the porch. The shape of the porch also follows the hexagonal grid.
There’s a hexagonal plaque on your floor, near the plastic bubble window that looks out at the channel. What does it represent?
That’s a rosette I designed, an equilateral hexagon with six points. I’ve oriented it with true north at the top and south at the bottom. The other four points of the hexagon point approximately to the sunrise and sunset on the shortest day (Dec. 21) and longest day of the year (June 21), at our latitude.
Our cottage is oriented to the sun’s movement. Four walls (out of six) align with the sunrise and sunset in our area. This creates an interesting play of sunlight inside the cottage during the day, like a sundial. It gives a feeling of passing daytime and a cosmic connection.
The two of you did all the construction? How long did that take, and did you have any help?
Yes, we did. For obvious reasons, we could not prefabricate. Conventional construction of each hexagonal unit took us approximately two seasons, working about 16–18 weekends per season. So, construction took many years.
We would usually arrive at the island on Friday at midnight and leave on Sunday after sunset. Most of our time was spent transporting building materials from Parry Sound or Toronto and cutting lumber and plywood without power tools. However, the actual erection of a unit was fast and relatively easy.
Don Ord helped us a lot! We regularly rented one of his boats in the first couple of years, before acquiring our own aluminum runabout. Before we got hydro, he allowed us to custom-cut our lumber on his property at Hangdog.
Your island is very small and it’s also right next to a busy boating channel. How do you safeguard your privacy?
The northern tip of the island protrudes into the channel. So, the cottage is seen from the east, north and west. This required careful attention to the sculptural qualities of the building, and the play of light and shadows on its facades.
Being at the edge of the shoreline allows all sorts of small boats to come close to our building. Thus, the design had to consider the issue of privacy. We like to see them, but they don’t have to see us.
And what about septic and hydro?
Our septic and grey water goes into a holding tank (it used to sit on the shore, but is now buried), which is pumped out regularly. We connected to hydro early on, in the late 1970s, which helped with construction.
Do you like watching all the boat activity in the channel?
Absolutely. It’s like observing a living organism. Boat traffic is the pulse of the neighbourhood. There’s a constant parade of private boats, cargo boats of contractors, police and coast guard boats, and occasionally, long-distance travellers in spectacular ultra-luxurious floating villas.
We look forward to the emerging popularity of electrical motors and we’d like to convert our boat, especially if we could incorporate hydrofoil technology to reduce drag. And of course, we also love to watch sailboats, kayaks and canoes in the channel. We’re environmentalists after all.
You have relatively few windows facing the channel. How well can you see out?
The main building has 22 windows of different sizes and shapes. Each one is hand-made on the site from high-quality cedar. Since we do not have any overhangs, making them waterproof was challenging. Some narrow horizontal windows at eye level give us channel views without allowing people to see inside. We have an almost 360-degree view from our cottage without compromising our privacy!
When I boat by your cottage in the early morning or late evening, it appears to glow. What material is the siding?
Originally, it was cedar, installed vertically. But that needed re-staining every third year, and it became too much with scaffolding and ladders once I turned 65. I searched intensively for a suitable metal product and finally in about 2000 I found a product made by Interlock in Vancouver.
Their aluminum panels were for roofing, but the company was excited to see it installed as siding, even if they did have to make nine-inch-wide panels for me instead of their standard two-foot ones for commercial roofs.
How many days do you spend at your cottage each summer, and are you finished building yet?
We currently spend about four months a year at the cottage, depending on the weather. Probably no more than 100 days and nights. Our bedroom upstairs is finished. Some minor interior cosmetics are still in progress elsewhere. We hope that a contractor will help us finish the floor. I wanted to do it myself but my deteriorating health rules out hard labour now. (Note: in 2024, the Matus’s finished their flooring.)
This cottage project has occupied much of your adult and married lives together. Do you have any children? What does it mean to you?
No, we don’t have children. We still live in Toronto and will visit Bayfield Inlet as long as we’re able to. When we started work on this in 1973, I aimed to build a “walk-in sculpture” to express my admiration for the immense beauty of Georgian Bay. I put my heart into it. That’s what it represents to us.
Vladimir Matus: “I wanted to express my admiration for the immense beauty of Georgian Bay. I put my heart into it.”