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Just over 40 years ago, a struggling young artist named Ed Bartram found his muse: a 10-acre slab of granite and pine off Georgian Bay's serrated shore.
The island was deserted but for the concrete forms of an old cottage leaching slowly into the soil.
He had to have it.
Mr. Bartram offered the owner $7,800, every penny he'd saved teaching high school to supplement his painting income.
An aerial view of Bartram Island on Georgian Bay. Because of increased taxes, Mr. Bartram may be forced to sell. (Kathy Sutton)
"I didn't buy it with the idea of making a profit," said Mr. Bartram, now 70. "I fell in love with the area."
Since then, Mr. Bartram and his work have become so rooted in the island and its surroundings that locals named the island after him. But now the renowned painter of Georgian Bay rockscapes is worried that skyrocketing property taxes on waterfront cottages may force him to part with his Bartram Island and the spartan cottage studio he built upon it for $400.
"My whole art career is associated with that property," he said.
Over the past three years, values of waterfront cottages in Ontario have ballooned by as much as 150 per cent, according to one recent report compiled by real-estate firm Cushman & Wakefield LePage. Until now, a two-year freeze on the annual property assessment cycle has insulated property owners from corresponding tax bills.
The freeze thaws this fall, when the provincial government will issue a new round of tax bills.
Waterfront cottage owners are already saving up or cashing out.
"People don't like to talk about it all that much, but taxes are already playing a significant factor in people's decision to sell," said Bob Topp, executive director of Waterfront Ratepayers After Fair Taxation, a retiree who saw his cottage taxes increase 65 per cent during the last round of assessments in 2005.
"People are looking at their bills and saying, 'We're out of here.' Either they can't afford it or they don't think their kids will be able to."
Retiree Jane Stock and her husband were willing to tolerate the monster homes, golf courses, float planes and power boats that moved in around their Lake Joseph cottage over the past decade; it was the tax bill that finally drove them out.
"We had many, many happy summers there," said the 80-year-old Sarnia, Ont., resident. "But when two lots near us went for over a million dollars, all of a sudden our taxes went to just under $8,000."
"We worked it out and we were paying at least $85 in taxes for every day we used the place. It just got to be too much."
Ms. Stock said she appealed to her local municipality for help, to no avail.
Several ratepayers' groups expect the ranks of dispossessed cottagers to swell this fall. The median resale price for waterfront cottages in the Muskoka and Haliburton regions increased by 47 per cent from 2004 to 2007, according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield LePage. That compares with an 18 per cent climb for non-waterfront residential properties in the area.
"This means I'm going to pick up a bigger tax bill and the beneficiary is the guy who's not on the water," said Mr. Topp.
That's a reasonable state of affairs, according to the province's municipal property tax authority.
"There's a limited number of waterfront properties, so the values go up faster than other property types in times of strong demand," said Larry Hummel, vice president of property values with the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation. "It's purely economics and circumstance."
Tax assessments don't necessarily follow property values. MPAC looked at a number of factors in assessing properties, including lot dimensions, building quality, recent renovations and sales data.
But Mr. Topp wants the provincial government to moderate the roller-coaster nature of cottage assessments by instituting a 5-per-cent cap on year-to-year tax increases. He'd also like to see Ontario adopt American programs that link property-value assessment to personal income and offer special assistance to pensioners.
The provincial government has acted on some demands to reform its assessment methods. Starting this year, properties will be reassessed every four years - replacing the current annual assessment cycle - and any increase will be phased in gradually over that period.
A property owner hit with a 50 per cent assessment increase, for instance, would see 12.5 per cent added to each of his or her subsequent four tax bills.
"That's still too much for a person on a fixed income," said Mr. Topp.
And it may spell the end of one of the country's most fruitful artistic relationships between a breathtaking landscape and one of its definitive interpreters.
Several smaller islands near Bartram Island have recently fetched in excess of $1-million.
"I live in fear that my assessment will quadruple," Mr. Bartram said. "That may force me out."
