Olympian says goodbye to Muskoka cottage

Alex Bruce, one of the new Canadian badminton icons from the summer Olympics, grew up coming to Muskoka every summer.
When she started training for the Olympics, she traded in the cottage for the badminton racquet.
She never played badminton at the cottage, she said. During the school year, badminton was her stress release, but when she came to Muskoka, she took a break from everything.
“I’ve actually never played outside before, so it was always a city thing, and when I was up there it was always a break,” she said.
Bruce was the counterpart of Michelle Lee, the Bruce-Lee badminton duo that was brought back into the Olympic games after four teams purposely lost to manipulate the quarter-final draw.
That put Bruce and Lee on the national radar, as well as the game of badminton.
Warren Brownlee, president of the Bracebridge Night Hawks, a badminton club with about 60 members, said it’s a step forward, but it’s not a big enough step.
“Belonging to a sport that’s ignored is a little hard to swallow,” he said.
He sees a rise of good badminton players coming from Toronto, especially in the Asian population, but not in Muskoka.
“Asians in Toronto believe they can be good badminton players. The kids in Bracebridge don’t believe that,” he said.
He said it’s a coach-starved sport and badminton kids are often belittled and put down. It’s a sport with a certain image, he said.
Bruce said she has gained a lot of popularity through the Olympics and hopes some of that will spill over into the sport of badminton.
Her father’s acquaintances, people she’s never met, will ask about her before they ask about his business, she said, but she hasn’t seen recreational badminton gain more popularity yet.
Brownlee believes there is hope, though for some people, he said what happened at the Olympics confirmed their thoughts that badminton is “dumb and weird.”
“It’s starting to get somewhere, but will we have more numbers? I don’t know,” he said.
Bruce started playing badminton recreationally at age eight and dreamed of the Olympics
“I dreamed of it in the sense that I never thought I’d be there,” she said.
“The Olympics for me was such an unattainable dream because I thought everyone in the Olympics had some special skill or super-hero power … I’ve realized that everyone there is just normal people.”
The biggest thing she learned from the athletes, she said, is belief in yourself and others.
“Do it or don’t do it,” she said.
Bruce is taking that philosophy, and her love for badminton, back to school with her this year following her two-year break to play badminton.
After her first day in the structural engineering program at Western University in London she said she can tell it’s going to be a challenge.
Playing badminton will help her a lot this year, she said.
For Brownlee, that’s the most important part of the sport.
“The enjoyment of the sport is more important than striving for the Olympics,” he said.
Bruce doesn’t know if she’ll play in the Olympics again, but she knows she’ll keep playing for the rest of her life.
This year she’s taking a break from international competitions, only competing in North America.
As for cottaging in Muskoka, Bruce only came up one time this past summer.
It was the last time.
This summer they sold the cottage on Sparrow Lake that had been in the family since Bruce’s mom was a child.
Selling the cottage was a sad occasion for Bruce.
“I went up for one night in June, just to say goodbye to my old cottage,” she said.
Next spring she plans to come back up, but to a new cottage her dad bought over the summer that is close to Parry Sound.

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