Seana O'Neill, president and founder of Cottage Dreams, connects cancer survivors with generous cottage owners who are willing to donate time at their vacation homes for survivors and their families.

O'Neill said that her family cottage in Muskoka always played a role in her family getting away and celebrating life and she wanted to pass that on to cancer survivors and their families.

She's looking to expand the Ontario-based charity into the southern Georgian Bay region, including The Blue Mountains, Collingwood and Wasaga Beach and wants willing donors with chalets and cottages in the area to join her program.

In September of 2003, O'Neill visited several cottages and met with the owners, who agreed to donate time at their vacation homes. That first year, she was able to place six survivor families in cottages for one week each.

The idea was to pair a cottage that was probably sitting empty through the week, with a family, that was dealing with cancer treatment and was likely financially strapped and not be able to afford a vacation.

The concept caught on and the program now has 700 cottages and O'Neill has placed 700 families - mare than 4,000 people - in a cottage for a week's stay.

The charity's goal for 2010 is to place 500 families. There's no cost except groceries and spending money and the cottage owner gets a charitable donation receipt for the value of the week long rental.

O'Neill said she had to bounce the idea off a real estate agent, an insurance agent and two lawyers before she worked it out, and what has surprised her most is not the impact on the survivor but the impact on the cottage owner.

She hears stories about thank you notes, bottles of wine, painted rocks, and friendships left behind by the survivors for their generous hosts.

"I thought it was all about the cancer survivor, but the home owners get a lot out of it," she said.

O'Neill said that the time right after treatment is an important period when families are starting to get back on their feet, but probably can't afford a vacation for themselves.

"It's making people feel better at a time when there's nothing," she said.

One story stands out from a couple years ago. A mother, her young daughters and their Nana were enjoying a week at a cottage and one evening the mother and daughters were playing a game - enjoying themselves and laughing loudly. Nana came down the stairs to tell them to quiet down, then all of them burst into laughter, realizing this was the first time the family had laughed in years.

Breast Cancer survivor Tina Lima spent a week at a local cottage after enduring nine months of treatment in 2007/2008. She heard about Cottage Dreams through a friend and applied for the program, she was accepted and came with her husband and son to Dr. Paul Freedman's cottage at Alpine Springs (at the base of the Alpine Ski Club) for Labour Day weekend and week 2009.

Her husband and son stayed for the first day and she spend the rest of the week by herself.

"It was serene and heavenly," said Lima. "It gave me an opportunity to just stay on my own and kind of think through everything - family, what I want to do with my life. When you go through a life-threatening illness, you sort of re-evaluate your whole life. I was in peace."  

When Lima was diagnosed, she folded her business. She said she was in shock and wondered if she would ever be able to go away again.

Lima said the cottage experience changed her. She's doing more charity work and not saying no to opportunities that come her way. She said the Cottage Dreams program was important because it gave her something to look forward to.

"I really appreciated the fact that someone would donate their cottage to a cancer survivor," she said. "Because I folded my business, financially, I wasn't able to afford to go away."

Dr. Freedman also heard about the program through a friend, and because of his background in family medicine, he was pretty sure he understood what a get-a-way would mean to families at such a time.

"To give them a refuge, even for a short time, to be a family with no worries other than bonding and enjoying, I thought, would be great," he said in an email.

He said his whole extended family found the experience gratifying.

"I was surprised at how much they appreciated it and how really great a time they had," he said.

O'Neill's dad was the original owner of Windy O' Neill's restaurant at the Village at Blue, so she is familiar with the area and hopes to find some cottage owners to participate in the charity.

She's also looking for sponsors to donate $500 for a family to spend a week at a cottage.

For more information, or to get involved with the charity, visit www.cottagedreams.org or phone Seana O'Neill at 705-457-9100.