Congratulations to this year’s King Family Bursary winner, Katy McNabb! Katy will be using the bursary funding to produce the second season of her environmental cottaging podcast, Rewind Design.

Katy McNabb is a cottage interior designer, and sustainable design advocate, born and raised in the heart of the Thirty Thousand Islands, Parry Sound. Katy earned a degree in interior design at Ryerson University, having studied and worked in New Zealand as a part of her university education. She later worked in the French Alps, but was called home to Georgian Bay in spring of 2020 when presented with the opportunity to begin her career as a cottage designer. In an effort to reconnect with her hometown, she began to research the rich history of the area. She quickly realised the impact that cottages and cottaging have on our shoreline and ecosystems. She began to understand her impact as a designer, and what she could do to protect Georgian Bay through designing sustainable buildings. Her project, Rewind Design, emerged from her passion for history, cottage design and sustainability. While season 1 focuses on intimate stories of cottage history, season 2 will focus on sustainable design along the shores of Georgian Bay, with an emphasis on protecting the shoreline via green energy, green building methods and the maintenance and preservation of natural landscapes.

With support from the Georgian Bay Land Trust, Katy will be interviewing a variety of guests for her podcast, including builders, contractors, architects and landscapers, to discuss best practices when building sustainably on Georgian Bay. The purpose of season 2 is to educate Georgian Bay cottagers and locals on the benefits of sustainable design, presented through her podcast and blog in an accessible and easily understood conversational format. Visit her website here.

“I am extremely honoured to receive the King Family Bursary in support of my project Rewind Design, Season 2. I am a huge advocate for sustainable design and architecture on Georgian Bay’s shorelines. Development on Georgian Bay is inevitable, however it is my goal to help current and future generations become more educated on sustainable ways of building and designing to protect our treasured Georgian Bay shores and ecosystems for generations to come.”

– Katy McNabb