Northern Ontario Highlights

Thirteen nights in a motorhome around the north shore of Lake Superior, which is remote by any standard and a long way from the Ontario most people picture.

Toronto opens it, then Tobermory on Lake Huron, where glass-bottomed boats run over the shipwrecks in the clear water. The Chi-Cheemaun ferry crosses to Manitoulin, the largest freshwater island in the world, with guided canoe trips and the Cup and Saucer Trail.

Sault Ste Marie gets two nights, one of the oldest French settlements on the continent, with a lock cruise, the Bushplane Heritage Centre and an optional train into Agawa Canyon. Lake Superior Provincial Park follows for two nights on the largest freshwater lake on earth by surface area. The Agawa Rock pictographs there are thirty-five red ochre images painted on a lakeside cliff around four hundred years ago, reached along a slippery ledge at the water’s edge.

Wawa comes next, with the obligatory photograph beside the Wawa Goose, then Ivanhoe Lake through the boreal forest. Cochrane closes the route and holds the Polar Bear Habitat, the only facility in the world dedicated purely to the care of polar bears, with three named residents who could not survive in the wild. Canadian Affair include the flights, the motorhome and the listed attractions, with campground fees, fuel, insurance and meals separate. The price is per person. This is a long way north, the gaps between fuel stops are real rather than theoretical, and that is rather the point of it. Anyone whose idea of Ontario is Toronto and Niagara will find this a different country altogether, and considerably emptier.