I’ve been to Canada a few times but never for very long. One time when I was a kid, maybe ten years old, we went to Toronto for a couple of days. It was so long ago that I can’t even remember most of the details anymore. However, every trip I’ve done afterwards lasted no more than a few hours and barely crossed the border.
We went to lunch in Montreal once during a camping trip in Vermont. Then we detoured briefly to Vancouver on the way back from visiting the geo-oddity known as Point Roberts. We’ve gone to Niagara Falls a couple of times. And most recently we visited a truly fascinating airplane museum / insectarium in Sault Ste. Marie.
So I’ve been to Canada plenty of times, but I don’t think I’ve ever truly experienced Canada. That needed to change.
General Thoughts
During the pandemic we started taking vacations at secluded lakeside homes to minimize COVID exposure. We needed to unwind but we also didn’t want to get sick. We’d load the car with everything we’d need for the week and then drive far away from everyone. So we ended up in interesting spots like Treasure Lake in Pennsylvania and Lake Lancer in Michigan. We discovered that we actually liked lakefront vacations in out-of-the-way places.
So I combined all those preferences together, and added one more… decent craft beer options. A small Canadian town by a lake with good beer. Got it. Collingwood, Ontario rose to the top of the list after some Internet searching.
Collingwood
I’d never heard of Collingwood but it ticked all the right boxes.
- Canada? Unquestionably
- Small town? About 25,000 residents away from the orbit of any major metropolitan area
- Lake? Yes, and some might even say a great one: Georgian Bay, an offshoot of Lake Huron
- Craft beer? It showed up regularly on lists of exceptional Canadian brewery towns
We would live in Collingwood for a week and explore the area from there. The only improvement would have been if it was located a few kilometres further north, and thus outside of the narrow 150 km (93 mile) belt where 75% of Canadians live. I measured it at 140 km (87 miles) from the United States border running through Lake Ontario so we came oh-so-close. But we can’t have it all, and actually this was fine because we could drive from Toronto Pearson Airport pretty quickly.
The Plan
My wife hoped that I wouldn’t expand my County Counting hobby into Canada, but the Mob Rule website does have a Canadian option so I counted them. However, to keep peace in the family, I won’t become as dogmatic here as with its U.S. counterparts.
There are two colors on the map. The ones newly visited appear in a darker blue shade: York Regional Municipality, Dufferin County, Simcoe County, and Grey County (that’s Grey with an “e”). Those marked in lighter blue represent places I visited previously: the City of Toronto and Peel Regional Municipality.
So the plan was pretty basic. We’d drive straight up to Collingwood and explore the southern edge of Georgian Bay. Then we’d return to the airport, turn in our rental car, and head into Toronto for the final two days.
Brewery #1: Collingwood Brewery
The first phase passed flawlessly. We took a direct nonstop flight to Toronto that landed exactly on time. We passed through border controls effortlessly and secured a rental car without any delay. The hour and a half drive to Collingwood went fine, with minimal weekend traffic.
However, this created one minor hiccup. We’d traveled so perfectly that we couldn’t check into our rental house for another hour. That was completely unexpected. Travel never happens like this. We were approaching the outskirts of Collingwood at a rapid clip with an entire hour to kill.
That seemed like a perfect opportunity to stop at the first microbrewery of the trip. We checked our map and saw The Collingwood Brewery on our direct path. Problem solved. We got a table at an outdoor patio and enjoyed a flight of beverages while appreciating the sunshine and a cool Canadian breeze. Our (now adult) kids enjoyed the first of many servings of poutine they would order during the week.
I’m not going to repeat my caveat about quality over quantity at these brewery visits because we went to a bunch of them during the week. Instead I think I’ll just create a generic disclaimer for this and subsequent pages.
Sunset Point Park
Finally we arrived at our home-away-from-home, went to the grocery store, fixed dinner, and settled in. That evening we walked over to Sunset Point Park on Collingwood’s lakefront (map) and witnessed the suggested activity. Smoke from distant Canadian wildfires obscured the disk and created an orange haze as it dropped to the horizon.
Now we were in a place none of us knew about a few weeks ago, ready to explore.
Articles in the Ontario Series
- Choices
- Downtime
- Lake and Mountain
- Penetanguishene and Beyond
- Lake and Caves
- Owen Sound
- Toronto Orientation
- Toronto Tourist
- Bonus Days
See Also: The Complete Photo Album on Flickr.
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