Steep Rock Manitoba. Photo credit: Mike Grandmaison.
The Favourites
10 of the sweetest spots Canada has to offer.
Compiled by explore magazine. Featured in our June 2008 issue.
Okay, we’ll admit that this country has a lot – and we mean a lot – of special outdoor places. But some of these places are, well, extra-special in their own unique way, and they deserve to be recognized. So we asked our team of experts to share a few of their personal favourites – from highways and tranquil lakes to hideaways and secret breaks. Read on – and let our faves become yours.
The June 2008 issue of explore featured our picks of 50 sweet spots to check out this summer.
Twillingate, Newfoundland
By Robert Postma (professional photographer)
Twillingate sits on the northern coast of Newfoundland, on the edge of Iceberg Alley. I love to go and watch the icebergs, both large and small, float serenely past, with the silence broken only by the wind or the cracking of the massive pieces of ice. You can sit there for hours and forget about everything.
Photo credit: Robert Postma
Grace Lake, Killarney Provincial Park, Ontario
By Kevin Callan
Over the years, the McMichael Art Gallery in Kleinburg, Ontario, has displayed a black-and-white photograph taken in 1935 by Joachim Gauthier. It shows Group of Seven member Frank Carmichael, sitting on a chunk of Killarney quartzite, capturing Canada’s true north on canvas. The first time I saw the photo was during a high-school field trip, and I promised myself then that I would one day visit the very spot where the artist was painting. At the time, I knew nothing of how picturesque Killarney Park was, nor how special the north would become for my aspiring career. But I liked what I saw in the photograph, and at the age of 23 I finally found the time to go and check it out.
Believe me, this is one cool lookout. From the high vantage point on top of the northern fringe of the ancient La Cloche mountain range, you look down on the turquoise waters of Grace Lake, and the magic of the north woods comes alive. It’s no wonder Carmichael returned here time and time again, as I have.
And I’m not the only one who has sought out, and sat on, the recognizable Carmichael rock. Artists such as Robert Bateman and Bill Mason have made the pilgrimage as well. But the two most important visitors since the Group of Seven may well be art historians Jim and Sue Waddington. Not only were they among the people who rediscovered the rock, but they were also the ones who recently saved it. In 2005, some idiots pushed the 200-pound piece of quartz over the neighbouring cliff, so in 2006, the enthusiastic couple, with the help of friends and family, hoisted it back up with block and tackle.
(Photo credit: Kevin Callan)
Miramichi River, New Brunswick
By Jake MacDonald
I first heard of the Miramichi River when I was a small boy growing up in a ticky-tacky subdivision on the edge of Winnipeg. My grandfather, a tall imposing man who never smiled, would come over for Sunday dinner in his dark wool suit, complete with vest and railwayman’s pocket watch, and sit in the living room while the smell of pot roast filled the house. As kids, it was our job to keep him company. My little brother and I had discovered fishing, and we were keen on it. It was our escape route into nature. But Grampy, as we called him, thought fishing was cruel. “The fish thinks he’s getting a meal but he gets a hook in the throat. The proper way to fish is with a spear. You kill him cleanly and he feels no pain.” Grampy told us that as a young man in New Brunswick, he would go out on the river at night to hunt salmon. It was illegal, and if the fish warden came he would douse his torch, crouch underwater and breathe through a straw. He told us many tales of giant salmon, lumberjacks and ghosts, and the river in his stories even had a fairy tale sort of name—the Miramichi.
The Miramichi hasn’t changed much since my grandfather’s day. The salmon still migrate back from the North Atlantic every summer. Old men still sit hunched over kitchen tables tying ornate salmon flies, which they sell out the back door to the “sports” for a few dollars apiece. The local economy is still hand-to-mouth, so there’s very little of the cherished economic development that has ruined other Canadian landscapes. Cruising along the deserted two-lane blacktop that threads through central New Brunswick, you come upon picturesque villages like Blackville, where the church steeple is the highest point in town and you can buy a lovely, fully rigged cabin on two acres of forest for less than 70 grand. The people still speak with the musical accent of the old country, and last year a salmon guide named Murray told me with a perfectly straight face that on dark nights he’s more than once heard the anguished howl of a ghost known as the Dungarvon Whooper. The best time to visit the Miramichi is early autumn, when the hills are splashed with red and gold and the river is a deep blue that you can’t see anywhere else. I try to return once a year, spending a few days wading in the cold strong current, fishing for salmon. And despite the counsel of my grandfather, I still prefer a fly rod to a spear.
Jake MacDonald is the author of Houseboat Chronicles: Notes from a Life in Shield Country.
Nimbus, Lion’s Head, Ontario
Sonnie Trotter (climber)
Nimbus is loads of fun and what makes it unique is that you start from the top and have to rappel over the edge. You don’t actually go to the ground—you go halfway down and you clip into an anchor. So the whole time that your friend is climbing above you, you feel like you’re floating. That’s what I remember the most. And the climbing is just really enjoyable. The moves are mellow and they flow, and the limestone is pocketed so anyone can enjoy it. It’s rated 5.10b. I’d say it’s a moderate classic.
(Photo credit: Mike Landkroon)
The Tombstone Range, Yukon
By Pat Morrow
It was early morning, and we were perched atop an unnamed peak, straight up from the aptly named Twin Lakes. Getting to our bivouac site the previous afternoon hadn’t been easy—we’d been forced to make a few dicey moves over a run-out 4th-class climbing section without a rope. And then the whine of a single mosquito had kept us awake all night. But now, the promise of getting some great photographs of Mt. Monolith and a gaggle of other peaks in the Tombstones made everything worthwhile.
Bearing a striking resemblance to the granite spires of Patagonia, the jagged syenite backbone of the 55-kilometre-long Tombstone Range bursts out of the tundra in the Yukon’s Ogilvie Mountains. But unlike Patagonia, there is no glacial ice cap surrounding the peaks, making the Tombstones a hiker’s and nature-lover’s paradise. Although the craggy peaks look inviting to climbers, serious alpine attempts have been thwarted by the crumbly rock that has been ravaged by the elements.
I’ve been drawn back to the Tombstones several times since I shot a cover photo of Mt. Monolith for the first of my two books on the Yukon in 1979. I was even drawn to the area in late winter, completing a lovely seven-day circumski of the range with a couple of Yukoners, after our first attempt had been thwarted by bad snow conditions and cold weather.
The area is also home to amazing wildlife and ancient cultures, and I was thrilled when it officially became a territorial park in 2000. But it seems the Tombstone Range is still not fully protected—a mining company staked a claim here just before the area received park status. The thought that one day they might punch an exploratory road deep into the heart of the range brings a shiver to my spine.
Pat Morrow is the co-author of The Yukon. (Photo credit: Pat Morrow)
Monts Groulx, Quebec
Patrice Halley (professional photographer)
The Monts Groulx area sits near the Labrador border, so it doesn’t get many visitors—when you go there, you get a feeling of isolation you don’t normally get in the East. The sub-arctic tundra landscape is beautiful, and stretches as far as a hiker can hope. And the rolling mountains offer some of the most challenging wilderness hiking in Quebec.
(Photo credit: Patrice Halley)
Point Prim, P.E.I
By Charles Mandel
Okay, so Point Prim is not one of Prince Edward Island’s famous sand beaches. For a stretch of hot sun and smooth shoreline, visit Basin Head, Lakeside or any other number of popular spots. Point Prim is something else entirely: A finger of land offering brooding beauty, a sullen melancholy that’s best savoured in the spring or fall shoulder season.
The drive to Point Prim, which extends into Hillsborough Bay on P.E.I.’s south shore, is half the reason for visiting. From Charlottetown, head east toward Souris, past the rolling hills overlooking Orwell Bay. After 40 minutes, turn onto the 11-kilometre Point Prim Road. Just before the point proper, spectacular views of the bay open up from either side of the road, leading—as always—to impractical impulses to purchase property in the area.
The landscape is minimal: a grey line of water meeting a grey line of clouds. Off to one side stands the island's oldest lighthouse, built in 1845. Locked up tight—permanently now—is the chowder house where you could once buy a decent feed of mussels. Yet complexity fills this bleak scene. Peer closely at the stony beach and hundreds of tiny mollusc shells swim into focus, while precious pieces of sea glass sparkle all around. The shells range from the size of your knuckle to a clenched fist. The glass pieces—worn and rounded—are bottle-green, white, turquoise, amber and even deep blue.
I’ve got a jumble of these shells and bits of glass in a dish at home. And whenever I look at them, I think of that thin spit of land, untamed and wild.
Charles Mandel is a regular contributor to explore magazine.
Clayoquot Sound British Columbia
Jeremy Koreski (professional photographer)
As a surfing photographer, there’s no place I like more than the islands in Clayoquot Sound, just north of my home in Tofino. They’ve got these great hidden beaches, fantastic waves, and there’s never anyone else there. So it’s a great place to shoot.
(Photo credit: Jeremy Koreski)
French River Ontario
By Marni Jackson
I won’t divulge my favourite place; are you kidding? But my second favourite place might be the French River, in Northern Ontario. Recently, a friend and I paddled the stretch near Wolseley Bay in late summer. It’s a three-and-a-half- hour drive north of Toronto, with an access point not too far from the town of Noelville, but it’s nicely tucked into the heart of this great historic web of water.
After years of canoeing either in Quetico or Algonquin, I had forgotten what it felt like to paddle on a big, purposeful river system with a vast watershed. The French has a muscular, almost industrial scale and grandeur that flat-water lake-hopping lacks. It’s 105 kilometres long, flowing from Lake Nipissing in watery fingers and estuaries across a landscape of rumpled pink and grey granite, as the water level drops over 60 feet, to finally empty into Georgian Bay. The river is also a provincial park, dotted with orange no-camping zones that remain aboriginal property. This helps maintain the area’s wildness, despite the cottages and motorboat traffic on the main channel. It was the French River that carried Samuel Champlain westward in 1615 and became the main route for the fur traders and the voyageurs. A little context like that can make your tent feel more historic and less MEC.
I met up with my paddle partner at the Pine Cove Lodge. (I’ve never actually stayed at this elegant cedar resort, but I have the feeling it could be my third favourite place.) We headed east down the main channel. Most paddlers make their way over a series of rapids to the Blue Chute, where one smooth, powerful curl of water offers turbo-charged swimming. We turned north instead, portaging over Five Finger Rapids into the Little French River, which skirts along the Dokis Indian Reserve. (Camping is allowed on the opposite shore.) On the narrow, quiet Little French, we pulled our canoes up on the shore, ate lunch and sat watching the current single-mindedly push past us. Then we had naps, lying with our backs on the country’s collective unconscious—Georgian Bay’s bottomless, six-billion-year-old granite. It radiates.
Forget the hot-stone massage; head to the French River for the real thing.
Marni Jackson is the author of several books, including The Mother Zone.
Steep Rock Manitoba
Mike Grandmaison (professional photographer)
Steep Rock is a spot on the eastern shore of Lake Manitoba that has these unique limestone outcroppings. I enjoy walking and photographing along the edge of the cliffs, occasionally climbing down to the water level to explore small caves that are accessible when the lake is calm. Photographing here at sunset is particularly rewarding as the last light bathes the textured limestone rock faces of the cliffs.
(Photo credit: Mike Grandmaison)
Originally published in explore magazine. Copyright © 2010 by explore. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any article, photograph, or artwork, for other than personal use, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the publisher is strictly forbidden.
