Lake Superior is not really a lake. It behaves like an inland sea, with fog banks, six metre waves and a horizon with nothing on it, and the Trans-Canada Highway that traces its northern shore between Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay feels like a coastal road in a country with no coast. The distance is about 700 kilometres on Highway 17, which most maps quote at eight to nine hours of driving. We have never done it in less than two days and we do not recommend trying. This is the emptiest, most beautiful stretch of the Trans-Canada in Ontario, and it is best taken in pieces.
What follows runs west from the Sault, the direction most travellers take when heading toward Manitoba and beyond. Everything works just as well in reverse.
Sault Ste. Marie to Lake Superior Provincial Park
Fill the tank in the Sault. The first 120 kilometres north follow the shoreline past small beaches, a handful of motels and fishing villages, then the land rises and the highway enters Lake Superior Provincial Park. The park covers about 1,550 square kilometres and the highway runs through it for roughly 85 kilometres, with the lake appearing and disappearing between granite headlands the whole way.
The park has proper day-use stops with washrooms and interpretive signs, and a day-use permit is required for parking at most of them. The Sand River and Katherine Cove are easy places to walk onto a beach; Old Woman Bay, near the north end, has a wide sweep of sand under 200 metre cliffs and is the spot we would choose for a picnic if we could only pick one.
The Agawa Rock pictographs
The single most memorable stop on the entire drive is a 400 metre trail down through a fissure in the rock to a ledge at the water’s edge, where Ojibwe artists painted images in red ochre on the cliff face several centuries ago. The pictographs include a horned lynx-like water spirit, canoes, and figures on horseback, and they are among the most significant rock art sites in Canada.
The ledge is sloped, wet and completely exposed to the lake. On calm days it is a straightforward if careful walk with ropes bolted to the rock for hand holds. When the lake is up, waves wash right over it and park staff close the access. Check the sign at the trailhead, wear shoes with grip, and do not push it. People have been swept off this ledge. If the lake is rough, the short trail through the boulders is still worth doing for the setting alone.
Wawa and the long empty middle
About 230 kilometres from the Sault, the highway swings inland to Wawa, a mining and forestry town best known for the nine metre steel goose that has greeted drivers since the 1960s. The current bird is a replacement erected a few years ago after the original rusted through, but the tradition of stopping for a photo is unchanged. Wawa is also the last reliable place for fuel, food and a room for a while, so treat it as a checkpoint.
From Wawa to Marathon is roughly 180 kilometres with only White River in between, a village that once recorded the coldest temperature in Canada and still sells itself on that. Do not count on late-night fuel anywhere on this stretch. Moose are a genuine hazard here from dusk to dawn, and in winter the highway can close entirely for hours after a crash, since there is no alternative route. Carry blankets, water and a full tank in every season.
Pukaskwa National Park
Just south of Marathon a side road leads about 15 kilometres to Hattie Cove, the only road-accessible corner of Pukaskwa National Park. The rest of the park’s 1,878 square kilometres of Canadian Shield wilderness is reached by foot or canoe. Hattie Cove has a campground, a visitor centre and a network of short trails, including a boardwalk to a beach and a suspension bridge over the White River gorge on a longer day hike. The coastal hiking trail that runs 60 kilometres south from here is one of the toughest backpacking routes in the province. For most drivers, two or three hours on the shorter loops give a real sense of the place: the pink granite, the stunted trees, the lake stretching away like an ocean.
A national park pass is required, separate from the provincial park permit further south.
Terrace Bay, Nipigon and the Sleeping Giant
West of Marathon the highway returns to the shore and the views open up again. Terrace Bay has a lighthouse replica with a lookout and a short trail to Aguasabon Falls, where a river drops 30 metres into a gorge beside a hydro dam. Rossport and the islands offshore are worth a detour on a clear day. Nipigon, at the mouth of the Nipigon River, marks the point where Highway 11 and Highway 17 merge, and the lookout tower above the town gives a wide view over the bay.
Approaching Thunder Bay, Ouimet Canyon is a short side trip to a 100 metre deep gorge with platforms on the rim, and the Sibley Peninsula holds Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, whose flat-topped mesas form a reclining figure when seen from the city across the water. The park’s trails range from short walks to a demanding 22 kilometre return hike to the top of the giant’s knees, with the highest vertical cliffs in Ontario.
The Terry Fox lookout and arrival
A few kilometres east of Thunder Bay, a lookout on the highway holds a bronze memorial to the young runner whose cross-Canada marathon ended near here in 1980. The site looks out over the lake and the Sleeping Giant, and even people who know the story well find it a quiet, affecting stop. Thunder Bay itself, with its grain elevators and its harbour, is the largest city on the Canadian shore of Superior and the natural end of the drive.
A few things worth knowing before you set out:
- Distances between fuel stops can exceed 100 kilometres; fill up at half a tank.
- Mobile coverage is patchy to absent for long stretches, especially inside the parks.
- Fog is common in late spring and early summer when warm air meets the cold lake; it can cut visibility to a few car lengths.
- Best months are late June to early October. Black flies are at their worst in June; September brings colour and cool, clear days.
- Winter driving is possible but demanding, with drifting snow, ice and very few open services.
Give the north shore three days if you can. The lake will fill every one of them.