Georgian Bay is technically a bay of Lake Huron, but nobody who has stood on its shore believes that. It is about 15,000 square kilometres of open water, big enough for its own weather, and its edges could not be more different: pink granite and windswept pines in the east, white limestone cliffs and blue water in the west, and, across its mouth, the largest freshwater island in the world. We have spent parts of a dozen summers along this coast, and we still have not run out of it.
This is a guide to the western arc: Manitoulin Island, the Bruce Peninsula that reaches toward it, and Killarney, the white-ridged park at the bay’s northern head. Together they make a loop of about 600 km of driving and one ferry, best spread over a week between late May and mid-October.
Crossing to Manitoulin
There are two ways onto the island. From the south, the Chi-Cheemaun, whose name means Big Canoe in Ojibwe, carries vehicles between Tobermory at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula and South Baymouth on Manitoulin from early May to mid-October. The crossing takes about an hour and 45 minutes, and on a clear day the limestone cliffs of the Bruce fade behind while the low shore of the island rises ahead. Reservations for vehicles are strongly recommended in July and August and on holiday weekends. From the north, Highway 6 reaches Little Current over a one-lane swing bridge built in 1913, which still opens on the hour in summer to let sailboats through the North Channel.
Manitoulin covers about 2,766 square kilometres, and it holds 108 lakes of its own, including Lake Manitou, the largest lake on any freshwater island. Its name comes from the Anishinaabe word for spirit, and the island has been Anishinaabe territory for thousands of years. Six First Nations communities are here today, among them Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory on the eastern peninsula, one of the few unceded reserves in Canada, and M’Chigeeng at the island’s centre.
Cup and Saucer and the island’s quiet roads
The Cup and Saucer Trail, about 20 km west of Little Current, climbs the Niagara Escarpment where it crosses the island and follows the top of 70 m cliffs for several kilometres. The full network is around 12 km, with a short adventure section that involves ladders and a squeeze through a rock cleft. From the rim the view runs across the North Channel to the La Cloche hills on the mainland, and in late September the maples below are at their peak. The trail is managed by a local conservation body; there is a small parking fee and no facilities.
Elsewhere the island rewards aimless driving. Bridal Veil Falls at Kagawong drops 11 m over a limestone lip into a pool you can walk behind. Providence Bay, on the south shore, has the island’s best sand beach and a long boardwalk. Wiikwemkoong hosts one of the largest powwows in eastern Canada on the August long weekend, open to visitors who come respectfully, and the cultural tours run by the community offer a far better introduction to Anishinaabe history than any plaque. In September, thousands of sandhill cranes stage in the island’s fields before flying south.
The Bruce Peninsula and the Grotto
Back across the ferry, Bruce Peninsula National Park protects the tip of the escarpment where it plunges into Georgian Bay. The Grotto, a sea cave in the cliffs near Cyprus Lake, is the park’s most famous spot, and its popularity has forced a system: from May to October, visiting requires a timed parking reservation, booked online well ahead, for a four-hour window. The walk from the lot is about 1.5 km each way through cedar forest, and the water in the cave is the colour of a swimming pool and roughly as cold as the lake, which is to say cold. Nearby Indian Head Cove and the boulder beach are just as fine and slightly less crowded.
Tobermory is also the northern terminus of the Bruce Trail, which runs nearly 900 km along the escarpment from Niagara, and the base for Fathom Five National Marine Park, where glass-bottom boats visit the shipwrecks in Big Tub Harbour and the sea stacks of Flowerpot Island. The town is about 300 km from Toronto, a four-hour drive, and it fills completely in summer. Campsites at Cyprus Lake and backcountry sites along the shore are reserved months ahead.
Killarney and the white quartzite
At the northern end of the bay, about 100 km southwest of Sudbury at the end of Highway 637, Killarney Provincial Park protects the La Cloche Mountains, a range of white quartzite ridges that are among the oldest rock in the region. The white shows through the pines like snow, and the lakes between the ridges are startlingly clear, partly a legacy of the acid rain that once killed their fish and has since been reversed. The park has been a painters’ landscape for a century, and it is easy to see why.
The Crack is the day hike everyone does: about 6 km return from a trailhead on the highway, ending with a scramble up through a cleft in the quartzite to a ledge overlooking Killarney Lake and the whole southern range. Silver Peak, 539 m, the highest point in the park, is a longer day usually reached by canoe. Most of Killarney is canoe country, with portage routes linking lakes across the interior, and the George Lake campground at the road’s end serves as the base. Reservations open five months ahead and the summer weekends go within minutes.
Wildlife, seasons and the loop
- Massasauga rattlesnakes, Ontario’s only venomous snake, live on the Bruce and around Georgian Bay; they are shy, protected and rarely a problem if left alone.
- Black bears are common in Killarney and on Manitoulin; use the bear-proof storage at campgrounds.
- Sandhill cranes gather on Manitoulin in September; loons, ospreys and bald eagles are on every large lake.
- Late May and June are green, cool and buggy; July and August are warm and full; mid-September to Thanksgiving is our favourite, with colour, empty trails and water still warm enough for a brave swim.
- From Toronto, drive north to Tobermory, take the ferry, cross Manitoulin to Little Current, then continue to Killarney and Sudbury to end with the quartzite.
The whole coast, from the caves of the Bruce to the white ridges of La Cloche, is stitched together by the water, which changes colour every hour and every season. It is freshwater, and the scale of it is hard to explain to people from the sea. We usually stop trying and simply tell them to take the ferry.