Ontario Travel Guide

Ontario is Canada's Great Lakes province — Toronto's skyline on one end, Niagara Falls thundering nearby, and to the north, Georgian Bay and the Bruce Peninsula's freshwater cliffs, plus thousands of lakes that define the province's "cottage country."

Toronto Pearson International is the main gateway. Georgian Bay and the Bruce Peninsula (the diving hub) are a few hours' drive north of the city.

Summer (June–September) is prime season for freshwater diving and boating on the Great Lakes. Fall (September–October) turns cottage country into a foliage destination. Winter is genuinely cold, with ice diving and skating taking over.

Late summer gives the warmest surface water and the clearest visibility for wreck diving in Georgian Bay, before the fall temperature drop.

Peameal bacon sandwiches and butter tarts are Ontario originals; Niagara's wine region (especially its ice wine) is a serious stop in its own right, and maple syrup from the province's sugar bushes rounds out the list.

Black bears and moose range through northern Ontario's forests, loons call across the lakes at dusk, and Point Pelee — the southernmost point in mainland Canada — is a major migratory bird stopover each spring and fall.

Fathom Five National Marine Park off Tobermory is the reason divers come to Ontario at all — remarkably clear, cold freshwater has preserved 19th-century shipwrecks in extraordinary condition, with no saltwater corrosion to speak of. It's some of the best freshwater wreck diving in the world, and entirely unlike anything on the ocean coasts.