Experience the best of Barrie

Barrie sits on Kempenfelt Bay, an arm of Lake Simcoe, about 82 km north of Toronto in Ontario. The waterfront has a sandy beach, a marina and a long lakeside path, and the downtown streets climb the slope behind it, with galleries and cafés. In winter the bay freezes and anglers set up ice-fishing huts on the ice.

Snow Valley on the edge of town and Horseshoe Valley to the north give the area downhill skiing in winter. On Georgian Bay, Wasaga Beach is among the longest freshwater beaches in the world, and Midland, to the north, has a reconstruction of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, a seventeenth-century French Jesuit mission. Collingwood and the hills of the Blue Mountains lie farther along the bay.

Simcoe County farms supply apples, berries, potatoes and maple syrup to roadside stands, and whitefish and perch come out of the lake. Summer is warm and humid, the autumn colours peak in October, and winter brings cold, snow and heavy squalls off Georgian Bay.