Exploring Ontario on the Trans Canada Trail: Our Walk, Stories, and Resources

Ontario on the Trans Canada Trail

Four Regions, Five Months, and More Than 2,500 Kilometres on Foot

When we returned to the Trans Canada Trail in Ottawa in May 2020, our #Hike4Birds across Canada was already unfolding very differently from anything we had imagined at Cape Spear the previous summer. After walking through the Maritime provinces and reaching Rivière-du-Loup, Québec, in November 2019, we had expected to resume our westward journey the following spring. Instead, the arrival of COVID-19, rotating restrictions on interprovincial travel, and uncertainty about what would be possible had forced us to reconsider our plans.

As a result, once opened back up to travel, Ontario became the beginning of our second hiking season, and what followed was one of the longest and most varied provincial experiences of our entire journey. Over approximately five months, we walked more than 2,500 kilometres of the Trans Canada Trail, exploring everything from peaceful railway corridors and the urban pathways of the Greater Toronto Area to the forests and lakes of Muskoka, the Canadian Shield, and the rugged northern shores of Lake Superior.

It was a province whose scale made simple descriptions almost meaningless. We could spend days following maintained recreational trails through farmland and small communities, navigate some of Canada's busiest urban landscapes, or find ourselves wading through flooded routes or struggling along northern highway shoulders. Along the way, we visited historic locations, learned about the people and industries that had shaped the province, encountered wonderful generosity, and discovered remarkable opportunities to connect with nature in places where we had not necessarily expected to find them.

By the time we reached the Manitoba border, we had divided Ontario into four broad regions simply to make sense of and share everything we had experienced: Eastern Ontario, the Greater Toronto Area, Muskoka and Central Ontario, and Northern Ontario. Each had its own distinctive combination of trails, landscapes, communities, challenges, and rewards.

Throughout our crossing, we recorded these experiences in daily travel journals, sharing photographs, natural history observations, local discoveries, and the practical realities of travelling across Canada's most extensive provincial section of the Trans Canada Trail. Since completing our coast-to-coast-to-coast #Hike4Birds, we have expanded this collection with regional planning guides, walking itineraries, cycling assessments, and reflections on what the journey taught us.

Whether you are considering a walk along the Cataraqui Trail, exploring Toronto's waterfront pathways, planning an adventure through Muskoka, or researching the remote footpaths of Lake Superior, we invite you to discover these resources and Come Walk With Us.

Follow Our Walk Across Ontario

Our complete Ontario Trans Canada Trail journal brings together the daily entries, photographs, experiences, and observations from our journey across the province.

Beginning with our return to the trail in Ottawa, our journals follow us westward through the Ottawa Valley, Lanark County, the Rideau corridor, and the beautiful Cataraqui and K&P Trails. These former rail trails led us through forests, wetlands, agricultural landscapes, and historic towns before eventually reaching Peterborough and the Kawarthas.

From Lindsay, the nature of our journey changed again as we entered the Greater Toronto Area. The Trans Canada Trail led us through the Beaver River Wetlands, Oak Ridges Moraine, Durham Region, and the urban landscapes surrounding Lake Ontario. After crossing Toronto, we continued through Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington, and Hamilton before following the Grand River corridor through Brantford, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Elora. Eventually, the route of the national pathway turned north through Caledon, Barrie, Midland, and Orillia.

Beyond Orillia, the forests, lakes, rocky ridges, and wetlands of Muskoka increasingly shaped our days. Here the trail itself became less predictable, often following rough ATV and snowmobile corridors, seasonal pathways, rural roads, and sections affected by flooding. Our travel journals preserve both the beauty of these landscapes and the frustration of navigating routes that did not always resemble what appeared on our maps.

Northern Ontario introduced yet another kind of journey. From North Bay westward, we continued along the TCT's Voyageur Cycling route through to Sudbury and along the North Channel of Lake Huron toward Sault Ste. Marie. Beyond lay the immense landscapes of Lake Superior, where the discontinuous nature of the Trans Canada Trail required considerable logistical adjustments. We explored Lake Superior Provincial Park,  the Casque Isles Trail, Nipigon River region, and Kabeyun Trail in Sleeping Giant Provincial Park before continuing toward Thunder Bay, Kenora, and eventually Manitoba.

Our reflection, The Trans Canada Trail in Ontario: Why One Province Became Four Stories, provides an introduction to these different regions and explains why we came to understand Ontario as several distinct walking experiences rather than one continuous trail.  Readers can follow the complete journey chronologically, explore an individual region, or begin with one of the shorter feature trails and regional reflections before returning to the original daily journals.

Planning a Walk or Cycle Across Ontario

For those considering their own adventures on the Trans Canada Trail, we have assembled several resources examining the practicalities of travelling through Ontario on foot or by bicycle.

Because of the province's enormous size and geographical diversity, we organized our planning research into four regional guides. Our Eastern Ontario planning guide explores the route from Ottawa through the Kawarthas and Greater Toronto Area toward Brantford, while our Muskoka and Central Ontario guide examines the connections through the Grand River region, Simcoe County, Muskoka, and the approach toward North Bay.

For those travelling farther north, our Northern and Northwestern Ontario planning guide addresses the considerably different challenges of longer distances, more limited services, highway connections, remote trail sections, and the geography surrounding Lakes Huron and Superior.

We have also prepared a separate Southwestern Ontario planning guide, examining the routes through Niagara and the southwestern portion of the provincial network. These sections form part of Ontario's extensive Trans Canada Trail system, although we did not walk all of them during our main cross-province journey.

Complementing these regional resources, our Ontario walking itinerary documents our daily stages, distances, interruptions, and the time required to make our way across the province. Our article Can You Cycle the Trans Canada Trail in Ontario? examines the opportunities and limitations of cycling a network that includes excellent rail trails and urban pathways alongside roads, rugged wilderness footpaths, and extensive water routes.

For a broader introduction, our guide to understanding the Trans Canada Trail in Ontario considers how the provincial route is organized, the differences between its major regions, and the challenges of travelling across such an extensive network.

These resources are intended to help future visitors appreciate the possibilities and limitations of the route rather than prescribe a particular adventure. Our principal crossing took place in 2020, and current trail conditions, access arrangements, camping regulations, services, and route alignments should always be confirmed before setting out.

Discovering Ontario's Birds and Wildlife

Birding and encouraging people to reconnect with nature remained central to our #Hike4Birds throughout Ontario. Few provinces offered such an extended opportunity to observe how wildlife, habitats, and seasonal conditions changed along a continuous journey.

Our regional accounts, Birding and Wildlife on the Trans Canada Trail in Eastern Ontario, Birding and Wildlife Across the Greater Toronto Area, Birding and Wildlife Through Muskoka, and Birds and Wildlife Across Northern Ontario on the Trans Canada Trail, bring together the observations recorded each day on the Trans Canada Trail and published in our daily hiking accounts.

A separate provincial overview, Birding, Wildlife, and Nature on the Trans Canada Trail in Ontario, considers the larger patterns that emerged across the province.

In Eastern Ontario, wetlands, agricultural landscapes, and the forests of the Frontenac Arch offered memorable encounters with Bobolinks, warblers, turtles, porcupines, and other wildlife. Through the Greater Toronto Area, urban parks, ravines, restored wetlands, and waterfront pathways demonstrated that remarkable natural experiences could still be found within densely populated landscapes.  By comparison, the Muskoka region brought a different relationship with nature, as lakes, beaver ponds, and forests became more continuous and Common Loons, woodland birds, and signs of larger mammals increasingly accompanied our journey. Farther north, the shorelines of Lakes Huron and Superior provided opportunities to witness the changing seasons, culminating in remarkable autumn bird migration around Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.

Together with our daily journals, these regional accounts preserve what we observed while walking through Ontario from spring into autumn, illustrating how much natural diversity can be encountered simply by travelling slowly and paying attention.

Reflections from Canada's Largest Provincial Trail Network

Ontario changed our understanding of the Trans Canada Trail in ways that were difficult to appreciate when looking at a national map. The province contained some of the most enjoyable and accessible recreational pathways of our journey, but it also included long road connections, difficult trail conditions, remote wilderness footpaths, and substantial gaps where paddling routes or other arrangements complicated the possibility of travelling continuously on foot.

The contrast between these experiences became particularly apparent as we moved north. Eastern Ontario's extensive rail-trail systems and Toronto's urban greenways gradually gave way to the challenging surfaces and changing landscapes of Muskoka. Beyond North Bay, the distances between communities, the demands of northern highways, and the difficulties of connecting individual trail sections increasingly shaped our progress.

Our reflections on hiking in Eastern Ontario, trekking across the Greater Toronto Area, exploring Muskoka, and venturing across Northern Ontario revisit the distinctive experiences of these regions, while the original daily journals preserve the challenges, discoveries, and ordinary moments as they unfolded.

Ontario also encouraged us to reconsider what it meant to explore somewhere familiar. We passed through communities and landscapes that we had previously visited by car, yet walking introduced us to histories, natural environments, and local perspectives that we had never fully appreciated. Sometimes the greatest discoveries were not in remote wilderness but in neighbourhood parks, small towns, historic railway corridors, and places we had previously passed without stopping.

Looking back after completing our journey across Canada, Ontario remains one of the clearest examples of both the opportunities and contradictions of the national trail. It demonstrated how a network of local pathways can connect extraordinary landscapes and communities, while also revealing the substantial challenges that remain for anyone hoping to follow that network over long distances.

Come Walk With Us Across Ontario

Today, with our coast-to-coast-to-coast #Hike4Birds complete, we hope these collections offer something for anyone interested in exploring Ontario and the Trans Canada Trail. Some readers may be planning a short walk along the Cataraqui Trail or Waterfront Trail, while others may be researching a longer journey through Muskoka or Northern Ontario, and still others may be interested in the province's birds, natural history, communities, and cultural landscapes.

Our complete Ontario archive remains the best place to discover the full collection of daily journals, photographs, regional planning guides, itineraries, resources, and reflections. We invite you to begin wherever your interests lead you, whether beside the Ottawa River, among the wetlands of the Frontenac Arch, along the busy shores of Lake Ontario, in the forests of Muskoka, or on the rugged trails overlooking Lake Superior.

For us, Ontario represented one of the longest and most complex chapters of a journey that would eventually carry us from the Atlantic to the Pacific and north to the Arctic Ocean. By the time we reached the Manitoba border in September 2020, we had walked through five very different provincial regions of Canada and discovered that the challenges of the Trans Canada Trail could change dramatically from one day to the next.

From Ontario, we invite you to continue exploring our journey into Manitoba, where the Canadian Shield, prairie landscapes, waterways, and communities would introduce us to another distinct chapter of the national trail.

Thank you for joining us, whether you followed our Ontario journey in 2020 or are discovering #Hike4Birds for the first time.

See you on the trail!