Escape to The Bruce
by Dr Howe Sim,
published in Guiding Stars
The long-term forecast
for southern Ontario that weekend was for heavy rain showers. So we hadn’t planned on venturing outdoors,
much less doing a day trip to a local park or tourist destination. When late
Friday evening rolled around and the weather channel changed its forecast to
warm and sunny for the entire mid-July weekend, we decided to get up early the
next morning and head up to the northern tip of Bruce Peninsula, an area we had
heard great things about but never before visited.
Situated between
Georgian Bay and the main Lake Huron basin, the Bruce Peninsula is most easily
traversed by Highway #6, which connects the towns of Wiarton at its southern
end with Tobermory at its northernmost tip. From Toronto, the drive to
Tobermory takes about 4 to 4½ hours. Named after a fishing village on
Scotland’s Isle of Mull, Ontario’s equally friendly village of Tobermory
features many quaint shops, outfitters, restaurants, and galleries, most of
which line Little Tub Harbour, the town’s business centre.
General Eclectic is one of many quaint
stores that line Tobermory’s Little Tub Harbour
Despite my wife’s
initial urge to acquaint herself with these stores, we wisely decided to first
find lodging for the night. The best way to do so, for those who haven’t
pre-booked accommodation, is to contact the Tobermory Chamber of Commerce at
519-596-2452 or visit www.tobermory.com. They will tell you which motels, inns,
B&B’s, and campgrounds have vacancies. We were on our way to the Chamber of
Commerce when we fortuitously drove by the Bruce Anchor Motel (tel:
519-596-2555; www.bruceanchor.com). As soon as we spotted their ‘Rooms
Available’ sign, we pulled into the parking lot and booked ourselves a room for
the night (which happened to be the last one available in town that weekend).
We were very pleased with the motel, which features 37 clean, well-maintained,
air-conditioned units with cable TV, 5 cottages, and private waterfront
property for swimming, diving, and sunbathing.
Once we booked our room,
we headed back to Little Tub Harbour to arrange a tour of Fathom Five National
Marine Park, Canada’s first national marine conservation area. We promptly
located the Blue Heron Company booth (tel: 519-596-2999; www.blueheronco.com)
on the north side of the harbour, and booked the next available cruise to
picturesque Flowerpot Island. Various tours are available, but if you wish to
spend a few hours exploring Flowerpot Island on foot, try to schedule an
earlier departure time.
On leaving Little Tub
Harbour at 12:15 PM, our first stop was the nearby Big Tub Harbour, where we
had an opportunity to view the 140-year-old lighthouse and two of Fathom Five’s
mid-nineteenth century shipwrecks. Those interested in a closer (ie.
underwater) look at these and more of the park’s extraordinarily well-preserved
wrecks will find that Tobermory offers some of the best freshwater diving
opportunities in the world. Little Tub Harbour is home to dive shops, dive
charter boats, a Diver’s Registration Centre, as well as an excellent search
& rescue Coast Guard station and even a hyperbaric dive chamber-equipped
medical clinic.
Big Tub Harbour’s lighthouse is a popular
place to sit and picnic
As you leave Big Tub
Harbour to begin the 45-minute boat ride to Flowerpot Island, admire the
multi-million dollar waterfront properties that line its shore. Some are
available for rent as cottages; check them out at www.rentcottage.com.
Big Tub Harbour is home to many multi-million dollar properties
The crowning jewel of Fathom Five’s
twenty islands, Flowerpot is located 6.5 km northwest of Tobermory, and
measures 2.1 km from east to west and 1.5 km from north to south. Your tour
boat will let you off at Beachy Cove, where you will have to pay an entry fee
as you would for any national park. Allow yourself at least an hour
(round-trip) for a hike out to the island’s two flowerpots, and at least two if
you wish to venture beyond to the lighthouse station, where snacks, beverages,
and souvenirs are available for purchase.
The flowerpots (or seastacks) for
which Flowerpot Island is famous were created by waves pounding at cracks in
the bedrock, gradually wearing away the softer lower limestone from the harder
dolomite top. Similar wave action is thought to have created the sea cave that
now sits high in the bluff above the flowerpots (also accessible via hiking
trail). For those who find that a few hours at Flowerpot Island is not adequate
to fully experience this must-see attraction, six tenting sites are available
for primitive camping. Fires are not permitted on the island, and advanced
registration at Tobermory’s Fathom Five Visitor Centre is required.
Allow yourself an hour for a casual visit to Flowerpot Island’s famous
seastacks
Those wanting to make an even
longer go of it can sign up as a volunteer light station keeper. In 1996, the
volunteer organization Friends of Fathom Five agreed with the Department of
Oceans and Fisheries to care for this century-old lighthouse from mid-May to
early October each year. Volunteers take visitors back to simpler times when
everyday chores were done without the benefit of electricity or running
water. They paint, keep up the gardens,
and provide interpretive services for the 10,000 or so visitors that arrive
each summer. If you would like to volunteer for the Lightkeeper’s Host Program,
contact Friends at 519-596-8181 or check out www.castlebluff.com.
Volunteer lightkeepers at Flowerpot Island take visitors back to simpler
times
At 4:15 PM, our tour boat picked us
up and returned us to Little Tub Harbour by 5:00 PM. We spent the rest of the
afternoon wandering checking out some of Tobermory’s shops, in particularly the
famous Sweet Shop (tel: 519-596-2705; www.sweetshop.ca) with its hand-made
fudge and specialty coffee bar, Circle Arts Gallery & Studio (tel:
519-596-2541; 14 Main Street South; www.circlearts.com) featuring some of
Canada’s finest artisans, and the quirky General Eclectic store (tel: 519-596-8393;
40 Bay Street) offering an interesting mix of books, collectibles, clothes, and
artwork.
After sharing a delicious order of
the signature Tobermory Fish Taco dish on the open air patio of The Fish &
Chip Place (tel: 519-596-8380; 24 Bay Street; www.thefishandchipplace.com), we
headed back to our motel. At about 9PM, we walked over to our motel’s ‘sunset
deck’, overlooking the entrance to Big Tub Harbour. There, we enjoyed one of
the most spectacular sunsets we’ve seen in a long time, while sipping on
glasses of white wine and snacking on our freshly made chocolate peanut butter
fudge.
The next morning, we again got off
to an early start, as the local forecast now indicated thunderstorms starting
in the afternoon. Today’s destination was the rugged Bruce Peninsula National
Park (www.pc.gc.ca/bruce), located just south of Tobermory. At over 140 sq km, this park is southern
Ontario’s largest remaining tract of natural habitat, and forms the core of
UNESCO’s Niagara Escarpment World Biosphere Reserve. It consists of limestone
cliffs, underground streams, and thousand-year-old cedar forests, and is known
for being home to over 43 species of orchids, 39 types of ferns, half of the
world’s dwarf lake irises, and most of Canada’s Indian plantains.
Bruce Peninsula National Park is home to ancient cedars
Since our time was limited, we
decided against visiting the Lake Huron side of the park, which features the
Singing Sands area with its gradual sloping beach. Instead we focused our
attention on the scenic 20 km stretch of rugged limestone Niagara Escarpment
cliff facing Georgian Bay. The main access point off Highway #6 is Cyprus Lake
Road, at the end of which is a 242-site campground (call 877-737-3783 for
reservations), a picnic area, and a system of hiking trails.
The Georgian Bay side of Bruce Peninsula National Park is famous for its
scenic limestone cliffs
From the day parking area, we took
the Georgian Bay Trail, a mere 1 km hike to the scenic lookouts. Near the shore
it joins up with the Bruce Trail; here we followed the trail to the left to get
to Indian Head Cove, a popular spot for swimmers and divers. Just a little
further along the trail we reached the Natural Arch and the Grotto, both again
products of centuries of wave action. Clinging onto the sides of these cliffs
we spotted white dwarf cedars, allegedly some of the oldest living objects on
the continent.
Cyprus Lake’s huge Grotto cave is a
popular photo op for visitors
Just as we reached the
Grotto, it began to rain. We quickly headed
back to the parking lot, by which time it had started to thunderstorm. Clearly
our day at Bruce Peninsula National Park had come to an end. However what we
had experienced of it till that point whet our appetite for future returns to
this beautiful rugged part of Ontario.