Lake Ontario

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June 20, 2026

Visited June 10 – 15, 2026

“Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings In the rooms of her ice-water mansion.
Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams, the islands and bays are for sportsmen.
And farther below, Lake Ontario takes in what Lake Erie can send her …” Gordon Lightfoot.

Jim and I came to the Great Lakes for new explorations. As you know, we like to take a different route all the time, whether it be by car or boat. This years venture is Ontario, Huron and Michigan.

Lake Ontario is the 2nd deepest lake, only Superior is deeper. Turns out Ontario is trout country; at least eastern Lake Ontario. I always think of trout as a stream fish, but in Lake Ontario, there are MANY fishing boats with 3 or 4 downriggers (electric fishing poles of sorts. Our boat came with one, but we got rid of it!) Fishermen, take folks out for the day and they go to the 50 foot deep line and catch lake trout weighting 30 – 40 pounds! It is nearly impossible to buy the fish from the lake, you have to go on a fishing trip if you want to eat one. Crazy.

I am so bad…. I kept planning to take a pic of a boat with downriggers, but kepts saying I would. Then we got to western lake Ontario and the dowriggers are gone. So, the link will give you an idea.

As Gordon tells us, Lake Erie has provided plenty of water for us to boat!

The Freedom of the Lake

We were happy to get out of the canals. One begins to feel rather hemmed in on canals. It is always a bit intimidating sailing out into big water (Ontario is nearly 200 miles long and just over 50 miles wide) after being in the relative safety and security of canals. It works up our adrenaline a bit. That along with so much talk about Great Lakes weather being so unpredictable was scaring us a bit.

The lighthouse at the exit from the Oswego Canal. Beyond, Lake Ontario. The tummy butterflies were active. Scared and excited all at once.
We would be happy with water like this all the time!

The Weather Knows Best

We took a 4 hour Great Lakes weather class this past winter and have basically learned, until we learn we are wrong, that we just ignore swell and understand wind and potential storms. There is basically no tidal current, minimal river current and thus minimal swell. If you know wind direction, you worry about fetch and wind speed. A continuous 10 knot wind can generate 1 – 3 foot waves (chop) depending on the duration of the wind and how much fetch (distance the wind can freely travel on the water) the wind has. Then you need to worry about wave period which is usually fairly short (1-8 seconds) and makes the water choppy; no gliding over wind generated waves. So far in 5 days on the water, we’ve had 4 very lovely smooth days and one snotty one. But we knew it was going to be somewhat uncomfortable. So, we read the weather correctly. We should not forget lightening of which we’ve rarely had to worry about. Yes, the snotty day had some close lightening but luckily nothing too close.

Funny how I rarely have pictures of the crappy weather. I was too busy on our snotty day cleaning up cat puke and then holding Chicha to calm her a bit. We did have fog one morning but this does not bother us as we have done lots of fog boating.

We Really are Too Big

Although these are big lakes and can have big water, the boats here tend to be 30-40 foot sailboats or powerboats in the 35 – 40 foot range; not trawlers (like ours) or boats in the 50 foot size. Thus, many marinas cannot accommodate us and if they can, it is tight to get in and to maneuver. We found this when we’ve been in Canada before, so expected it. Still, it is a bit of a challenge. My docking skills get better and better.

A typical small dock with our big boat. In really bad weather, I’m not sure I’d trust this particular dock to hold us, but it was just fine. This one was not too tricky to get into except for the post in the water 15 feet off our stern which I had to navigate around and the unknown shallowness off the starboard side. Easy peasy.

Gardens

When I started looking at things to do in Western Ontario, gardens, waterfalls and green space came up over and over. The Royal Botanical Garden is quite old and has 2 large gardens and many, many hiking trails thgrough open space and to waterfalls. These are not the size of Niagara, but are definitely big by New Mexico standards. And there are lots of them.

Our day at the gardens was to be rainy, and I mean LOTS of rain, it rained all night the night before. We decided we’d would do outside looking until it rained too much, then move to the conservatory and after that, we stopped in for afternoon tea. Then we topped it off with a visit to the rock garden in an old query.

The pretty manicured gardens. They had quite a few rose gardens and an interesting medicinal garden where we chatted with two gentlemen who drive an hour every Sunday morning to enjoy the gardens. They just sit and talk of life.
My lovely tea snacks. Jim had quiche. he was happey they provided a pot of coffee to complement my pot of tea.
And another rain shower. Rain jackets, rubber boots and umbrellas served us well and kept us dry.
I loved this sculpture in the rock garden. An accompanying sign tells us this piece is called Flora Hoininis which “… calls for an alternate underrstanding of what it means to the human – that humanity can only realize its full potential when it accepts that it is part of the natural world, and that we are not stewards of all things natural, but subjects of the complex ecosystem that surrounds us.”
Likely because of the rain, there was hardly anyone at the rock garden; we had it almost to ourselves. So very lovely. The larger Toronto and Hamilton area is full of garden spaces.

Niagara Falls

A big driver of our coming to western Lake Ontario was to go to Niagara Falls. No, not to take the boat over the falls, nor to drive the boat to the base of them, but to see them. Neither of us had ever been. Our base in Bronte, Ontario worked well. Our rental car took us to the botanical gardens and it was just over an hour to the falls. Everyone, both US and Canadians said go to the Canadian side, not the American side. The Canadians developed the entire area around the falls for tourism while the Americans designed for business. That says a lot. Our rental car would not get us to the American side anyway.

A classic picture of Horseshoe Falls. I thought it was much more impressive than the American Falls, or little Bridal Veil Falls.
Apparently rainbows are not uncommon at the falls; makes sense. We took this boat ride earlier in the day (when it was not quite so packed). One gets to go into the mist of the falls.
A lovely Redwing Blackbird enjoying the falls.
There are several tunnels you can walk through which get tytou to the base or behind the falls. The power is impressive.

The falls were more spectacular that I’d imagined. Truly magical and being able to get to the base of the falls, behind the balls and into the mist really gave us a sense of the power of the falls. Jim and I have also been to Iguazu Falls in South America and were very interested in which was bigger. Iguazu has many waterfalls all basically connected, nearly 300 versus 3 major falls at Niagara. But, the water volume as Niagara is much larger. We could feel that power!

This is a half mile long tunnel from the first power plant, now decomissioned and part of the Canada Niagara Park now. This was the water return to the river after being used by the 12 turbines from the plant. It was never more than half full.
Our behind the scenes tour took us to the control room for the plant. This plant became operational in 1904, was expanded and obviously had improvements to the control station. This control room became operationional in 1913.

An interesting tidbit… there are 3 power plants that use the river near the falls. To keep the falls as gorgeous as possible, there are ponds/lakes associated with each power plant. During the night after all the light shows and everyone as gone to bed, the “turn down” the falls, diverting water to the reservoirs to fill them while no one is watching. By morning, the falls are in their glory. So…. They do turn down the falls at night!

We’ve now headed to Toronto by boat, but you’ll have to wait for another post for that!

Mute Swans, although introduced are everwhere around Lake Ontario. So many cute babies.

Comments

Lake Ontario — 5 Comments

  1. Lovely and nice to visit but I am not sure if I could live with so much moisture. Talk about humidity and insects in a post at point please. Lots of info in the news right now of how it is tick season. Funny, when I have been on the boat with you in places with humidity, the only insect problem was in that marina on the coast near Savannah—zillion gnats

  2. Bugs have not been bad so far. We’ve had some bugs coat the non-wind side of the boat a couple times, but they left. We hada walk in New York on the Lake Ontario side where they sarned us of ticks. But, we’d not planned so just walked. There were mosquitos, so we moved quickly. But we were in a swampy area so one would expect mosquitos.

  3. Hello Sylvia and Jim! From Suzanne and Shelley, your SFCC workout buddies. 😊 We are finally home-free as of our closing yesterday, yippee! We are loving catching up with your adventures, you are a wonderful writer and photographer. And adventurers, of course!