Toronto’s Distillery District is where Canada’s biggest city goes to drink, shop and pretend it’s 1860. And from here, Niagara Falls, Mennonite markets, the birthplace of Tim Hortons and the lakes of Muskoka are all within easy reach.
Nobody goes to Toronto for Toronto. That, at least, is what I was told before I went, usually by people from Montreal or Vancouver, who say “Toronto” the way Melburnians say “Sydney”. It’s a banking town, they said. All glass towers and men in fleece vests talking about mortgage rates. Go to Niagara, they said. Go to the lakes. Fly over the rest.
They were wrong, which is always a pleasure. And the place that proved them most wrong smells, faintly but unmistakably, of whisky.
In 1832, two brothers-in-law, William Gooderham and James Worts, started a small mill and distillery on the shore of Lake Ontario. By the 1860s, Gooderham & Worts was the biggest distillery on Earth, turning out more than two million gallons of whisky a year. One imagines the brothers-in-law got on very well at Christmas.
The whisky has long since stopped flowing, but the buildings stayed. Today the 13-acre site holds more than 40 Victorian industrial buildings, the largest surviving collection of its kind in North America. It’s a National Historic Site, and it’s entirely closed to cars. You walk on old brick laneways between red-brick warehouses, iron stairs and towering chimneys. It’s like wandering through a period drama that somebody forgot to pack up.
What’s clever, and very un-museum-like, is that it’s all still in use. The old malt houses and tank houses are full of galleries, boutiques, cafés, restaurants, a craft distillery and a chocolate maker. It’s lively without being frantic. On a crisp autumn afternoon, with a hot chocolate in one hand and a carrier bag of things I didn’t need in the other, I thought it was one of the most pleasant places I’d been in years.
Go hungry and wear comfortable shoes. The cobbles are historic, and so, after a couple of hours, are your feet.
At Christmas: From mid-November until late December, the district becomes the Distillery Winter Village, a European-style Christmas market with lights, a giant tree, mulled wine and enough gingerbread to sink a ship. It’s spectacular, and spectacularly busy. Go on a weekday, early. Check thedistillerywintervillage.com for dates and any weekend entry fees.
While you’re in town: St Lawrence Market, a short walk away, is one of the great food halls of the world. Try the peameal bacon sandwich, a Toronto institution. If you have a head for heights, the CN Tower is the city’s unmissable landmark, and the view from the top explains where everything is in about four seconds.
Distance from Toronto: About 130km, or 90 minutes’ drive. GO Transit trains run from Union Station, and day tours are plentiful.
There are two sides to Niagara Falls, and you want the Canadian one. That isn’t patriotism, it’s geometry: the Canadian side faces the falls and gets the full, front-on view of the thundering Horseshoe Falls.
You will get wet. Accept it. The Niagara City Cruises boat sails right into the mist at the foot of the falls, with everyone in matching plastic ponchos like a very damp cult. It’s loud, drenching and completely wonderful. Adult tickets are CA$47.95 plus tax, and boats run daily from May to November. Journey Behind the Falls takes you through tunnels in the rock to platforms beside, and almost underneath, the water.
The town itself, Clifton Hill, is neon, wax museums and fudge. Walk through it quickly, the way you’d walk past a busker you don’t intend to tip.
Then drive 20 minutes north to Niagara-on-the-Lake, which might be the prettiest small town in Canada. Think tree-lined streets, Victorian houses, hanging baskets and the Shaw Festival theatre. Around it are more than two dozen wineries, many famous for icewine, made from grapes left to freeze on the vine. It’s sweet, intense and expensive, and you’ll buy a bottle anyway.
Tip: Do the falls in the morning and the wineries in the afternoon. That way you’re dry by the time you start tasting, and you’re not driving back to Toronto. Book a tour or a driver.
Distance from Toronto: About 120km, or 90 minutes’ drive. The market is 15 minutes north of Kitchener-Waterloo.
You may have heard this called “Amish country”. Strictly speaking, the horse-and-buggy farmers you’ll see here are mostly Old Order Mennonites, close cousins of the Amish who share their plain dress, faith and distrust of motor cars. The area around St Jacobs is home to the largest Old Order Mennonite population in Canada. On the drive in, you’ll find yourself stuck behind a horse and buggy, and it will be the most relaxing traffic jam of your life.
The draw is the St Jacobs Farmers’ Market, Canada’s largest year-round farmers’ market, with more than 300 vendors across three buildings and a big outdoor market. It opens year-round on Thursdays (8am to 3pm) and Saturdays (7am to 3.30pm), with extra Tuesday markets in summer.
Buy the butter tarts. These are Ontario’s great contribution to world baking: a small pastry shell filled with butter, sugar and egg, somewhere between a treacle tart and a heart attack. The Mennonite bakers make the best ones. Also look for summer sausage, apple fritters, maple syrup, fresh cheese and hand-stitched quilts that cost more than your first car and are worth it.
Etiquette: Many Old Order Mennonites prefer not to be photographed. Ask first, and take no for an answer.
Distance from Toronto: About 70km, or an hour’s drive. GO trains run from Union Station.
First, what is Tim Hortons?
Imagine if Dennis Lillee had opened a chain of coffee and doughnut shops, and it had become so beloved that the nation measured its identity by it. That’s Tim Hortons.
Tim Horton was a tough, crew-cut defenceman for the Toronto Maple Leafs. In May 1964, he and a business partner opened a doughnut shop on Ottawa Street North in Hamilton. Horton died in a car crash in 1974, but the business took off. By 2023 there were nearly 5,700 Tim Hortons around the world, almost 3,900 of them in Canada. It’s where Canadians get their morning coffee, their afternoon snack, their road-trip fuel and, it sometimes seems, their sense of self.
The essential vocabulary:
“Timmies”: what everyone calls it.
A “double-double”: coffee with two creams and two sugars, Canada’s national drink.
Timbits: bite-sized doughnut balls, sold by the box. Dangerous.
“Roll Up the Rim”: the annual contest that once involved rolling up the rim of your paper cup to see if you’d won. Grown adults take it extremely seriously.
The original store on Ottawa Street North is still trading. It’s modest, a little worn, and completely charming, which makes it rather like the country. Have a double-double and a Timbit in the spot where it all began.
And the rest of Hamilton
Hamilton was once a steel town, and it hasn’t quite shaken off the reputation, but it’s having a moment. The Niagara Escarpment runs right through the city, giving it more than 100 waterfalls, and many are a short walk from a car park. Dundurn Castle, a grand 1830s mansion, is worth an hour. The Royal Botanical Gardens, just next door in Burlington, is worth a morning.
Distance from Toronto: About 200km, or two and a half hours’ drive north.
If Toronto is where Canadians work, Muskoka is where they’d rather be. This is cottage country: hundreds of lakes, granite islands, pine forests, wooden boats and summer “cottages” that are, in many cases, mansions owned by bankers and Hollywood stars. (Martin Short has a cottage on Lake Rosseau, the same lake as Windermere House. He’s Canadian (from Hamilton), and his cottage even featured on a commemorative silver coin. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell are widely reported, including by Forbes, to have a cottage on Lake Rosseau. Tom Hanks is reported to own a cottage on Lake Muskoka. Steven Spielberg is reported to own a place in the area, though no lake is given.) In autumn, the maples turn the hills every colour of a bushfire, without the fire.
The grande dame of the region is Windermere House, on the shore of Lake Rosseau. Guests have been coming since 1870, when a Shetland Islander called Thomas Aitken began taking in fishing parties. In 1996, the original building burned to the ground during the filming of the Hollywood thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight. Only the stone verandah survived. It was rebuilt in the same style and reopened in 1997, and today it has 56 rooms, a spa, a heated pool, a golf course nearby and a dining room looking straight down the lake.
Sit on the verandah with a drink as the sun drops behind the pines, watch the wooden launches come and go, and you’ll understand why Canadians would sell their grandmothers for a week up here.
A word to the wise: The Windermere Pub runs some excellent weeknight specials. Just don’t count on them if you’re staying in the hotel. They’re for the locals. (See my Crisp on Sunday column tomorrow, When it doesn’t pay to be a guest.)
Flights: There are no nonstop flights from Australia to Toronto. Air Canada flies from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne to Vancouver, with connections on to Toronto, which is about another four and a half hours. Qantas also flies to Vancouver. Allow around 20 to 24 hours door to door. You can also connect through US cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas or San Francisco, but you’ll need a US ESTA, even if you’re only passing through.
Entry: Australians flying into Canada need an Electronic Travel Authorisation (eTA). It costs CA$7 and you apply online at canada.ca. Use only the official government site, because copycat sites charge much more.
Time difference: Toronto is 14 to 16 hours behind eastern Australia, depending on daylight saving.
Money: Good news, for once. The Australian and Canadian dollars are almost level. At the time of writing, A$1 buys about C$0.98, and C$1 costs about A$1.02. A C$20 lunch costs you about A$20, so you can do the maths in your head. Remember that Canadian prices are shown before tax. In Ontario, 13 per cent HST is added at the till. On top of that, tipping of 15 to 20 per cent is expected in restaurants, bars and taxis. That C$20 lunch can quickly become C$27.
Getting around: The UP Express train runs from Toronto Pearson Airport to Union Station downtown in about 25 minutes. Toronto’s streetcars and subway are excellent for getting around the city. GO Transit trains reach Hamilton and Niagara Falls. For St Jacobs, Niagara-on-the-Lake wineries and Muskoka, you’ll want a hire car or a tour. Canadians drive on the right, and turning right at a red light is generally allowed after stopping, which will alarm you for the first few days.
When to go: September and October bring autumn colours, harvest markets, comfortable temperatures and fewer crowds. The Distillery Winter Village runs from mid-November to late December. Toronto winters are genuinely cold, often well below zero, so pack properly. Summer (June to August) is warm and humid, and Muskoka is at its liveliest.
Find out more: destinationtoronto.com, destinationontario.com, niagarafallstourism.com, stjacobsmarket.com, windermerehouse.com.
Prices and opening details were correct at the time of writing but may change. Check before you travel.
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