General
Info:
If you're heading south from Severn Sound towards Toronto, you might consider a brief detour to
ORILLIA
, beside lakes Simcoe and Couchiching - and on Hwy 11, the road to Algonquin Provincial Park
. The town lies just to the west of the narrow channel that connects the two lakes, a waterway that was once a centre of Huron settlement. When
Samuel de Champlain
arrived here in 1615, he promptly handed out muskets to his Huron allies, encouraging them to attack their Iroquois rivals in order to establish French control of the fur trade - an intervention that was to lead to the destruction of the Jesuit outpost at Sainte-Marie in 1649
. Two hundred years later, a second wave of Europeans cleared the district's forests, and today Orillia is a trim little town of 27,000 citizens - part lakeside resort, part farming centre.
Orillia's humdrum
town centre
spreads out on either side of the main drag, Mississaga Street, which runs east from Hwy 11 to Lake Couchiching. At the foot of Mississaga,
Centennial Park
incorporates a marina, a harbour and a boardwalk that runs north to
Couchiching Beach Park
, complete with an Edwardian bandstand and a bronze statue of Champlain. However, the town's principal attraction, the
Stephen Leacock Museum
(mid-June to Aug daily 10am-7pm; Sept to mid-June Mon-Fri 10am-5pm; $7), is located some 3km southeast of the centre along the lakeshore - just follow the signs. Built in 1928 in the colonial style, with symmetrical pitched roofs and an ornate veranda, this was the summer home of the humorist and academic Stephen Leacock until his death in 1944. His most famous book,
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
, gently mocks the hypocrisies and vanities of the people of Mariposa, an imaginary town so clearly based on Orillia that it caused great local offence. Some of the rooms contain furnishings and fittings familiar to Leacock, others shed light on his career, interests and attitudes. The books may be engagingly whimsical, but you can't help but wonder about a man who had concealed spyholes in his library so that he could watch his guests and, perhaps worse, carefully positioned his favourite living-room chair so that he could keep an eye on his servants in the pantry via the dining-room mirror. After you've explored the house, take a few minutes for the easy stroll out along the adjacent wooded headland and drop by the giftshop, which sells almost all of his works.
As for practicalities, Orillia's
bus station
occupies the old railway station at the southern end of the town centre off Front Street South, 2km from the Leacock Museum. From here, it's around 800m north along Front Street South to the seasonal
tourist office
(mid-May to early June Mon-Fri 10am-7pm, Sat & Sun 8am-9pm; early June to Aug daily 7am-10pm), right by the harbour; the Chamber of Commerce year-round tourist office is at 150 Front St S (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm; tel 705/326-4424). There's no special reason to hang around after you've done the sights, but if you do decide to stay, both these offices have the details of local
accommodation
.
More Orillia travel guides (each guide contains specific sub-sections):
Orillia
