Journey Across Northern Ontario | Part One of a Road-trip Exploring Northern Ontario 

Thank you Aven!

Thank you Casey 😊

Thanks Kathleen

Have given you a subscribe, btw, and will have a look through some of your videos soon!

@@BritHikesOntario Thanks for the sub!

Hi Bradley - I know OF you :) I haven't done any wilderness camping, so I can only really give you some general thoughts. I would start with deciding whereabouts in Canada you want to visit. It is a huge place. The distance from Vancouver to Toronto is just about the same as the distance from Toronto to London, UK. Sorry if all this is obvious but coming from a small island, as I did, it takes a little getting used to! I've been here nearly 13 years and still haven't made it out to the West yet. So maybe do some research to decide which region you are interested in. West Coast (BC, Alberta), Central Canada (Ontario, Quebec) or East Coast/Maritimes (Nova Scotia, Newfoundland etc). They all offer different things. I don't want to put you off if you are dead-set on the idea, but REAL wilderness is going to be logistically difficult. By definition, there are no airports. In Ontario, you are looking at losing 2 or 3 days of your vacation spent driving to some of the further reaches that I get to in this video. Or connecting to a smaller airport and still having to drive some (if they even much in the way of rental services). Or... maybe using some kind of chartered private plane service. It might be different in the west, but I wouldn't know. I'd suggest some kind of compromise Here are some (Ontario biased) suggestions: 1) Back-country camping - camping in a place with not too many amenities. Most of the population lives in the south of Ontario not far from The US border. Anywhere around 3hrs north or further will be fairly quiet. 2) "Crown Land" camping. Land owned by the governemnt. You'd have to research this. There's probably maps, but I haven't looked into it. You're allowed to camp on it. I think as a non-resident, you'd need some kind of permit. The quality of this land probably varies quite a lot. I've seen people bushwhacking through it which doesn't look fun to me, but maybe you're down for that! 3) My prefered option would just to be to go to a provincial or national park. If you pull up Google Maps and look at Algonquin Park... the vast majority of people only ever visit the bits that are near the main highway that passes through. But there are many, many more miles to explore (and camp in) that are only accessible by canoe. Final thoughts: Do some research on what time of year you want to come. Many of the parks, pretty much anywhere, will be busy in the peak of summer. And it is also very hot and humind here in the summer. Mosquitos (and black flies, and horse flies) through early summer to early autumn are a real pain in the arse. Autumn is my favourite time of year. Less people around. The colours of leaves here are much more vibrant than The UK. Things are all up-in-the air with Covid-19 right now and I wouldn't necessarily count on things being fully back to normal next year. Speaking of Covid-19, bear in mind that suddenly everyone on the planet has suddenly decided that they are a big fan of the outdoors. Places are way busier right now, unfortunately. Sorry this is so long.

@@BritHikesOntario That's brilliant information thankyou! Well our plan was to to have a start and end destination in a national park sometime during the end of summer leaning towards autumn as we want to kyak but not in freezing waters! I'll be scouting around the next 6-8 months for a decent place to go but I'll be sure to ask you any question I need answering 👍 Only thing we was curious about is the wildlife as we was worried about having protection and Canadian laws on foreigners using live ammunition in a situation maybe with a bear or cougar etc as I've read mace doesnt always work...🤷🏻‍♂️

​@@bradj3474 If you are going to do Ontario, I'd recommend Algonquin Provincial Park. Your best chance of seeing moose and it is a great place to canoe once you get away from the main highway. You can rent canoes right at the park or from a nearby "outfitters". You then have the option of several other parks that are reasonably close such as Killarney or Killbear. Or Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, but that's about 14hrs drive. Those places all have camping and various degrees of hiking. I really wouldn't worry about wildlife attacks, they're incredibly, incredibly rare, especially if there is a group of you. I've seen 3 black bears during my time here and only because I was driving and moving too fast for them to hide. Each time I've seen them, they just ran away immediately, so quickly that I've never been able to get a good photo of one despite my very long wildlife camera lens. I've seen 3 wolves, again, just using the road as a shortcut, and they all looked scared and meek. I've seen about 4 coyotes (like a small wolf that is more into scavaging and lives closer to humans and the city) and one of them was pretty close... it ran past me in a small neighbourhood park... but it just completely ignored me. I'm not particularly afraid of even larger animals here and generally love having encounters with them, so with the cougar, I was whistling and shouting "Oi!" at it. It didn't care at all. It just kept going and didn't even look at me. I'm very keen on tracking animals and looking for signs of their presence and my wife got her biology degree in Northern Ontario - so we are...ahem... always looking out for animal shit and stuff like that :) I've seen SIGNS of black bears and wolves, such as very fresh shit, footprints, and scratch marks on trees where animals have relieved their itching, way more often than I have seen the animals themselves. That's because they almost always know about us way before we know about them and they will disappear and avoid us. Even moose won't generally stick around too long before running or walking away. Most of my encounters have been because the animals are feeling lazy and using the road as a shortcut. Cougars (aka Mountain Lions) and Grizzly bears (which are larger than Black bears) are only found in the west. Cougars are fairly endangered and encounters with them are very rare. Researchers have to put radio collars on them and still struggle to find them. I've heard of encounters... there's probably even a couple of videos of it happening on youtube... but the reason those videos are so interesting is exactly because it's such a rare occurrence. I don't really know the laws on firearms, but there are a lot of barriers to a citizen let alone a non-resident. I think you'd have to be supervised and sponsored by someone that has a license and you can expect to pay a lot for something like that. Unlike The USA, guns here are used for hunting and not for protection against other humans, so they are much more restricted (and gun crime is significantly lower). I don't know for sure, but I seriously doubt that you are allowed to carry a gun of any kind in a provincial park where hunting is also not allowed. Even a citizen has to take a test and then send off for a license. Guns have to be kept securely and locked at all times that they are not in use, etc.. etc... I'd honestly just forget about having a firearm. The general advice for wildlife encounters is to make noise, yell at the animal, make yourself seem large, and if necessary, throw stuff like rocks at it if it shows aggression or doesn't leave. I wouldn't even bother with pepper spray. I'm given pepper spray by my work (I'm a postman) for if I'm attacked by someone's dog... But realistically, by the time I have rummaged through my crap, taken the time to aim it at the dog and not myself, and then sprayed it, the dog will already be on me and even if it isn't, the wind is likely to blow most of the spray away. If you do all the stuff like warn animals away ahead of time the chances of ending up face to face with something are absolutely minuscule. If you feel like you still need something to feel safe in that one-in-a-billion-chance, then I would recommend blasting one of those small pressurised air horns at it.