Discovery Harbour
The most westerly town on Severn Sound is Penetanguishene, which holds Discovery Harbour, an ambitious reconstruction of the important British naval base established here in 1817. The principal purpose of the base was to keep an eye on American movements on the Great Lakes following the War of 1812, and between 1820 and 1834 up to twenty Royal Navy vessels were stationed here. Ships from the base also supplied the British outposts further to the west and, to make navigation safer, the Admiralty decided to chart the Great Lakes. This monumental task fell to Lieutenant Henry Bayfield, who informed his superiors of his determination “to render this work so correct that it shall not be easy to render it more so”. He lived up to his word, and his charts remained in use for decades. The naval station was more short-lived. By 1834, relations with the US were sufficiently cordial for the Navy to withdraw, and the base was turned over to the Army, who maintained a small garrison here until 1856.
The site
Staffed by enthusiastic costumed guides, Discovery Harbour spreads along a hillside above a tranquil inlet, its green slopes scattered with accurate reconstructions of everything from a sailors’ barracks to several period houses, the prettiest of which is the Keating House, named after the base’s longest-serving adjutant, Frank Keating. Only one of the original buildings survives – the dour limestone Officers’ Quarters, dating from the 1840s – but pride of place goes to the working harbour-cum-dockyard, where a brace of fully rigged sailing ships, the HMS Bee and HMS Tecumseth, have been rebuilt to their original nineteenth-century specifications.
Georgian Bay Islands National Park
The Georgian Bay Islands National Park consists of a scattering of about sixty islands spread out between Honey Harbour and Twelve Mile Bay, about 50km to the north. The park’s two distinct landscapes – the glacier-scraped rock of the Canadian Shield and the hardwood forests and thicker soils of the south – meet at the northern end of the largest and most scenic island, Beausoleil. Cruises of the waters surrounding the park’s islands depart from Penetanguishene, Midland and Parry Sound, but the only way of making landfall is from Honey Harbour, little more than a couple of shops, a liquor store and a few backcountry houses just 13km northwest of Port Severn across the mouth of the river and along Route 5. Several of the park’s islands can be reached by boat from Honey Harbour, but Beausoleil is the obvious objective.
Hiking in the park
Beausoleil Island has twelve short hiking trails, including two that start at the Cedar Spring landing stage, on the southeastern shore. These include the Treasure Trail (3.8km), which heads north behind the marshes along the edge of the island, and the Christian Trail (1.5km), which cuts through beech and maple stands to the balsam and hemlock groves overlooking the rocky beaches of the western shoreline. At the northern end of Beausoleil, within comfortable walking distance of several other jetties, are the Cambrian (2km) and Fairy (2.5km) trails, two delightful routes through the harsher scenery of the Canadian Shield. Nearby, just to the west, is the Dossyonshing Trail (2.5km), which tracks through a mixed area of wetland, forest and bare granite in the transitional zone between the two main landscapes.
The Massasauga rattlesnake
The endangered Massasauga rattlesnake is the only venomous snake in eastern Canada and a small population slithers around the Georgian Bay Islands National Park. Tan-coloured with dark brown blotches, an adult specimen is 50 to 70cm long with a heavy body and triangular head. In the unlikely event you stumble across one, give it a wide berth. The snake prefers marsh and mixed forest, so if you are hiking in this kind of habitat, be sure to pick up one of the advisory leaflets at a visitor kiosk.
Parry Sound
A chirpy little place, PARRY SOUND sits beside an inlet of Georgian Bay some 70km north of Port Severn – and well on the way to Sudbury. Parry Sound takes its name from the Arctic explorer Sir William Edward Parry, but it earned the nickname “Parry Hoot” on account of the swarms of water-bound log-drivers, who once chose this as the place to get drunk in. The logs and the loggers are long gone and Parry Sound is short on sights, but its slender harbour is overshadowed by a splendid Edwardian railway trestle bridge and the few blocks that make up the commercial centre – along and around James Street – are dotted with good-looking, old brick and stone buildings. Nowadays, the town is mainly popular for the boat cruises that leave the harbour bound for the Thirty Thousand Islands out in the bay and for its proximity to one of the region’s most impressive parks, Killbear.