Spencer Smith Park & the Brant Street Pier
The waterfront park in the middle of downtown, with a pier out into the lake and something programmed on it most weekends of the year.
Burlington
Technically Halton, spiritually its own thing. Burlington sits between the lake and the escarpment, with the country's largest botanical garden on one side and its largest ribfest on the other, and it turns up near the top of the best-place-to-live lists most years.
Stock photograph. Not Burlington.
Lake on one side, cliff on the other
Feels like
50–60 min by GO
To Union Station
A waterfront downtown that is actually busy
Go for
How to say it
BUR-ling-ton. The waterfront is “the pier” and Spencer Smith Park is just “Spencer Smith”. And no, it is not part of Hamilton: that one gets a look.
Heads up
The GO ride is long and the QEW at rush hour is longer. Burlington works beautifully if you work in Halton or Hamilton, and much less well if you are downtown Toronto five days a week.
Who to go and watch
The clubs, and which ones you can actually get in to see.
OJHL junior hockey
Burlington Cougars
One of the oldest junior clubs in the league. Fifteen dollars, a small rink, and a crowd that has been coming for decades.
Where to actually go
5 things worth knowing about Burlington.
Public places, parks, markets and the streets the independents are actually on. Nothing here is invented, and nothing here is a photograph of somewhere else.
Royal Botanical Gardens
The largest botanical garden in Canada: 2,400 acres across four sites, with the lilac collection in May drawing people from three provinces.
Burlington Performing Arts Centre
Two rooms, a full touring programme, and (for the architecture-minded) the only freestanding certified-green performing arts centre in the country.
Bronte Creek Provincial Park
A provincial park inside the city limits: a working heritage farm, ravine trails, and an enormous outdoor pool in summer.
Brant Street & Village Square
Downtown's independents cluster on and just off Brant, and the patios run right down to the water. Busy on a weekday, which is the real test.
The year
What comes round every year.
Keyed to a month, never to a date. Dates move, and a page that prints last year's is worse than one that says “September”.
June
Children's Festival
A long-running weekend at Spencer Smith Park given over entirely to families. Free, and it takes the whole waterfront.
September
Canada's Largest Ribfest
Labour Day weekend at Spencer Smith Park, run by Rotary for three decades and genuinely the largest of its kind. Free to walk in.
November–January
Festival of Lights
The whole waterfront lit for two months. It is free, it is on your doorstep, and it is the thing that makes December bearable.
HelloGTA.com
The GTA is enormous and most of it is unknown to everybody.
Including the people who have lived here twenty-five years. That is the whole brief: twenty-nine guides, and a question a week put to the region.