Forks of the Credit
A provincial park of kettle lakes, a waterfall and the Bruce Trail running straight through. In October the road in is one of the best drives in Ontario.
Caledon
The GTA's back garden. Rolling hills, gravel roads, the Bruce Trail, and villages (Bolton, Caledon East, Inglewood, Alton) that carry on as though they are not half an hour from a six-lane highway.
Stock photograph. Not Caledon.
Countryside, on a Toronto payroll
Feels like
60–75 min, mostly by car
To Union Station
Land, trails and quiet
Go for
How to say it
CAL-uh-don, and almost nobody uses it on its own: Caledon covers close to 700 square kilometres. Say Bolton, or Caledon East, or Alton, and people will know exactly where you mean.
Heads up
There is no GO train. Everything is a drive, the side roads are your own problem after a snowfall, and a lot of properties run on a well and a septic system. Budget for both.
Who to go and watch
The clubs, and which ones you can actually get in to see.
OJHL junior hockey
Caledon Admirals
Junior A hockey in a town of villages, which means the crowd is genuinely local and somebody in it knows every player's parents.
Where to actually go
5 things worth knowing about Caledon.
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.
Albion Hills
Mountain biking and camping in summer, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing in winter, forty minutes from Brampton. Day passes, no membership.
Alton Mill Arts Centre
An 1881 stone mill full of working studios, galleries and a café. Artists are usually in and usually happy to be interrupted.
Belfountain
A village of about four hundred with a conservation area, a suspension bridge and a café that the entire cycling population of the GTA stops at.
Bolton's Queen Street
The largest of the villages, and where Caledon does its actual shopping and eating. Strongly Italian, and it shows in the bakeries.
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
Caledon Day
The town's flagship free festival: music, fireworks and the whole of Caledon East turning out. If you go to one thing here, this one.
September
Bolton Fall Fair
Run by the Albion and Bolton Agricultural Society since the 1850s. Livestock, a midway, and a demolition derby that is taken seriously.
October
Headwaters Arts Festival
A month of studio tours and exhibitions based out of the Alton Mill. Free, self-guided, and a very good excuse to drive the back roads in autumn.
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.