Sibbald Point Provincial Park
A proper sand beach on Lake Simcoe with a campground behind it. Day passes in summer, and it is the busiest place in Georgina for eight weeks of the year.
Georgina
Lake Simcoe, and everything that comes with it: ice huts in February, beaches in July, and three towns (Keswick, Sutton and Jackson's Point) that were cottage country long before they were commuter country.
Stock photograph. Not Georgina.
Cottage country, year round
Feels like
80–90 min
To Union Station
A lake at the end of your street
Go for
How to say it
Jor-JEE-na, and say the community rather than the town. Keswick is KEZ-wick, with the W silent, and getting that right the first time will genuinely surprise somebody.
Heads up
It is the furthest corner of the GTA and there is no GO train: a bus meets the train at East Gwillimbury. This is a place to live, not a place to commute from five days a week.
Who to go and watch
No club of its own.
Georgina's sport is on the water and then on the ice over it. The ice-hut colonies off Jackson's Point are among the largest in Ontario, and perch fishing through a hole in February is a genuine local season.
Where to actually go
5 things worth knowing about Georgina.
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.
Jackson's Point
A pier, a beach and a short strip of independents behind it. The most cottage-town block in the GTA, and busy from May.
Stephen Leacock Theatre
A 295-seat theatre in Keswick, open since 1985 and named for the humorist who summered nearby. Touring music and local theatre.
The ROC
The Recreational Outdoor Campus: a tubing hill, a ski hill and a bike park run by the town itself. Cheap, and unusually good for a municipal facility.
Sutton's High Street
The oldest of the three towns, with a river through it and a main street that still has a hardware shop on it.
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”.
February
Georgina Winter Carnival
Ice, fire pits, and the whole town outdoors in the coldest month. This is how a lake town handles February.
January–March
Ice fishing season
Hut operators run out of Jackson's Point and Virginia Beach once the ice is safe. You can rent everything, including the hut and the heater.
August
Sutton Fair & Horse Show
A century and a half of agricultural fair: livestock, a midway, and one of the biggest horse shows in the region.
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.