Limehouse Conservation Area
The Bruce Trail through old lime kilns and a crevice called the Hole-in-the-Wall that you climb down a ladder into. Free, and genuinely unusual.
Halton Hills
Georgetown and Acton, joined by a township and separated by fifteen minutes of farmland. Escarpment, Bruce Trail, two proper main streets, and a leather-tanning history that Acton has turned into a festival.
Stock photograph. Not Halton Hills.
Two small towns and a lot of green
Feels like
60 min by GO
To Union Station
A main street, a trail and a garden
Go for
How to say it
Halton Hills is the municipality; the towns are Georgetown and Acton, and those are what people say. Acton is “Leathertown” on the signs and residents use it entirely without irony.
Heads up
The Kitchener GO line through Georgetown has limited off-peak service, and Acton's station has fewer trains again. Work out which one you would actually use, and check its timetable rather than the line's.
Who to go and watch
The clubs, and which ones you can actually get in to see.
OJHL junior hockey
Georgetown Raiders
Junior A in a rink at the edge of the town it is named for. The kind of crowd where the announcer knows people by name.
Where to actually go
5 things worth knowing about Halton Hills.
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.
John Elliott Theatre
A 260-seat playhouse in the Georgetown cultural centre, home to two long-running community companies and a film programme.
Downtown Georgetown
Main Street South: independents, a bakery, a bookshop and a farmers' market on Saturdays through the warm months.
Hungry Hollow & Silver Creek
A ravine running right through Georgetown, with trails linking up to the Bruce. You can walk out of the town centre and be in it in ten minutes.
Acton's Mill Street
The smaller town, and the more surprising one. A short main street, a lake at the end of it, and a tannery history it wears proudly.
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
Georgetown Highland Games
Pipe bands, heavy events and a parade, running since the 1970s. One of the largest Scottish gatherings in Ontario.
June
Acton Leathertown Festival
Acton closes Mill Street for a day of stalls, music and a parade, named for the tanneries that built the town.
September
Georgetown Fall Fair
An agricultural fair going back to 1846: livestock, a midway, and a demolition derby taken very seriously.
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.