Lakeview Park
A proper beach, a bandstand and a museum on the lake at the bottom of the city. Free parking, which is not nothing.
Oshawa
The city General Motors built, and it did not stop when the line slowed down. Oshawa has a university, a downtown full of live music, two professional teams in the same arena, and the cheapest waterfront in the GTA.
Stock photograph. Not Oshawa.
A working city with a lake
Feels like
55 min by GO
To Union Station
The most city for the least money
Go for
How to say it
OSH-a-wa. “North Oshawa” means up by the university, downtown means downtown, and “the Motor City” is on the signs and used without irony.
Heads up
Downtown is genuinely improving and still uneven block by block. Walk the specific street, after dark, before you sign anything: the difference between two neighbouring blocks here is real.
Who to go and watch
The clubs, and which ones you can actually get in to see.
OHL major junior hockey
Oshawa Generals
One of the most storied junior clubs in hockey: Bobby Orr and Eric Lindros both played here. Tickets cost less than a cinema seat and the building is properly loud.
NLL lacrosse
Oshawa FireWolves
Professional box lacrosse arrived in Oshawa in 2025. It is the smallest arena in the league, which makes it comfortably the loudest.
Where to actually go
5 things worth knowing about Oshawa.
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.
Parkwood National Historic Site
The McLaughlin estate: fifty-five rooms, formal gardens, and the house that car money built. It has stood in for a mansion in a lot of films you have seen.
Regent Theatre
A 1919 vaudeville house on King Street, restored, and now a working theatre and cinema. The best-looking room in Durham.
Canadian Automotive Museum
Two floors of Canadian-built cars in an old dealership downtown, including makes you have never heard of. Small, cheap, unexpectedly good.
Simcoe Street & downtown
Independent coffee, cheap and good Middle Eastern and Caribbean food, and live music most nights of the week within about four blocks.
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
Peony Festival
Twenty-odd years running, free, and genuinely spectacular: the botanical gardens hold one of the largest peony collections in the country.
June
Fiesta Week
Multicultural pavilions across the city, running since the 1970s. One passport, a week, and a lot of dancing.
August
Autofest
Classic cars filling Lakeview Park, in the city that built cars. It draws thousands and it is free to walk through.
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.