After travelling around the world for 20 years, I have become obsessed with exploring my home country, Canada. Last summer I travelled to Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland, the Gaspé Penninsula of Quebec, and The Massassauga Provincial Park in Ontario.
Gros Morne has some of the most unique geology in North America. The Tablelands (above, left, in the background, and right) are flat mountains composed of pink rock called peridotite, which is toxic to vegetation. You can hike the tablelands if you wear heavy-duty boots and don't mind leaping from boulder to boulder and climbing up rockfaces.
The Gaspé Penninsula boasts high mountains you can easily hike up (Pic Brule, above left). Quebeckers are very outdoorsy, but they've heavily logged the Gaspé . Flying over it, you look down and see hundreds of logging roads and clear cuts. The good news is that windy Cap Chat on the coast is home to a windmill farm (above, right) that feeds into the electrical grid of Hydro Quebec.
The Massassauga is a relatively new provincial park just south of Parry Sound, Ontario, on the edge of the rugged Canadian Shield. It comprises a good chunk of Georgian Bay shoreland, hundreds of islands, and inland lakes and rivers. The best way to tour the Massassauga is to canoe in and camp overnight at designated campsites.
For more information on
any of these spots, please send me an email at: lynnes@interlog.com
(Photos of the Massassauga by C. Feeney)