Canada 2025 Part Five: Bruce Peninsula, Georgian Bay, Tobermory, Owen Sound

By Michael Downing
_{All photos by Michael Downing and Jacklyn Downing except as otherwise noted}

North to “The Bruce’

We left our rustic cabin in Goderich and headed directly toward the Bruce Peninsula. Known to locals as “The Bruce,” this segment of land juts out northwestwards from the rest of Southwestern Ontario, pointing towards Manitoulin Island.

Manitoulin Island, as I’ve heard from my Canadian friends, is “the largest freshwater island in the world.” Apparently, you can put your car on a ferry and head over to South Baymouth, Ontario in order to explore the island. That wasn’t in the cards for us today, but perhaps in the future. We’d need to check on 10′ clearance for the van.

As we drove north, towards Bruce Peninsula National Park and Tobermory, we noticed at least a dozen signs that said, “Speed limit enforced by aircraft,” and advising extreme penalties for speeding on Highway 6, such as a $10,000 penalty for going 50 km/h over the speed limit.

“What’s that about?” we both wondered.

Turns out there’s code:

Enforcement: “The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) actively patrols…including using aircraft surveillance…curbing excessive speed, tailgating, and unsafe passing due to a history of serious and fatal collisions.”

Stunt Driving: “‘Stunt driving’ (over 50km/h)…carries severe penalties, including an immediate 30-day license suspension and 14-day vehicle impoundment.”

We paid close attention to our speed and made our way up to Bruce Peninsula National Park Visitor’s Centre, where we grabbed a map and took a short walk out to Georgian Bay.

Georgian Bay and Tobermory

Georgian Bay is huge. Might as well be the sixth Great Lake. It is 80% the size of Lake Ontario. I had seen it on maps, but you never really understand the scope of something until you visit. We wandered out the gorgeous path, took some pictures, and doubled back to the Visitor’s Centre.

By this time it was raining, but we had gear, so we decided to take the 15-minute walk to Tobermory, which was nice. We walked along Bay Street, browsed the stores, and had ice cream at the Sweet Shop. We wandered down to the docks and then headed back to the van.

‘Stunt Drivers’

We set the nav for Owen Sound and began the trip south. It was then we began to understand why there are so many attempts to enforce speed on “The Bruce.” It’s a two-lane highway, and traffic moves along just fine, except for the occasional slow RV, but there is a fairly steady stream of “stunt drivers” who are ready to pass at extremely high rates of speed.

It’s terrifying.

We would watch them emerge behind us, headlights popping up through the light rain like luminescent eyeballs, and then they would start passing, weaving in and out, sometimes passing a dozen cars in a single stretch. It’s absolutely ridiculous and those drivers should definitely face harsh consequences for putting everyone in danger.

We remained patient and let the maniacs go flying by and eventually made our way to Owen Sound.

Owen Sound

After the rustic cabin experience of Goderich, Owen Sound was like an oasis. We drove into town and found the Best Western Inn on the Bay.

Hotels for me are often problematic because bed sheets have way too much bleach and the carpets have too much disinfectant. The cleaning agents are really pretty fierce–it’s no wonder people can’t sleep in hotel rooms. The enclosed environment is essentially hostile to organic organisms, including me.

To our delight, there was no overwhelming smell–just clean. Clean sheets, clean carpet, clean countertops, everything clean. The staff were friendly and the air conditioning worked. This may be the best hotel I’ve ever stayed in and I’ve stayed in no fewer than 100 hotels.

Many thanks to manager Jason Hemstock and his team. We will likely go back to Owen Sound and we will stay at the Best Western.

I also noticed that the hotel is located directly across from the Bayshore Community Centre where the Owen Sound OHL team plays: The Owen Sound Attack. This was delightful for me, as someone who used to attend Erie Blades OHL games all those years ago (now the Erie Otters).

So this is where the Erie team travelled to play Owen Sound…that’s pretty cool, I thought. Fun to close that loop in my mind. This realization was also a great point of conversation for us in Owen Sound when people asked where we were from.

“Erie, PA,” I’d say. “Home of the Erie Otters.”

“That’s not far,” said Barry Morland of Morland Place. “About five hours, eh?”

This prompted me to check out the current status of the OHL, which consists of 20 teams, three of which are from the United States: Erie, Flint, and Saginaw. The other 17 are from Canada.

We got checked into the hotel and spent the night. Then the next morning we made the short drive to the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in downtown Owen Sound.

Tom Thomson Art Gallery

I’m not going to go deep on my evolving Tom Thomson research at this point, because I plan to write separate posts related to being “On the Trail of Tom Thomson,” but let me say to any new readers that Tom Thomson was one of the famous Canadian Group of Seven Artists, who had their heyday in the early 20th Century, with Thomson being at the forefront.

Therefore, a large part of our Canadian Excursion 2025 was aligned with following the spirit of Tom Thomson, seeing his art, and learning as much as we could about his life, times, and paintings. It follows, therefore, that a major aspect of our adventure was landing in Owen Sound, where the Thomson Art Gallery is located.

The Gallery is small, but had several cool displays. The first thing we were drawn to was the work of a female artist who is also a writer who does journaling. Here’s the setup: she had a script on large canvas hanging floor to ceiling and it was in her handwriting. Then there was a hologram of her, talking about how AI has scraped so much of her material and stolen it from her. You have to see it to get the full effect, but it was impressive.

(As a writer who has has published thousands of pages of material on the internet, I’ve said the same thing: Big Tech is stealing our material and selling it back to us…because they can.)

The second installation at the Thomson Gallery was connected directly to the Group of Seven and highlighted some of the difficulties and discrepancies related to how several of those artists had to go off to World War I–and how Tom Thomson did not–due to medical exemptions.

According to the Art Canada Institute, “The Canadian painter Tom Thomson had flat feet. This condition, along with respiratory problems, was one of the medical reasons he was denied entry into the army multiple times when he attempted to enlist for both the Second Boer War and World War I.” 

So, instead of going to war, Thomson went North into Algonquin and painted. In time, he produced approximately 50 large canvasses and 400 small sketches.

Thomson died when he was 39 under mysterious circumstances, and of course, this brief bio doesn’t come close to covering his life and contributions. I recommend starting with the Wikipedia page and then moving toward other sources.

But it was interesting to see the various depictions from several of the Group of Seven. While most of the Go7 got their start depicting landscapes, many of them re-focused their work, understandably, during the war. Many of them were appointed to capture scenes from the war so they did drawings and paintings and such, showing men loading cargo onto ships and various battlefield scenes.

The wartime experiences of Frederick Varley, in particular, left a mark on him and his depictions of the world around him became darker. Can’t blame him.

The third installation was a weaving together of inorganic technology and with organic materials, so there were actual rocks that had transistors carved into them and textile wall hangings that looked exactly like circuit boards. There was a giant log with two USB ports coming out each end. I would love to share photos I took, but I don’t currently have permission. Perhaps I can reach out to the Gallery to see if permission can be secured.

After we left the Thomson Gallery, we wandered downtown and had sushi at Yummy Yummy which was delicious. We ordered the Dynamite Roll which was an architectural achievement.

Shirra Benson and the Owen Sound Artists’ Co-Op

From there we wandered through the downtown area and went into the Owen Sound Artists’ Co-Op, which was an amazing open space, filled with art by local artists. We looked around for a bit and both landed on the art of a particular artist named Shirra Benson.

We inquired about a piece that we both liked very much and were told, “Oh, that’s Shirra’s. She’s upstairs.”

Talk about divine timing. To be interested in a piece of art and then get to talk to the artist in person…that doesn’t happen everyday.

Shirra came down and we talked about art in general and the history of the individual piece. We learned that that the piece had been completed recently and is related to a celebration of Owen Sound. The painting, entitled Downtown Layers, Owen Sound River District is oil on canvas and Shirra mentioned something about wax so she must do a wax finish on top of the oil so as to achieve the dimension…the thickness of the oil on the canvas. Very interesting.

Shirra Benson, Jackie Downing, Mike Downing at the Owen Sound Artists Coop.
Mike is holding Downtown Layers, Owen Sound River District, 2025
Oil on Canvas 12″x12″
Photo by Wendy Bishop

Shirra had one particular work where the oil paint must have been a half inch to an inch thick. Really impressive. Our piece didn’t have that level of thickness. Maybe a quarter inch to a half inch, but still very impressive.

We told Shirra that we wanted to buy the 12″x12″ piece but we had another 10 days to go on our Canada trip and we were in the van and there was no way we were confident in being able to transport that piece of art without causing damage to the layers.

Shirra confirmed: “I just completed it two weeks ago and I don’t think it’s dry yet,” she said.

So we decided to ship it. We negotiated the terms of sale, along with the shipping details, and closed the deal! The painting arrived–entirely undamaged–at the end of July and is now prominently displayed in our dining room.

Thank you, Shirra.

Morland Place

From there we went out to Morland Place, which is a story on its own. I may circle back to this entry to add my perspective on Barry Morland and his life’s work, but this post is getting long so I’m going to wind up for now and drop in a slide show from Morland Place, which is just south of Owen Sound and it totally worth visiting.

Also included are photos of Inglis Falls, the Georgian Bay shoreline near the Best Western, and flower gardens next to the Harry Lumley Bayshore Community Centre.