I will never return to the camper organization I met last July at Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park. My brother and I were returning from spending two nights at the Serpentine Lake. We had finished a portage on the way back to the boat release and were getting back into the swing of paddling when an organization of 3 or 4 canoes were racing up the creek looking for shore.
Each canoe had an adult, as well as two or three children, whose excitement was electric. One of the campers in a wheelchair. Flanked by two rowers gliding silently across the calm waters, everything is smiling. I was so satisfied to be in the field that it radiated from within. The adults leading the convoy were in good spirits, laughing with their protégés, listening to silly stories as they sought to move the ships forward, and enjoying the hot summer day. It’s a moving encounter.
As a northerner, it was a bit of leaving my own garden for the farther wilderness. But Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park is one of Ontario’s nine iconic sites. This story is the first in a series on those nine sites. While researching the Goulais River last year, for a dispatch in the Koral Adventure series, I found data on the iconic sites. They cover the entire province and show the most productive of the most productive. That’s why in the coming years, I look forward to exploring each site and reporting on it. It’s an ambitious project, but making travel plans is a wonderful way to spend the long winter nights.
Author and professional canoeist Kevin Callan has a comfortable spot for Kawartha Highlands PP. He literally wrote the e-book about the park and put it on the map. He is credited with generating interest in the Crown lands that have become the Kawartha Highlands PP and for pushing for the creation of the park.
While the parks were Crown lands in the 1970s, there were popular routes for canoes in the domain and the government considered turning them into a park but made the decision not to.
“I wrote that in an e-book called Cottage Country Canoe Routes, along with other canoe routes as well,” laughs Callan. “It’s become a great distributor; other people enjoyed it. It’s too complicated to find a place to camp. There are smart and bad solutions in that.
Callan recalls one time when he was portaging into Copper Lake and met a couple who had walked into a hunt camp and met a group who were burning books.
“They asked the couple why they were in their lake. It wasn’t his lake,” laughs Callan. They said they were following Kevin Callan’s lead. The boys said, ‘Yes, can you put it in the fire?'” They burned my books. I kept walking thinking that my calling is John Smith right now.
They had to do something. He created the park in 1989.
Kawartha Highlands PP is a few hours away from Toronto, so those days it gets very crowded on weekends.
“It’s one of the closest semi-natural parks to Toronto and it’s small; it’s not like Algonquin,” Callan says.
Luckily, my brother and I scheduled a mid-week trip. The Anstruther Lake parking lot was packed, but we only saw two other people — who had portaged kayaks into Serpentine Lake — over the course of a couple of days.
I chose the Anstruther-Serpentine address after reading about it on the Peterborough and Kawarthas municipal website. In a 2020 blog post, Callan lists the circuit as his favorite address in the park.
“This is my all-time favourite loop route in the Kawarthas. It comes complete with a cascading waterfall, perfect island campsites, stout white pine and incredible fishing,” he writes. “The only issue is the 1,500-metre portage required to link Serpentine Lake to North Rathbun. It’s not a bad portage; however, I usually just paddle the route counter-clockwise, paddle and camp in Copper or Serpentine, and then return the same way back. It doesn’t create a loop route but it does avoid the long portage.”
I was intrigued by the prospect of the best waterfalls and campgrounds, and that’s exactly what my brother and I did.
We have since introduced public release at Lake Anstruther. It was windy and the waters were rough, but we traveled aboard Quill the Canoe, eager to succeed in our destiny.
I fell a little more in love with my canoe during the Kawartha Highlands trip. She was steady through frightening winds and waves — despite her lightweight status (48 lbs.) — and she was fairly easy to portage. A good thing, since the route to Serpentine Lake entails a steady climb across a few short trails.
Copper Lake Falls is a beautiful waterfall in the woods, next to the trail that connects Lake Rathburn to Copper Lake. The water sank over a rock face into a dark pond, feeding a small meandering stream. It reminded me a bit of Paradise Lagoon. It’s worth making a quick stop at the falls, as they have an almost fairytale vibe.
We spent a few hours making our way to Serpentine Lake. We completed five portages, all of which were well-marked and well-maintained; the only real limiting factor is respiratory capacity.
Callan says Kawartha Highlands PP offers the ability to camp in rural areas.
“Kawarthas is pretty easy; Not much will happen,” he says. “Your phone works even when you’re paddling. “
Once my tent was pitched at site 222 — on a west-facing rocky outcropping overlooking a small island with perfect sunsets — it was easy to see why Callan favoured the Serpentine loop.
Our site offered a perfect place to swim and a cozy fireplace. It was a great place, probably one of the most productive I’ve enjoyed over the years. A typhoon came here on our second night. There were strong winds and heavy rain. The problem with the rocky outcrop was the lack of protection, but I stayed dry in my little tent. Luckily, the rain fell about an hour before we could get home. The mist settled over the lake, dancing like an aerial dancer. Very beautiful.
My brother and I were on Serpentine Lake during last summer’s fire ban. Not having a campfire at night while camping is weird, but I was hanging out at our campsite on our first morning and a couple of park wardens were paddling by. We started talking and they informed me the ban had been lifted overnight. What a joyous fire that was. We must have burned a few trees on our second night.
One of my goals with this was to learn how to fish. My brother bought me some essential fishing tackle last Christmas; Part of his gift included classes. As an absolute novice, I didn’t feel comfortable fishing from Quill, so we discovered some cool rocks along the coast, in a sheltered bay.
I temporarily picked it up and glued 3 fish, adding two blue gills and a small bass. I imagined it as a wonderful first attempt. My brother is an avid fisherman and I caught no less than 30 fish, many of which have perhaps just been eaten. .
“Serpentine is smart for bass,” he says Callan. Si you ever come back, there’s a catch. There’s a lot of fishing and a lot of other people just go over the edges. You’ll catch the little ones, but if you manage to locate the schools in the middle of this lake, there are monsters there.
In late fall, Callan camped out with some YouTubers, PaddleHeads. The duo received a “sonar; they had six yards between them; and they had enough grip to sink his canoe.
They asked Callan what he was carrying. He had “a fishing rod I bought at Canadian Tire for $14, a white jig with a pink head, and a shopping bag full of other things. “
The contest continues.
“Over three days, they caught one fish; I caught 12,” he laughs.
The Kawartha Highlands PP is the southernmost feature known in the provincial government’s 1999 Land Use Strategy.
The park protects a variety of grasses that straddles the border of two ecoregions. Known as the Middle Land, it represents the transition zone between the Canadian Shield to the north and the St. Lawrence Lowlands to the south.
In its parks control plan, the Ontario government identifies Kawartha Highlands as a component of one of Ontario’s maximum biodiversity hotspots.
“At 37,587 ha, Kawartha Highlands is a large, relatively intact natural area and is part of a forest landscape that joins it to major protected areas,” the Ontario government indicates. “Its extensive forests, rock barrens, lakes, rivers and wetlands provide diverse habitat for at least 37 mammal species, or 53 per cent of the provincial total; 176 bird species, representing 51 per cent of bird species that breed in Ontario; 13 species of reptiles; 16 species of amphibians; 74 species of dragonflies and damselflies; 65 species of butterflies; and 688 species of vascular plants, of which 628 are native to the region.”
The park protects a collection of animal species, bald eagles, red-winged hawks, cerulean warblers, Blanding’s tortoises, and oriental pig-nosed snakes.
Callan says biodiversity is a highlight of the Mississagua River, which courses through the lower half of Kawartha Highlands PP from Mississagua Lake to Lower Buckhorn Lake. From there, paddlers can enter the Trent Severn Waterway system, which connects Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay. The possibilities for exploration are nearly endless.
Callan says the river fascinates amateur runners and can inspire confidence.
“Despite being surrounded by cabin subdivisions, the landscape of the Mississagua River is strangely wild. The river meanders through the rocky moors of Kawarthas and is made up of open ridges topped with red oaks and centuries-old sugar maples, which provide habitat for “the five-lined skink, Ontario’s only lizard,” he writes. “The river runs over the granite and into rocky gorges. As it happens, Mississagua is part of the Kawartha Highlands, which cover 35,000 acres, resulting in getting the least attention from rowers. Maybe it’s because of the dozen or so transports marked on the address map. However, few of them are necessary, as the waters of maximum movement are of the pool and fall type, with short sections. , or shallow water that flows easily.
When Callan moved into his current home, an old man visited him and told him he lived on an old transportation route. He mapped it and canoed from the north end of the park to its lawn. Callan says he’s amazed by the park’s biodiversity, specifically in the Mississagua River area.
“Somewhere in the North you would swear, but no,” he says.
My adventures with Quill the Canoe were made imaginable thanks to the kindness of Ramakko’s Adventure Spring.
[email protected] X: @marykkeown Facebook: @mkkeown
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