Fall colours from Toronto: five chauffeured drives in October

Fall colours by chauffeur, in one paragraph

The colour is Ontario's one reliable spectacle — the sugar maples' red, the aspens' and the birches' yellow, the oaks' rust — and it moves down the province like a tide, a week per hundred kilometres, from Algonquin at September's end to the city's ravines at October's, so that a Toronto passenger has five weekends of it within three hours of the door and a chauffeur who knows which lookout peaked yesterday. This guide sets out the dates by region, the report the fleet reads, the drives inside the city, the day drives by direction, the gridlock and the weekday rule, the vehicle and the photographs, the picnics and the wineries, the wedding overlap, the wildlife, and a worked Thanksgiving weekday.

The peak dates by region

The colour is driven by the shortening days and the cool nights (the anthocyanins that make the maples red need warm days and nights below 7°C without frost), and it peaks first in the north and the highlands and last on the lake's moderated shore: Algonquin Park — the last week of September into the first days of October (the Highway 60 corridor's maples; the Algonquin article's gridlock weekends); Muskoka and Haliburton — the first week of October (the Muskoka article's lakes with the maples to the water; Haliburton's Highway 118 and the Dorset lookout tower); the Kawarthas and the Land O'Lakes — Thanksgiving weekend (the 507 from Buckhorn to Gooderham, the Bobcaygeon and Fenelon Falls shores); the Caledon Hills, the Hockley Valley and Mono — Thanksgiving weekend into the week after (the Forks of the Credit, the Hockley Road, Mono Cliffs — the closest peak to the city at an hour); the Niagara Escarpment — the second and third week of October (the Bruce Trail's ridge from Milton's Rattlesnake Point through Terra Cotta and Belfountain to Collingwood's Blue Mountain, the Hamilton waterfalls' gorges, the Dundas Peak); the Grand River valley — mid-October (the Elora Gorge, the Grand from Fergus through Kitchener's Doon to Paris and Brantford); Prince Edward County and the Thousand Islands — mid-October (the County's Loyalist Parkway, the Kingston parkway's islands); the Niagara Peninsula — the third and fourth week (the Niagara Parkway and the Bench's vineyards); and Toronto — the third and fourth week of October into early November (the ravines, High Park, the Islands, the Bluffs — the lake's moderation delays the city by a month from Algonquin). The dates move a week either way with the year's weather — a warm, wet September delays; an early frost advances and shortens — and the fleet reads the report.

The report the fleet reads

Ontario Parks' fall colour report — updated weekly from mid-September by the parks' staff with a percentage of colour change and a "best viewing" flag for each park (Algonquin, Killarney, Arrowhead, the Kawartha Highlands, Bon Echo, the escarpment's Forks of the Credit and Mono Cliffs, Sandbanks) — is the dispatcher's Monday read; the Muskoka Tourism and the Blue Mountain resort's own trackers, the Toronto's High Park page, and the fleet's own chauffeurs' phones from the week's runs fill in the rest; and dispatch books the hourly colour day for the week the report says "peak" rather than the weekend the passenger first asked for.

The drives inside the city

The city's own colour is a half-day on the hourly: the Don Valley (the Bayview Extension's and the Don Mills' views into the ravine, the Evergreen Brick Works' quarry garden and its lookout, the Rosedale ravine roads — Park Road, the Glen Road bridge, the Rosedale Valley Road under the maples), High Park (the Bloor West and High Park guide's 400 acres — the oak savannah's rust, the Grenadier Pond's maples, the Colborne Lodge drive; the road closed to cars on the fall weekends and the chauffeur's drop at the Bloor gate), the Humber (the Old Mill's bridge, the Humber Valley's trail from the Old Mill to the Lambton Woods — the Etobicoke chauffeur's stretch), the Scarborough Bluffs (the Scarborough guide's Bluffer's Park below and the Cathedral Bluffs' lookout above, the Rosetta McClain Gardens), the Rouge (Canada's urban national park — the Glen Rouge and the Twyn Rivers Drive's valley crossing, the Rouge Beach), the Toronto Islands (the Islands article's last warm ferries — the Ward's Island cottages' maples with the skyline behind), Mount Pleasant Cemetery (the arboretum the city forgets — the maples and the beeches on the drives between Yonge and Bayview), and the Beaches' boardwalk (the Beaches guide) with the Glen Stewart ravine behind it.

The day drives

The Caledon Hills (an hour north-west — the 10 to the 24 and the Forks of the Credit Road's hairpins down to the Credit's forks, the Belfountain conservation area, the Cataract's ruins, the Terra Cotta's stone, the Cheltenham badlands' red clay, the Hockley Valley Road's twenty kilometres of maples to Mono Cliffs' lookouts, the Alton Mill's galleries and the Millcroft Inn's lunch — the fleet's most-booked colour day, five hours on the hourly); the Niagara Escarpment (the Milton lookouts — Rattlesnake Point and the Crawford Lake's boardwalk — the 401 west forty minutes; or the full ridge north to Collingwood's Scenic Caves and the Blue Mountain's gondola over the colour, three hours out with the Thornbury apples on the way; or south to Hamilton's Dundas Peak with its reservation); the Grand River (Elora and Fergus's gorge, the Mennonite country's maples over the buggies, the Grand's valley road from West Montrose's covered bridge to Kitchener's Doon Heritage Village and Cambridge's Galt, and south to Paris on the river's bend — ninety minutes out); Muskoka and Algonquin (the Muskoka article's lakes in the first week of October — the Huckleberry Rock lookout at Milford Bay, the Dorset tower's 100-foot view, the Bracebridge falls — and the Algonquin article's Highway 60 in the last week of September; the long day or the multi-day); the Kawarthas (the 401 to the 35/115 and Highway 507's fifty kilometres north from Buckhorn through the Kawartha Highlands' lakes and granite — the province's best colour road by the chauffeurs' vote — two hours out); Prince Edward County (the County article's Loyalist Parkway and the wineries in mid-October, the Sandbanks' dunes without the summer crowd); and Niagara (the Parkway's Niagara Glen and the Bench's vineyards under the escarpment in the third week — the wine tour's harvest).

The gridlock and the weekday rule

The colour weekends are the province's worst driving after the long weekends — Algonquin's Highway 60 stopped at the Lookout trail's lot on the last two weekends of September, the Thanksgiving 400 both ways, the Forks of the Credit's hairpins in a queue and Belfountain's lot closed by 10 on a Thanksgiving Saturday, the Dundas Peak's reservation sold out, the Blue Mountain's gondola line an hour, and the Kawarthas' 507 at a crawl behind the leaf-peepers' pulled-over cars; the fleet's rule is the weekday — the Tuesday or the Wednesday of the peak week, when the same lookout is empty, the same lot has a space and the chauffeur can stop on the shoulder for the photograph — and, for the passenger who can only do the weekend, the Algonquin article's 5 a.m. departure, the lookout at 8 and the departure by 2 before the return crawl.

The vehicle and the photographs

The Escalade or the Navigator — the high windows and the panoramic sunroof are the colour's frame from the back seat, the third row for the grandparents, the cargo for the picnic and the boots — over the S-Class for the couple's Millcroft lunch; the Sprinter's tall glass for the birthday or the seniors' residence outing of eight; the stops the chauffeur knows (the shoulder wide enough at the Forks' second hairpin, the Huckleberry Rock's lot, the Dorset tower's base, the 507's lakeside pull-off past Catchacoma, the Mono Cliffs' upper lot) and makes without being asked; the light (the morning's low sun behind the passenger for the reds, the late afternoon's for the lakes — the proposal article's photographers book the colour week a year ahead); and the in-car amenities' blanket and thermos for the lookout at 8 a.m.

The picnic and the winery

The picnic — the St. Lawrence Market's or the Summerhill Market's basket in the cooler, the Belfountain's picnic tables, the Mono Cliffs' meadow, the Dorset dock — or the lunch (the Millcroft Inn at Alton, the Elora Mill's terrace, the Blue Mountain village, the Bracebridge riverside, the Buckhorn's lodge), and the winery or the cidery (the Niagara wine tour's harvest in the third week, the County's in the second, the Caledon's Spirit Tree cidery and the Hockley Valley's brewery, the Thornbury's apple cider — the chauffeur's zero and the passengers' tastings); the hourly's day is the drive, the walk, the lunch and the second drive home in the late light.

The wedding-season overlap

October is the wedding limo guide's second peak — the colour is the photograph — and the wedding venues article's country venues (the Millcroft, the Hockley Valley Resort, the Alton Mill, the Elora Mill, the Muskoka lodges, the escarpment's barns) are booked for the Thanksgiving and the two Saturdays after a year ahead; the fleet's colour-day bookings share the roads with its wedding convoys and the Sprinters go first — book the colour day a fortnight ahead and the October wedding a year.

The wildlife at dusk

The colour drives end at dusk on country roads, and the defensive driving article's deer rule applies — October is the rut and the deer cross the Caledon, the escarpment and the Kawartha roads at dusk and dawn; the moose on Algonquin's 60 (Algonquin article); the wild turkeys on the Grand's valley roads; the chauffeur drives the last hour at 70 with the high beams and the ditches watched, and the passenger who wants the sunset from the lookout has it and the drive home slow.

A worked Thanksgiving weekday

The Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, an Etobicoke couple in their seventies with their daughter visiting from London, an Escalade on the hourly for seven hours; the report Monday: Caledon and Hockley "peak", the escarpment "80%". 9:30 a.m.: the pickup (the blanket, the thermos, the daughter's camera); the 427 and the 401 to the 410, Highway 10 north through Brampton to Caledon Village at 10:20; the 24 to the Forks of the Credit Road at 10:35 — the hairpins empty on a Tuesday, the chauffeur's stop on the shoulder at the second bend (fifteen minutes, the daughter's photographs, the mother's "we drove this in 1978"), the Cataract's ruins lookout, Belfountain's conservation area's lot with six cars in it (the walk to the falls and the swinging bridge, forty minutes); 11:50 the Bush Street's climb to the escarpment's top and Erin's main street; 12:30 the Millcroft Inn's lunch at Alton (booked by dispatch; the chauffeur's reset in Alton's mill lot); 2:00 the Hockley Valley Road east — twenty kilometres of maples at their peak with the road to themselves, the pull-off at the valley's crest; 2:40 Mono Cliffs' upper lot and the 1.5-kilometre loop to the lookout over the Mulmur hills (an hour with the father's pace and the daughter's arm); 3:50 Highway 10 south with the sun behind, Orangeville's bypass, the 410 at 4:30, the Etobicoke door at 5:05. Seven and a half hours, 190 kilometres, four lookouts with no one at them, one lunch, one photograph the daughter framed, and a Thanksgiving Saturday that the family had first asked for and dispatch had moved.

Fall colours quick reference

Booking a colour day

The hourly chauffeur page books the five- to eight-hour day; the engine the Muskoka and Algonquin one-ways; the multi-day hire article the colour week; dispatch reads the report and moves your day to the peak. Ask for the Tuesday.

Book a fall colours drive