Toronto to Barrie, Orillia and Lake Simcoe by black car

Toronto to Barrie and Lake Simcoe, in one paragraph

Barrie is the city the 400 was built to reach and the one it reaches last on a summer Friday — seventy minutes on a Tuesday morning and two and a half hours at 5 p.m. on the July long weekend's eve — and the black car's passengers are the ones who have decided the 400 is not theirs to drive: the Toronto executive with a Lake Simcoe cottage, the Casino Rama concert-goer, the patient referred to the RVH's cancer centre, the Georgian College family, the Barrie commuter who works on Bay Street three days a week, and the ice-fisher in February. This guide covers the drive and the exits, Barrie's case, Orillia and Rama, Lake Simcoe's shores and their cottages, the Friday exodus's first hour, the skiing, the Holland Marsh and Bradford, the GO train, the vehicle, the rate, and a worked Rama night.

The drive

The 400 north from the 401 — the Vaughan page's Highway 7 and Rutherford (Canada's Wonderland on the left — the birthday article's summer run), Major Mackenzie and the Vaughan subdivisions, King Road and the Newmarket-Aurora page's Highway 9 at the Holland Marsh, Bradford's Highway 88, the Cookstown outlets and the 89, the Innisfil Beach Road (the 6th Line) for Friday Harbour and Innisfil's shore, and Barrie's exits — Mapleview Drive (the 94) for the south end and the Park Place shopping, Essa Road (the 96) for Allandale and the GO station, Dunlop Street (the 98) for the downtown and the waterfront, Bayfield Street (the 98/100) for the north end, the RVH and Georgian College, and the 400's continuation to the Highway 11 split for Orillia; 100 kilometres, sixty-five minutes of driving, seventy with the Vaughan stretch's traffic; the rush hour article's 400 at 5 p.m. northbound is the week's slow hour and the 407 from the 401 or the DVP to the 400 at Highway 7 bypasses the 401-to-400 interchange's jam.

Barrie's case

The waterfront — Kempenfelt Bay's Centennial Park and the Spirit Catcher sculpture, the Heritage Park's summer festivals (Kempenfest in August — the arts and crafts on the waterfront), the marina and the Barrie Yacht Club, the Lakeshore Drive's walk, the Dunlop Street downtown's restaurants and the Five Points (the Entertainment District guide's Barrie). The Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (Georgian Drive — the Simcoe Muskoka Regional Cancer Centre, the cardiac programme, the region's referral hospital that the Toronto hospitals also refer north to for the Simcoe patients; the hospital row article's standard for the patient and the family). Georgian College (the Barrie campus on Georgian Drive — the move-in, the graduation, the automotive business school). The Sadlon Arena (Bayview Drive — the Barrie Colts' OHL games and the concerts; the Scotiabank Arena guide's logic small). The commuter — the Barrie resident who works in Toronto's core three days a week and has stopped driving the 400 (the corporate account's standing booking, the seventy minutes of the back seat as the day's first hour of work — the corporate car service page). Park Place (the Mapleview shopping) and the Cookstown Outlet Mall (the 89 exit). The Barrie Molson Centre's successor and the Mady Centre for the theatre. Base Borden (CFB Borden west of the city on Highway 90 — the military families' runs).

Orillia and Casino Rama

Thirty minutes north of Barrie on Highway 11 (the 400's split at the top of the city — the 11 to Orillia, Gravenhurst and Muskoka; the 400 to Parry Sound): Casino Rama (the Chippewas of Rama First Nation's casino-resort on Rama Road east of Orillia — the 5,000-seat Entertainment Centre's concerts and comedians that play Rama on the Toronto-to-Detroit routing, the hotel's 300 rooms, the porte-cochère, the tour buses the black car beats; the event limo page's logic at ninety minutes), Orillia's downtown (the Mississaga Street shops, the Port of Orillia's waterfront on Lake Couchiching, the Stephen Leacock Museum — the humorist's summer home on the lake — the Orillia Opera House), the Mariposa Folk Festival (the July weekend at Tudhope Park — the concert article's festival logic with the campers' traffic), Lakehead University's Orillia campus and Georgian's, the Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital, and the Rama and Washago cottage roads; a Rama concert night is the two-hour run from Toronto (the 400 and the 11 — the Muskoka article's road to the Severn), the show at 8, the 11 p.m. pickup at the porte-cochère (the buses' queue avoided), and the 1 a.m. Toronto door — or the hotel night and the Sunday return.

Lake Simcoe's shores

The lake is thirty kilometres across and its cottage shores ring it — Innisfil (the 400's east side — Innisfil Beach Road to Friday Harbour, the resort-marina-condo development on Big Bay Point with its hotel, its golf, its boardwalk restaurants and its summer events; Alcona and Innisfil Beach Park; the Big Bay Point cottages), Oro-Medonte (the north shore between Barrie and Orillia — the Shanty Bay and the Hawkestone cottages, the Horseshoe Valley), Ramara (the east — the Brechin and the Lagoon City canals, the Rama casino's neighbours), Georgina (the south-east shore off the 404 and Woodbine Avenue — Jackson's Point's historic village and the Briars resort, Keswick's beach and marinas, Sutton's main street, Pefferlaw; the Newmarket-Aurora page's 404 is the route — an hour from downtown), Bradford and the Cook's Bay marinas at the lake's south tip, and Beaverton and the Trent-Severn's Gamebridge lock on the east; the cottage roads are gentler than Muskoka's (paved to most doors), the fire numbers and the road names still the address, the SUV for the load and the winter, and the luggage capacity article's coolers and the dog. The ice fishing — Lake Simcoe is Ontario's ice-fishing capital, the huts on the ice off Jackson's Point, Keswick, Beaverton and Innisfil from January to March, the hut operators' snowmobile shuttles from the shore, and the black car's February Saturday for a group of four with the gear to the operator's shore lot and the pickup at dusk (the winter driving article's roads; the chauffeur does not drive on the ice).

The Friday exodus's first hour

The Muskoka article's 400 from the 401 to Barrie — stopped from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. on summer Fridays and the long weekends' — is this run's entire length, and the timing is everything: seventy minutes before noon, two hours to two and a half at 4 or 5 p.m., seventy again after 8; the chauffeur's alternatives — the 407 to the 400 at Highway 7 (twenty minutes saved on the interchange), the 404 north to the Ravenshoe Road and the west for a Georgina or a Keswick cottage (the exodus's other side — quieter), Highway 27 or Highway 10 and the 89 for a Bradford or an Innisfil approach on the back roads, the Thursday evening, the Friday morning — and the passenger safety article's dispatcher watching the 400's speed on the map and re-timing the pickup; the Sunday afternoon return is the mirror.

The skiing

Snow Valley (ten minutes west of Barrie on Snow Valley Road — the family hill and the tubing, the Blue Mountain article's smaller cousin an hour from Toronto), Horseshoe Resort (twenty minutes north in Oro-Medonte — the hill, the Nordic trails, the resort's hotel and the summer's adventure park), Mount St. Louis Moonstone (thirty minutes north on the 400 — the largest of the three, the Toronto ski-school buses' hill) — a Saturday's day trip in an SUV with the skis (the luggage capacity article's bag) at an hour each way instead of Blue's two, the drop at the lodge, the pickup at 4, and the winter tires article's standard for the 400's Barrie stretch in a January squall.

The Holland Marsh and Bradford

The 400 crosses the Holland Marsh at Highway 9 — the drained lake bed's black soil and its vegetable farms (the carrots and the onions in the fields on both sides of the highway, the Bradford Marsh's farm stands on Canal Road in summer), the Bradford-West Gwillimbury town at the 88 (the new subdivisions, the Bradford GO station, the Holland Marsh wineries — the Holland Marsh Winery on Canal Road), and the Newmarket-Aurora page's 404 corridor a fifteen-minute drive east across the marsh on Highway 9 for the passenger connecting the two.

The GO train

Metrolinx's Barrie line — the GO trains from Union to Barrie's Allandale Waterfront station (ninety minutes; the weekday service that has grown to hourly and the weekend service that arrived) and the Barrie South station at Mapleview — is the commuter's spine and the solo traveller's option; the door-to-door is two hours with the Union Station guide's and the Barrie taxi's legs, the fare a fraction, and the car's seventy minutes door to door is the commuter who bills the hour, the family with the cottage load, and the Rama concert-goer at midnight when the last train has gone.

The vehicle and the rate

The executive sedan or the S-Class for the Barrie commuter's standing run and the Rama couple, the Escalade for the cottage family with the coolers and the dog, the skiers with the bags or the ice-fishers with the gear, the Sprinter for the Rama group of eight or the Friday Harbour party; the fleet's flat Barrie rate (the engine shows it — the one-way with the return leg built in), the flat Orillia and Rama rates, the flat Lake Simcoe rates by shore (Innisfil, Georgina, Ramara), the hourly for a day with stops, the multi-day hire article's weekend for a cottage with the chauffeur at a Barrie hotel, the corporate account's commuter rate, the 407 at cost, the gratuity guide, and the hybrid and electric article's EV doing Barrie and back twice on a charge with the Barrie Supercharger as the top-up.

A worked Casino Rama night

Six friends from Leaside and the Annex for a Saturday 8 p.m. concert at Rama's Entertainment Centre in October, a Sprinter (executive layout), the flat Rama rate with the wait. 4:30 p.m.: the three pickups in sequence; 5:00 the DVP to the 401 to the 400 (the Saturday's 400 moving — no exodus in October); 5:50 the Barrie stretch, the Kempenfelt Bay glimpse from the 400's hill; 6:00 the 11 north; 6:25 the Orillia exit and Rama Road; 6:35 Casino Rama's porte-cochère — the six to the dinner at the casino's steakhouse (booked by dispatch); the chauffeur to the staff lot and the a day in the life article's wait; 8:00 the show; 10:45 the text; 10:55 the porte-cochère (the tour buses' queue on the far lane; the Sprinter at the door); 11:10 Rama Road, the 11, the 400 south — empty; the six asleep by Barrie; 12:35 a.m. the first Annex door, 12:55 the last Leaside one. Eight and a half hours, 300 kilometres, one concert, six who had previously done Rama in two cars with one designated driver who did not enjoy it.

Barrie and Lake Simcoe quick reference

Booking the run

The engine shows the Barrie, Orillia, Rama and Lake Simcoe rates; the hourly chauffeur page books the day; the multi-day hire article the cottage weekend; the corporate car service page's account the commuter's standing run. Give dispatch the cottage's fire number and the Rama show's time.

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