Growing up in Trinidad, I was lucky to live 15 minutes away from the most popular beach, Maracas Bay, and Sunday mornings always meant heading to the beach. But Canada is a big country, so all summer we’ve been making the 1-hour drive north to the GTA’s most popular beach, Wasaga.

Wasaga holds the title of being the world’s longest freshwater beach, stretching endlessly along the sandy shores of Georgian Bay. There are five main access points to the beach, all within Wasaga Provincial Park. This year thanks to covid, entrance was free all summer! We definitely took advantage of this and went to the beach as often as we could.

So, just how cold is it? Of course in comparison to the Caribbean or Asia the waters are considered cold. But in the hot sunny summer days of July and August the shallow sandy waters definitely do warm up. Georgian Bay is so vast you can almost imagine that you’re in the actual ocean, except you keep sinking in the fresh water (I am accustomed to floating like a buoy in salt water!) Swimming in a lake is still a novelty to me!

There are six different beach areas within the provincial park, but our favourite place to set up a spot is Beach 5 because it’s very family friendly with a large playground, showers and bathrooms. Further down the road, Beach 1 is the party beach and the most popular area in Wasaga. Beach 1 and has a reputation of being “Ontario’s Daytona Beach”, with a busy boardwalk lined with shops, cafes and restaurants.

Sometimes it’s hard for me to adjust my idea of time in Canada. For example, in Trinidad you pack up in the morning and get to the beach before lunch. You’d never leave home to go to the beach at 4pm, because by 6pm it gets dark and you have to go home. But in the long, glorious endless hours of Canadian summer, where the sun is often out until close to 10pm, you can easily go in the afternoon which is the warmest time of the day, and stay past sunset time, eating dinner on the beach. It’s really beautiful and the perfect way to spend a summer day.