Algonquin Provinical Park
By Michael and Alison Goldstein
Algonquin, oldest and most famous of Ontario's parks, dominates the south-central provincial map, a vast landscape of maple hills, rocky ridges, spruce bogs, and blue lakes.
Canoeing is a favorite spring, summer
and fall activity at Algonquin Provincial Park.
For those who would travel by paddle and portage, Algonquin offers 1500 kilometres of canoe routes and remote campsites, isolated lakes full of hungry trout, and remote wilderness. One can scarcely speak of canoeing in Canada, but Algonquin Provincial Park comes into the conversation.
Artists, hikers, and photographers know the hardwood hills of Algonquin provide the most concentrated and flamboyant display of autumn colour, to be found west of Vermont. Vast stretches of sugar maple, in concert with white birch and dark green firs, present a visual celebration to summer's end, that offshore visitors find unbelievable.
 When there is still just brown grass in the backyards of Toronto, 200 kilometres to the south, it already snowing hard in the Park. The last tourist and mosquito have lit out for distant parts, and a world of white silence awaits the snowshoer and cross-country skier, the dogsledder and the winter camper.
In the spring the snow melts, the trees green up, the moose and the first of the summer visitors are seen again along the roadside.
Algonquin Park is home to 20 different kinds of reptiles and amphibians (none are poisonous), 40 types of mammals, and over 130 bird species.
In reality, this translates into having the haunting calls of the loon, morning and night. Canoeists will share the lake with families of mallards and merganser ducks, and the occasional beaver and muskrat.
Campers will enjoy the antics of squirrels and chipmunks, and the visits of black bear or raccoon. Moose sightings are frequent along the Parkway corridor in spring, while the deer population varies from year to year. Summertime"wolf howls", by Park rangers, will often result in a return greeting from the forest depths.For the family on vacation, Algonquin offers a wide range of camping experiences, evening wolf howls, float trips on the Ottawa and Madawaska Rivers, and the joy of a possible sighting of wolves, deer, bear, moose, or beaver.
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