Fitsell's Guide to the Old Ontario Strand: A Cultural and Historical Companion

Julie Rekai Rickerd is a Toronto-based broadcaster and public relations
consultant.

A journey from Toronto to Montreal by car or train along Highway 401 is
often a blinkered expedition that gives few clues to the wealth of
beauty, history, and nature that lies on either side of one of
Canada’s most-traveled routes. Only tantalizing glimpses of what lies
beyond are offered at such places as the crossings of the valleys of the
Trent and Cataraqi Rivers. This guide features one particular area
embracing Highway 401—from Deseronto in the west to Brockville in the
east, from Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River in the south to well
beyond Highway 7 in the north.

The handy soft-cover volume is designed to fit in the glove compartment
of a car, and to be referred to frequently as one embarks on any of the
seven daytrips starting in Kingston that form the core of the book. Each
tour highlights the area’s rich abundance of lakes, rivers, islands,
and historical events, information that appears to have been garnered
more from conversations with local residents than from serious
historical or geographical research.

The book is graced by a superb color photo of Westport by Jack Chiang,
but the black-and-white photographs in the text are uninspired, given
the great beauty that abounds in the area. The maps contain a number of
errors, such as the spelling of Smiths Falls and the location of Howe
Island to the northeast of Gananoque instead of to the southwest as it
appears on the introductory map (but not on the more detailed map
accompanying Tour Two).

All in all, the volume is a welcome addition to the sparse literature
on an almost overlooked area of Ontario.