Country Walks: Cottage Country

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Cottage country, as identified by Anne Craik, is that band of Central
Ontario that stretches from Georgian Bay to the Rideau Valley. Within
this extensive sweep of the Canadian Shield, she has singled out 28
hiking trails for description and comment. Most are in public parks or
conservation areas, and most are “loops”—no need to double back in
order to reach your starting point. The level of difficulty is from easy
to strenuous. Scenic variety and dramatic vistas were calculated into
the selection criteria.

The text starts at the beginning (how rocks were formed) and
laboriously creeps through history to the present-day parks and trails.
From this base, the work moves to a rather ponderous commentary on each
of 15 regions and their trails. All the key information needed to find
and assess the appropriateness of each trail is grouped at the top of an
introductory bog of clichés and undisciplined ramblings. If the
writer’s style weren’t so boring, the work would appeal to armchair
hikers and winter readers eager to select trails for next summer’s
enjoyment. The tedium of the prose is somewhat meliorated by a
sprinkling of historical black-and-while photos and eight color scenics.