Where to Stay in Barrie, Ontario

What is Barrie known for?

Watersports and boating on that water pull people to Barrie from across Ontario, and the shoreline at the head of Lake Simcoe is where the city puts most of what it wants seen. Art holds its own. The MacLaren Art Centre and the Spirit Catcher give the city a second reason to be visited, one that does not depend on the season or on the state of the water.

What are the main landmarks in Barrie?

Barrie's landmarks are mostly houses and addresses: Dutton House, the John Pearson House, Grubbe House, Maple Hill, and Maplehurst carry family and property names, while 126 Blake Street, 17 Peel Street, and 62 Shirley Avenue are known by their numbers. Two things break that pattern. The Spirit Catcher and the MacLaren Art Centre give the city landmarks that are neither residential nor numbered, and they are the two most visitors are sent to find.

The Frederic Gore/Benjamin Walker Smith House and the Robinson-Burton House and Coachman's House/Stable close the register.

What is the history of Barrie?

The date on record is 1812. A settlement at the head of Kempenfelt Bay had a use that any map explains: the bay reaches inland from Lake Simcoe, and whatever moved between the lake and the country beyond had to come ashore somewhere near here. Simcoe County grew around the place.

Barrie sits about 90 kilometres north of Toronto, close enough to matter and far enough that the city kept its own business rather than becoming an errand of the larger one. Independence came formally. Barrie lies geographically inside Simcoe County but governs itself as a single-tier municipality, politically separate from the county that surrounds it, and that arrangement is the clearest thing the city's history left behind.

Old houses hold the remainder. Dutton House, Maple Hill, Maplehurst, the John Pearson House, and the Frederic Gore/Benjamin Walker Smith House carry the names of the families who built here, while 126 Blake Street and 142 Collingwood Street survive on the register under their numbers alone. Boating turned the bay into a draw of a different kind, and watersports on Kempenfelt Bay became the reason people from across Ontario drive up at all.

Where is Barrie?

Kempenfelt Bay ends at the city. The bay is an arm of Lake Simcoe, and Barrie occupies the ground where it stops, spreading back over roughly seventy-seven square kilometres inside the boundaries of Simcoe County. Everything else is inland.

The shoreline gives the city its one open edge, and the built area runs back from it into the country that Simcoe County occupies on every other side.

What is the climate of Barrie?

Cold weather holds for months here. Barrie sits in the temperate band beside a lake big enough to shape its own weather, so autumn holds warmth longer here than inland and winter arrives with the snow that open water tends to produce. Summer is the season the water is for, and Lake Simcoe fills with boats from Ontario for as long as it lasts.

How do you get to Barrie?

Toronto is the way in. Barrie lies about 90 kilometres north of it, which puts the city within a straightforward drive for most of the traffic that comes up from the larger centre for the water. Simcoe County surrounds the rest of the approach.

Visitors arriving from elsewhere in Ontario reach Barrie by road through the county, and the run ends at the head of Kempenfelt Bay.