There's a particular kind of freedom that comes with pointing a car west on a long highway and watching the city dissolve into something wilder. Ontario's Highway 17 offers exactly that — a route that begins in the shadow of Parliament Hill and ends at the edge of the prairies, threading through some of the most dramatic, untamed, and quietly magnificent landscape in the country. It is not the fastest way across Ontario. It is, without question, one of the most memorable.
Stretching roughly 1,900 kilometres from Ottawa to the Manitoba border, Highway 17 forms the northern arc of the Trans-Canada Highway system through Ontario. For generations of Canadians driving coast to coast, it has been the road that defines the middle of the journey — the long, beautiful, sometimes humbling stretch where the country reveals its true scale. Logging trucks, motorcyclists, retirees in motorhomes, and young travellers with everything they own in the back seat have all shared this asphalt. It connects communities that would otherwise feel very far from anywhere, and it reminds every driver that Canada is, above all else, an enormous place.
Ottawa: Where the Journey Begins
The original routing of Highway 17 passed through Ottawa, and there is something fitting about starting a cross-Canada road trip in the nation's capital. The city sits at the confluence of the Ottawa, Rideau, and Gatineau rivers, and its skyline — dominated by the Gothic Revival towers of Parliament Hill — offers a send-off worthy of the journey ahead.
Before you leave, take a morning to walk the Rideau Canal, visit the ByWard Market for provisions, or stand on the Alexandra Bridge and look out over the river toward Gatineau. Ottawa is a city of institutions and green spaces, of museums and bike paths, and it rewards a slow morning before the highway calls.
Then you head northwest, and the city gives way to the Ottawa Valley.
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The Ottawa Valley: River, Rock, and Renfrew County
The drive from Ottawa toward Pembroke follows the Ottawa River, one of the great waterways of eastern Canada. The river was the highway long before asphalt existed — fur traders, voyageurs, and log drivers all knew this corridor intimately. Today, the valley retains a rugged, unhurried character. Small towns like Arnprior, Renfrew, and Pembroke line the route, each with its own history tied to the timber trade and the river.
The landscape here is transitional. You're leaving the St. Lawrence Lowlands and beginning to feel the first hints of the Canadian Shield — outcroppings of ancient Precambrian rock pushing up through the soil, forests thickening, the horizon pulling back. The Ottawa River is wide and grey-green, and on clear days the Gatineau Hills rise on the Quebec side in soft blue ridges.
Pembroke is a natural stopping point, a working town with a strong sense of its own identity. From here, the highway begins to climb in earnest into the Shield.
North Bay: Gateway to the North
North Bay announces itself as the place where the north truly begins. Situated on the southern shore of Lake Nipissing — a vast, shallow lake that stretches nearly 900 square kilometres — the city has long served as a crossroads for travellers heading deeper into Ontario's interior.
The waterfront is the heart of the city's appeal. Lake Nipissing shimmers in the morning light, and the sunsets here, with the lake catching the last colours of the day, are the kind that make you pull over and simply stand there for a while. The city also sits at the junction of Highways 11 and 17, making it a genuine gateway: north toward Temagami and the clay belt, west toward Sudbury and the Shield's dramatic interior.
North Bay has a proud history as a military and railway town, and the Discovery North Bay Museum tells the story of the region's Indigenous heritage, the fur trade, and the Dionne Quintuplets, who were born nearby in 1934 — one of the most extraordinary stories in Canadian history.
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Sudbury: The Nickel Capital of the World
Nothing quite prepares you for Sudbury. As you approach the city, the landscape shifts dramatically — the rock becomes darker, more exposed, the result of over a century of mining and smelting that stripped the surrounding hills of vegetation. Reforestation efforts since the 1970s have transformed much of the area, and today Sudbury is surrounded by recovering boreal forest, but the geology remains raw and extraordinary. You are driving through some of the oldest rock on Earth, the remnants of a meteorite impact 1.85 billion years ago that created one of the richest mineral deposits on the planet.
The Big Nickel is the landmark you stop for. Standing nine metres tall on the hill above Dynamic Earth, the giant replica of a 1951 Canadian nickel is one of the most recognizable roadside monuments in Canada — and one of the most photographed. It is unapologetically large, cheerfully absurd, and entirely sincere. Sudbury earned its nickel, and it wants you to know it.
Dynamic Earth itself is worth more than a quick photo stop. The science centre built around a real mine shaft takes visitors underground into the geology that made this city, and the exhibits on mining, minerals, and the Sudbury Basin are genuinely fascinating. The Science North centre on Ramsey Lake is another landmark — a striking building designed to echo the shape of a snowflake, perched on the Canadian Shield rock above the water.
Sudbury is also home to a thriving arts and culture scene that often surprises first-time visitors. The city has reinvented itself repeatedly, and its resilience is part of what makes it compelling.
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Into the Shield: Espanola, Blind River, and the North Channel
West of Sudbury, Highway 17 enters one of its most beautiful stretches. The road follows the northern shore of Lake Huron's North Channel — a sheltered waterway between the mainland and Manitoulin Island, considered by many sailors to be among the finest cruising waters in the world. The views across the channel are wide and luminous, the water a deep, clear blue-green that seems almost improbable this far north.
Towns like Espanola, Massey, Blind River, and Thessalon punctuate the route at comfortable intervals. These are working communities — forestry, mining services, tourism — and they have the unpretentious, self-sufficient character of places that don't depend on being discovered. The roadside here offers glimpses of the lake through the trees, small marinas, and the occasional osprey circling above the water.
The highway climbs and dips through the Shield, the rock cutting close on either side in places, the boreal forest pressing in. This is where the drive begins to feel genuinely remote, even though you're never far from a gas station or a Tim Hortons. The scale of the landscape simply makes everything feel farther away.
Sault Ste. Marie: Steel City on the St. Marys River
Sault Ste. Marie — "the Soo" to everyone who knows it — sits at one of the most strategically significant points in North America: the St. Marys River, which connects Lake Superior to Lake Huron. The Sault Ste. Marie Canal and its famous locks have been moving ships between the two lakes since 1895, and watching a massive lake freighter pass through the locks is one of those quietly spectacular experiences that stays with you.
The city has a proud industrial heritage — Algoma Steel has been operating here for over a century — and a strong sense of community identity. The waterfront has been thoughtfully developed, with walking paths, parks, and views across the river to its twin city of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. The Agawa Canyon Tour Train, departing from the Soo, offers one of the most dramatic rail journeys in Ontario, climbing into the canyon country north of the city through scenery that is genuinely breathtaking, particularly in autumn.
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The Wawa Leg: Lake Superior's Wild Shore
North of Sault Ste. Marie, Highway 17 becomes something else entirely. The road climbs away from the city and enters Lake Superior Provincial Park, where the highway hugs the eastern shore of the greatest of the Great Lakes. Lake Superior is not a lake in any ordinary sense — it is an inland sea, 560 kilometres long, cold and deep and capable of generating storms that have sunk ships. Standing at the shore here, with the water stretching to the horizon and the wind coming off the surface, you understand why the Ojibwe called it Gitchi-Gami — the Great Sea.
The scenery along this stretch is among the finest in Ontario. Massive headlands of pink and grey granite plunge into the water. The forest — spruce, fir, birch, and jack pine — clings to the rock in every direction. Waterfalls tumble down the hillsides to the lake. The light on Superior changes constantly, from silver to cobalt to a deep, almost violent blue, and the sunsets over the water are extraordinary.
Then you reach Wawa.
The Wawa Goose — a nine-metre Canada Goose sculpture standing sentinel at the highway junction — is one of the great roadside icons of Canadian travel. Built in 1963 to attract tourists to the newly paved Trans-Canada, the goose has become something far more than a novelty. It is a landmark, a meeting point, a symbol of the particular Canadian affection for the absurdly large and the earnestly proud. You stop. You take the photo. You feel, inexplicably, that you have arrived somewhere important.
Wawa itself is a small town with a big personality, surrounded by wilderness that draws hunters, anglers, and canoeists from across the country. The Magpie River runs through the area, and the waterfalls nearby — Magpie High Falls and Scenic High Falls — are worth the short detour.
White River: The Coldest Spot in Canada
West of Wawa, the highway continues through boreal forest so dense and unbroken that it begins to feel like the trees go on forever. White River is a small town with a remarkable claim: it holds the record for the coldest temperature ever recorded in Ontario, −58°C in 1935. A thermometer monument in town commemorates the distinction with a certain dry pride.
White River also has a warmer claim to fame: it is the birthplace of Winnie, the bear cub purchased here by a Canadian soldier named Harry Colebourn in 1914 and taken to England, where she eventually inspired A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh. A statue of Winnie stands in the town, and the connection to one of the world's most beloved children's characters gives this remote community an unexpectedly global resonance.
Thunder Bay: The Lakehead
Thunder Bay is the largest city on Lake Superior's northern shore and one of the most important inland ports in North America. Grain from the prairies has been flowing through Thunder Bay's massive terminal elevators for over a century, loaded onto lake freighters bound for the St. Lawrence Seaway and the world beyond. The grain elevators that line the waterfront are monuments to the agricultural economy of the Canadian interior, and they give the city's skyline a distinctive, industrial grandeur.
The city is also the gateway to some of the finest wilderness in Ontario. Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, visible from the city as a dramatic mesa rising from the lake, is one of the most striking natural landmarks in the province. The Ojibwe name for the formation — Nanabijou — carries a legend of transformation and consequence that gives the landscape a mythic weight. The Terry Fox Memorial, just east of the city on the Trans-Canada, marks the spot where the young runner was forced to end his Marathon of Hope in 1980 — one of the most moving roadside monuments in Canada.
Thunder Bay's arts and food scene has grown considerably in recent years, and the city's Indigenous cultural presence — it sits on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe — is increasingly central to how the city presents itself to visitors.
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The Long West: Dryden and the Boreal Interior
West of Thunder Bay, Highway 17 merges with the Trans-Canada and the landscape opens into something different again. The Shield gives way gradually to the boreal interior — vast, flat, and forested, with lakes appearing and disappearing through the trees like mirrors dropped in the moss. This is the longest, quietest stretch of the drive, and it rewards a certain kind of traveller: one who finds comfort in distance, who doesn't need the landscape to perform.
Dryden is a forestry and mining town on the Wabigoon River, surrounded by lakes that draw anglers from across the continent. The town is unpretentious and functional, with the self-reliant character of communities that have always made their living from the land. The Wabigoon Lake system nearby is a significant recreational destination, and the region's fishing — walleye, northern pike, muskie — is legendary among those who know it.
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Kenora: Where Ontario Meets the Prairies
Kenora is the final act of the Ontario highway experience, and it is a beautiful one. Situated on the Lake of the Woods — a vast, island-studded lake that sprawls across the Ontario-Manitoba border and into Minnesota — Kenora has the relaxed, sun-warmed character of a genuine lake town. The waterfront is lively in summer, the boating culture is deep-rooted, and the light on the Lake of the Woods in the evening is the kind that makes painters reach for their brushes.
The Lake of the Woods is one of the most extraordinary bodies of water in Canada: over 14,000 islands, 65,000 kilometres of shoreline, and a geography so complex that it took decades of surveying to map it properly. The Northwest Angle — a quirk of the 1783 Treaty of Paris — means that a small piece of Minnesota is accessible by land only through Canada, making it the only part of the contiguous United States that cannot be reached by land without crossing an international border. Geography, it turns out, has a sense of humour.
From Kenora, the Manitoba border is minutes away, and the boreal forest gives way to the first hints of prairie sky — wider, flatter, and impossibly blue. The road goes on.
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Why Highway 17 Matters
Highway 17 is not just a road. It is a connective thread through the largest province in Canada by land area, linking communities that would otherwise exist in isolation, carrying goods and people and ideas across a landscape that resists easy passage. For cross-Canada travellers, it is the northern route through Ontario — longer and more demanding than the southern alternative, but richer in scenery, in history, and in the particular satisfaction of having covered real distance through real wilderness.
To drive Highway 17 from Ottawa to the Manitoba border is to understand something essential about Canada: that the country is not just its cities, not just its coasts, but the long, quiet, magnificent middle — the Shield and the boreal, the lake towns and the mining cities, the roadside geese and the grain elevators and the cold records and the bear cubs that became beloved characters. It is all here, along this highway, waiting for anyone willing to take the long way.
Planning a road trip across Ontario? Each city along Highway 17 has its own story — and its own airport code. Explore our collections for Ottawa, North Bay, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay, Dryden, and Kenora, and bring a piece of the journey home.
