Driving from Ontario to Manitoba

Ontario and Manitoba share a land border that appears to be at least 500 miles long, yet it also appears that there is exactly one road connecting the two provinces, Canada’s Highway 1.

Is there any other way to motor directly from Ontario to Manitoba or vice-versa? Assuming using surface roads and not railroad tracks, hiking trails and so forth.

Well as far as Google Maps and Microsoft Streets and Tips, there is no other road but Rt 1. A fairly amazing fact, but isn’t most of that border in Tundra?
Microsoft shows small roads 304 & 314 through Wadhope, but nothing that goes across the border and indeed no towns in Ontario near the border north of Malachi. The entire area is so riddled with lakes and streams that I would WAG that Boats, Skis, Dog Sleds and small planes are the travel means of choice.
It looks like dropping into the US must be a common means of heading west.

Jim

No, if by “directly” you mean “Without going through the United States.” Most of northern Ontario above the towns along highways 11 and 17 is wilderness. There are spots up there my company does business at where the only way to get in is by floatplane. The most northernly town connected to the rest of the road system by a reliable highway is, I think, Pickle Lake. And there’s hundreds more miles of Ontario north of that. And let me tell you, those roads are not exactly I-90. Fill up on gas and bring a survival kit.

Between any point in Ontario within a few hours’ drive of Highway 401 or 402 - or, for that matter, any point in Canada east of Ontario, if you want to go for a REALLY long drive - the fastest way to get to, say, Winnipeg, Manitoba is to cross the border at Sarnia, take I-69 past Lansing and then onto Chicago via I-90 and -94, and continue on 94 right past the Twin Cities and hook up with I-29 at Fargo, which leads directly to Manitoba. And that’s a long drive. It would be a longer drive from Kingston, Ontario to Winnipeg as it would be to drive from Kingston to Orlando, Florida.

From Northern Ontario, however, that one road, Highway 11, is your one option.

As far as What Exit’s post goes, :rolleyes:.

I grew up in Winnipeg, and my family would frequently head out to Kenora and beyond for camping trips, and yup, if you want to get over there and not cross into the States, you’ve gotta take the Trans-Canada.

The area of the Manitoba-Ontario border, as well of most of Ontario north & west of, say, Sudbury, is rather sparsely populated. Properly speaking, you’d call it taiga or boreal forest, not tundra. The terrain is rather rugged, and the bedrock is fairly shallow (the whole area is called the Canadian Shield, and is essentially a very eroded mountain range); as a result, there are many, many places along the highway where the engineers had to dynamite down many yards into the bedrock to make a level road bed. The added expense required for this, combined with the low population density in the region, help to explain why there’s only the one highway. I believe (although I can’t find a citation right now) that this segment of the Trans-Canada was the last to be completed, in 1970; I’ll try to find a cite for this.

Sorry the part about the Tundra was a weak joke, I should have included the smilie.
I think the rest of my post was accurate.

Jim

I have to ask. What’s wrong with the Trans Canada Highway?

Got a Hummer or Range Rover?

Here is the Official Ontario Road Map. You can keep driving down to the actual maps by clicking on overviews. The maps, themselves, are in .pdf format.

There a couple of roads that cross out of Manitoba into Ontario. For example, Provincial Hwy 315 goes to Werner Lake, ON. Unfortunately, it is the ONLY road that goes to Werner Lake, ON and there is no access from the Ontario side.

Another option would be to leave Canada Highway 17A, going North on Provincial Hwy 596 to Minaki, ON, then bouncing down the Canadian National roadbed into Manitoba. (I have no idea how legal this would be.)

In the Winter, you could turn right off Hwy 17 onto Gundy Rd about five miles before the Manitoba border, snake up through the woods to the lake across from Ingolf, cross the ice to Ingolf and take Provinicial Hwy 312 into Manitoba.

Viewing the Gundy Rd/Hwy 312 “connection” through Google Earth, it appears that there are several gas lines or power lines with trails running through the woods in that region that do not follow any of the higways. I suspect that there are service trails one could follow (perhaps only in winter when fording the numerous bodies of water would be less an issue), but, again, one has to worry about the legality of trespassing, (and, these days, you might incur the interest of the Mounties or even the FBI (whom I would hope would only operate in a supporting role)).

Depends on what you mean by reliable. I drove that road for several years in the late 70s when participating in the development of the now closed Umex mine and it pretty well destroyed my pickup. It wasn’t paved and full of potholes and boils.

Well, in Northern Ontario, it’s just a 2 lane highway.

It would be illegal somehow, but perhaps more importantly, it would also be quite dangerous. If I recall correctly, that’s pretty much the only all-Canadian route the CN Railway has between eastern and western Canada. It’s frequently used; by freight trains mostly, but also by VIA Rail for passenger service. (And yes, I’ve been through there on a train–the terrain is quite inhospitable, being swampy in spots, rocky in others, with many lakes and rivers.) At any rate, you do not want to try to drive down those tracks.

Besides, in many places, when a train came, you’d have to pull over. And when you did, your car would sink in the muskeg.

Yes. One time some friends and I drove west. We drove from Oshawa to Flint, Michigan in one relatively-short day. We drove around the clock from Flint to Minott, North Dakota in about 36 hours (one person at the wheel, one navigating and keeping the driver awake, and one sleeping in the back, and changing around every three hours). The drive from the Toronto area to Minott is comparable to the drive to Winnipeg… and that’s the short route.

Actually, it’s Ontario King’s Highway #17. :slight_smile: West of Thunder Bay, Hwy 11 goes south of Hwy 17 and ends at Rainy River on the Minnesota border. It’s Hwy 17 that goes to Manitoba and becomes Manitoba Highway 1. It’s all still the Trans-Canada Highway, though.

East of Thunder Bay, Hwy 11 and Hwy 17 share the same road until east of the Nipigon River. There, Hwy 11 splits off and goes north, while Hwy 17 follows the north shore of Lake Superior and goes through Wawa to Sault Ste. Marie (an awesomely-beautiful drive, BTW).

There is only one road bridge across the Nipigon river. This bridge carries all the traffic that the Trans-Canada Highway carries between western and eastern Canada.

I hear that bridge is under repair…

Incidentally, the Trans-Canada Highway splits apart and takes several routes through Ontario. That’s not just your imagination. All of its routes, though, tend to stay to the north. The closest it gets to the Toronto area and Lake Ontario is along Hwys 12 and 7 through central and eastern Ontario.

While I’m at it, I should mention one of my favourite sites about Ontario highways:
http://www.thekingshighway.ca/
Great archival photographs, such as the Nipigon River bridge.

Not a thing. I’ve traveled parts of it with great pleasure.

I am just interested to find that such a vast land border has exactly one thru road crossing it.

Have a gander at the Northern territories.

Most of the industrial traffic probably came down through the great lakes to Toronto and Montreal and the only real surface transport up until WW2 would have been via train. Since the airlines take the majority of folks across the country, there probably has been no reason to expand on the surface routes.

Declan

Well, the gander is actually at Wawa, ON.

I’m pretty sure that’s a goose. Gander is in Labrador. :stuck_out_tongue:

It is.

The only road link between the two halves of the country is down to a single lane in both directions. Hilarity ensues!

I second this, and I think I can expand upon it.

Look at any road map of most of America*, even one without much detail, and you’ll see that it is completely riven with roads. Americans take it very much for granted that we can drive from anywhere to anywhere within most of our country, and that driving is the best way of travelling unless there are other obvious concerns. We have bad airlines (private) and worse rail (subsidized) because driving is very often seen as a better option. Yes, that is a self-feeding cycle. The cycle got started in the 1950s with the inauguration of the Interstate Highway System.

*Alaska is the big exception. The factors that work in Alaska also work in Canada to a very large extent, yielding the same result in both places. I don’t know much about roads in Hawaii except the obvious.

That doesn’t really have anything to do with the difference between the US and Canada though. (And why would you think private airlines are bad? What’s bad about them?)

There’s few roads in northern Ontario because very few people live there. If you look at a road map of the populated areas of Canada, they’re full of nicely constructed freeways. Canada has private airlines too (to be fair, in my extensive experience they’re a bit better than American carriers, but that may just be the luck of the draw) and an underdeveloped rail system.

The U.S. needs a lot of roads because 300 million people live there and it’s a big country.