This week’s dream: a Swallows and Amazons summer in Canada

One of the largest waterfalls on the planet, Niagara is beautiful, but marred by big crowds, high-rise hotels and souvenir stores. If you’re visiting Toronto, it’s only two hours way, so you may as well “see it, but get out quick”, says Aaron Millar in The Times – because Ontario’s real pleasures lie elsewhere, in its countless lakes. Fringed by forests, rocky crags and fine beaches, they are “the perfect offbeat destination for active families”, like a North American Swallows and Amazons, “with maple syrup and moose instead of cream teas and Coniston Water”. Best of all, this natural wonderland is remarkably unknown outside Canada.

Voted the country’s No. 1 “hidden gem” by Canadians, Georgian Bay is a vast inlet on the northeastern shore of Lake Huron, the second largest of the Great Lakes. At Tobermory, a tiny harbour of “colourful clapboard houses” and fish and chip shops, winter storms can swell the waves up to 30ft, but the lake is calm in summer, and at its Fathom Five National Marine Park, you can go snorkelling over century-old shipwrecks in waters that are so clear you feel like you’re flying. Other nearby delights include the white sands of Wasaga, the world’s longest freshwater beach – like a low-rise “Canadian Benidorm”, great for children – and Manitoulin Island, where guides from the First Nation Anishinaabe people lead visitors up steep forest paths to rock plateaus commanding huge views of the surrounding wilds.

Loveliest of all is perhaps Muskoka, an area of lakes where Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Justin Bieber all own homes. Activities on offer here include canoeing, jet-skiing, wake boarding and waterborne obstacle courses. But with a “staggering” 8,699 miles of shoreline, absolute peace is also easy to find – “no plans, no rush”, just sunsets, swims and the sound of waves lulling you to sleep at night. For more information, visit uk-keepexploring.canada.travel.