Watersedge Pub and Restaurant is located in Gore Bay, ON beautiful Manitoulin Island. Offering local craft beer and engaging food choices for all tastes. Dine on our patio overlooking beautiful Gore Bay or sit inside in air-conditioned comfort.
Watersedge provides relaxed, casual dining, with the unique rustic and artistic ambience you can only experience in Gore Bay.
With quality and tasteful service, fresh and always in-house made food, we take pride in giving our guests world-class dining with the casual atmosphere and gorgeous waterfront view.
Gore Bay Manitoulin Hotel has 5 completely equipped suites including full kitchens, barbecue & free wireless internet. The 1 & 2 bedroom units, on the third floor, have queen beds while the 3 & 4 bedroom ones, on the second floor, have 3 double beds & a queen bed. For your comfort, four pillows are provided on each bed plus all the usual bedding, towels, kitchen and bathroom supplies. For your entertainment, there is cable smart television, radio, music and movie players. For your convenience, there are several appliances including hair dryer, alarm clock, iron & board, vacuum cleaner. All services of Gore Bay are only minutes away.
The Codmothers’ Family Dining • Takeaway Wheelchair Accessible Licenced Wheelchair Accessible Licenced About The Codmothers’ This fully licenced family restaurant in
Founders Andrea Smith & Eleanor Charlton created Manitoulin Island’s first craft brewery, Split Rail Brewing Company in 2012.
After a Kickstarter campaign and an extensive search for the ideal site, Split Rail launched in 2015 in scenic Gore Bay, on the shores of Lake Huron’s North Channel.
Enjoy a bite to eat on our licenced patio with lakeside views.
Our tasting room offers beer samples, by the 12oz glass, beer to go, merch and brewery tours.
Zhiibaahaasing First Nation is home to three monumental installations: the World’s Largest Peace Pipe, the World’s Largest Dream Catcher and the World’s Largest Powwow Drum and when anyone visits the Zhiibaahaasing Traditional Powwow the fourth weekend in August each year, they will also be visiting these much larger-than-life monuments which are adjacent to the powwow grounds in the community. Expect good hospitality and an ample number of food and crafts vendors at the event. Zhiibaahaasing First Nation is accessed through the same road that leaves Highway 540 five kilometres west of the hamlet of Silver Water and is the entry to Sheshegwaning First Nation. Follow the road through Sheshegwaning to Zhiibaahaasing.
Sheshegwaning First Nation is located on the western portion of Manitoulin Island and its entry point off Highway 540 is five kilometres past the hamlet of Silver Water. Its traditional powwow is held the third weekend in June each year and visitors find it a friendly place to enjoy the dancing and drumming and visit the many traditional food and crafts vendors.
Manitoulin Island is able to boast three theatre groups, each of them unique
Burns Wharf Players
Named after the Manitowaning waterfront warehouse (Burns Wharf) where this talented group treated patrons to 15 years of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, the Burns Wharf Players are now bringing musical theatre to the revamped Knox United Church (in Manitowaning, at 25 Napier Street) while their beloved playhouse is being restored. The congregation at Knox United invited the players in and, during the spring rehearsal and late spring performances, have literally transformed the church’s sanctuary into a theatre setting. For details on Burns Wharf Players’ offerings, contact the box office at 1-866-967-8167 or book online at www.burnswharf.net
Gore Bay Summer Theatre
Gore Bay Summer Theatre presents two offerings through the month of July each year. This talented and well-directed group of volunteer actors, set designers and carpenters, lighting and sound technicians are also busy in the winter months when they pick a challenging dramatic work, polish it and go on to compete in the Northern Ontario regional drama festival, Quonta. Since they often win this event, they are also often off to Theatre Ontario’s showcase to compete against Ontario’s other regional winners in amateur theatre. The Gore Bay troupe is often successful at the provincial level too.
When you take in a summer production at the Gore Bay Summer Theatre, you’re being entertained by local thespians who hone their craft year-round. To see what’s on, call the box office at 705-2420 extension 3 or visit the town’s website www.gorebay.ca.
When you attend a production at Gore Bay Summer Theatre, you’ll find yourself in the town’s classic community hall at 25 Meredith Street in the downtown core.
De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Storytellers
Debajehmujig Storytellers is one of only a handful of professional Indigenous theatre groups in Canada.
Debajehmujig is headquartered in Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory but has its offices, rehersal space and theatre space in the village of Manitowaning at the Debajehmujig Creation Centre at 43 Queen Street.
The troupe has been presenting original work for over 35 years and has toured all across Canada and the United States, Europe and Great Britain.
The players present their own work at the Creation Centre theatre space which also often hosts touring performances.
Having their own theatre space gives Debajehmujig Storytellers flexibility and the versatile year-round theatre space is a real asset to Manitoulin Island’s cultural community.
The Creation Centre is also home to an art gallery with continually changing exhibits and installations.
The Debajehmujig Storytellers pride themselves on also being a land-based operation so crew and cast members get, literally, grounded in the growing season by spending some of their time helping to grow food and, each winter, hosting Manitoulin Island’s first ‘seed swap’ of the season. At Thanksgiving, the storytellers host a ‘Six Foot Festival’ of installations that fit in that space and there is an annual Christmas Cabaret show.
In the summer Debajehmujig Storytellers also often produce plays at Wiikwemikoong within the scenic stone ruins of a two-storey dormitory that once housed the community’s parish priests.
It is located on Wikwemikong Way, on top of one of the village’s highest point beside historic Holy Cross Catholic Church.
To find out what is going on at Debajehmujig Storytellers, visit www.storytellers@debaj.ca or call the theatre office at 705-859-1820.
When you take in a summer production at the Gore Bay Summer Theatre, you’re being entertained by local thespians who hone their craft year-round. To see what’s on, call the box office at 705-2420 extension 3 or visit the town’s website www.gorebay.ca.
When you attend a production at Gore Bay Summer Theatre, you’ll find yourself in the town’s classic community hall at 25 Meredith Street in the downtown core.
If you’re a golfer, by all means pack your clubs and come to Manitoulin Island.
Manitoulin is a large island (the biggest one in fresh water in the world) with a relatively small population (13,000-plus) but there are three golf courses here and each one of them is distinct in its features.
“Manitoulin’s Old Course” is the nine-hole Brookwood Brae Golf Course located not only within 2 km of the busy village of Mindemoya but also on the shoreline of Mindemoya Lake, one of Manitoulin’s larger inland lakes.
The nine hole course comes with its own array of bungalow cottages and is neighbour to three more housekeeping cottage businesses and a motel, all within walking distance of the course.
The course has challenging features and is also a fine course for golfers of every skill, especially those who, following their swing, can look forward to a glimpse of the beautiful lake, the large island called Treasure Island whose profile (an old woman on her hands and knees, according to local Ojibwe legend) will come in and out of your view as you play through, giving you the time to make up your own mind about the legend.
Just outside of the North Channel port town of Gore Bay, Manitoulin Golf offers golfers nine holes of bucolic beauty. The course, set in the fertile farmland that marks the Gore Bay area, is both gentle and subtly challenging. Manitoulin Golf is located in the rural township of Gordon/Barrie Island, although primarily agricultural, besides the golf course, is also the proud host of the Gore Bay-Western Manitoulin Airport and, along its share of the North Channel shoreline, one of Manitoulin’s distinctive and historic lighthouses: Janet Head Light.
We’ve covered the golf courses in Manitoulin’s central region and in its West End.
On Manitoulin’s eastern side, and just outside the historic village of Manitowaning, the Rainbow Ridge Golf Course is Manitoulin Island’s championship 18-hole golf course. It is also unique as it is owned and operated by the neighbouring Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve. This challenging course has numerous water features and a clubhouse that enables golfers to play their favourite game year-round, in any weather, at the state-of-the-art virtual golf course that has been installed there. Players can choose to play this way at most of the world’s most famous and challenging courses: suddenly, you’re there, at, for example, St. Andrew’s, and you have to match your play to the giant computer-generated vista before you and you must accommodate its perks and foibles as you play through as the virtual program gives you an extremely realistic experience, course by course.
Golf carts and clubs are available to rent at the pro shops at each course. Each club has dining facilities at its clubhouse and you’ll meet Manitoulin Island golfers as you play through or relax in the clubhouses.
Located on Manitoulin Island, CYC offers the finest selection of impeccably maintained modern yachts – sailboats, powerboats and catamarans. Our standard is second to none. CYC is located in the heart of the best freshwater cruising grounds in the world – “The North Channel”. Only 12 miles from the breathtaking Benjamin Islands.
Imagine pink granite islands, millions of years old, covered with windswept pines and scattered throughout a 120 mile expanse of the bluest freshwater in the world. Dozens of untainted anchorages, secret gunkholes and quaint harbour towns make up this “Boater’s Paradise”. This supreme waterway offers breath-taking scenery and solitude yet is within close reach of services and all amenities.
The timeless and unique pink granite of the Benjamin Islands, the protected sailing of the Whalesback Channel and the white quartz cliffs lining the 8 mile fjord of Baie Finn, are but a small part of this world renowned cruising area known as the North Channel of Lake Huron. The North Channel spills into Georgian Bay and there are literally hundreds of beautiful anchorages to discover.
Contact Information:
30 Water Street. Gore Bay, Ontario, Canada. P0P 1H0
We offer a variety of maritime services on the waters around Manitoulin. From the Killarney region to the western reaches of the North Channel – our events program is comprised of Regularly Scheduled Adventures offered to the public. Our public events calendar is then carefully woven in with a busy private charter and motor coach agenda.
Our signature tour offerings are comprised of main feature tours operated weekly in the summer and each one is quite diverse from the others. The main tours are known as “Sunset Dinner Cruise” – all with quality live entertainment aboard, “The Benjamin Islands“, “Baie Fine Fjord” and “Voyage to Killarney” adventures. In addition to these events, we are often create unique theme and seasonal offerings such as our Country Fest Songwriter Showcase and numerous dates with top notch live entertainment. From pirate parties to fall colours, we regularly add new events to keep our product range dynamic.
Contact Information:
1 Water St West, Box 596
Little Current, On, P0P 1K0
Overlooking the distinctive V-shaped bay bordered by the lushly-cedared heights of the East Bluff on one edge and the town and the gentler slopes of the West Bluff on the other, the Harbour Centre extends a commanding welcome to Gore Bay’s waterfront.
Within, on two floors, is a warren of light-filled, wood-lined artist studios, galleries and shops offering all manner of Manitoulin-made fine art, glass works, textiles, soaps, jewellery and much else to browse. On the third, topmost floor, up a broad staircase to a bright lobby, is the William Purvis Marine Centre, housing the Town of Gore Bay’s huge collection of nautical memorabilia gathered by historian G. I. ‘Buck’ Longhurst during his long career on the Great Lakes.
Visitors, researchers and boating enthusiasts are treated to a unique display that comprises an impressively thorough history of commercial shipping on the Great Lakes. In the temperature- and humidity-controlled loft space, the lives of the legendary fishing, freight and passenger boats are laid bare in original log books, ships’ wheels, lanyards, flags, photos, shipping company cap and jacket badges and even little plates and coffee mugs decorated with a ship’s name, from a long-ago ship’s dining room; intricate handcrafted model boats dot the room, re-creating all the details, in miniature, of the great commercial sailing vessels of the past.
Mr. Longhurst is the curator of the collection, including an archive room of “17,000 slides and 20,000 prints and the history of practically every company and vessel that sailed on the Great Lakes,” amassed over a lifetime of working on their waters and shores.
But his love of the ships started way before then. “As a kid, I was always at the dock watching the boats unload. I watched all day as the boats came through, the boats I’d read about.”
After high school Buck went into the navy until Canada’s defense forces were amalgamated in 1965, then became a letter carrier and supervisor until 1970 when his life changed on meeting Jack Purvis on the waterfront in Sault Ste. Marie.
The marine museum is named in honour of William Purvis, explains Mr. Longhurst, the Scottish patriarch of the Purvis commercial fishing clan, who was appointed the first lighthouse keeper at Great Duck Island in 1872–13 miles from today’s Purvis Fisheries location at Burnt Island; by 1882, William had started to fish commercially with his five sons
“The Purvis family is one reason why Gore Bay grew to be a boomtown in the 1880s and 90s,” says the historian. “They built the town, many of their huge old houses still stand today. The boys all were commercial fishermen. William’s son James started Purvis Brothers Fisheries, and he also ran the mail, snowplow and motorcar services, a livery stable and a dairy. The Purvis’s were the prime movers behind Gore Bay’s becoming the judicial seat of the Island. By 1934, they owned the largest independent fishing fleet in the Great Lakes.”
Buck Longhurst started working for Jack Purvis soon after their meeting on the docks, spending years on Jack’s ‘YankCanuck’ as a deck hand, crane operator and second engineer, earning his tug master and marine and hoisting engineer credentials as he went. In the museum, he proudly shows off the ‘YankCanuck’s steering column, wheel and ship’s bell below a photo of the ship as he fondly remembers it.
“I used to see all these old boats out there. With the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, all the little canal boats, the small upper lakes boats, were disappearing. I started taking photos and whenever I got a vacation I’d be at Sarnia or the Welland Canal taking pictures or getting rides on boats and taking more pictures. My hobby turned into an obsession.” As he towed ships to their final resting places in the scrapyard, he’d salvage unwanted name plaques, keys, flags, log books and brass railings to add to his growing personal collection.
In the museum, there’s a model of the ‘Gore,’ the ship that got stuck in the ice of the bay until spring and gave Gore Bay its name, built by Buck Longhurst himself, along with his models of the SS ‘Manitou,’ the ‘Mindemoya’ and the ‘Langell Boys.’ The SS ‘Manzutti’ has a miniature crane on the deck, a replica of the very crane Mr. Longhurst operated for 20 years. “This model was built by a professional model builder,” he says, pointing to the fine detail work, “and cost eleven thousand dollars.”
The ‘Avenger IV’ display features a beautiful large model of the tug and the log book of her decommissioning trip to Gravesend, England in 1985. Yes, Buck Longhurst was on that trip, “as a crew member for 59 days. There was no heat on those English tugs.”
Here’s a model of the ‘Edmund Fitzgerald,’ immortalized in song by Gordon Lightfoot, tragically sunk in hurricane-force winds on Lake Superior in 1975, drowning all 29 aboard. “It’s a great song,” says the marine history expert, “but Lightfoot got some details wrong. He says she was fully loaded – she wasn’t. And that she was bound for Cleveland – but she was going to Detroit.” There’s no reason to disbelieve this author of eighteen books and fervent devourer of maritime lore.
Buck Longhurst remembers the long-gone days when “you couldn’t get a semi-trailer truck onto the ferries until the 1960s, and they’d only get as far as Espanola on the north shore. The road from Espanola to Little Current “was impassable in all seasons” for trucks, and was nicknamed the Drunken Snake Trail. “Supplies were hard to come by and costly. Boats got through where cars and especially trucks could not.
“When I look around today I can say, ‘I dredged the marinas at Gore Bay, the Sault, at Spider Bay in Little Current. I put in the helipad at Gros Cap Lighthouse, built the Lafarge docks at Birch Island. In Gore Bay, all the boats in the marina are making use of the work I and others did; it makes the toil and hardship worthwhile. If you helped to shape the face of the area, it’s great to know your work means something.”
William Purvis Marine Centre: Third Floor, Harbour Centre, 40 Water Street, Gore Bay. Hours: Tuesdays to Saturdays, 10 am to 4 pm; Sunday from 12 pm to 4 pm, admission by donation. https://www.gorebaymuseum.com/marine-museum
Isobel Harry is a photographer and writer who has also worked extensively in the field of human rights advocacy. Her photos have been widely exhibited and she has published articles in many magazines; as programmes director and executive director for PEN Canada for twenty years, she worked on behalf of the right to freedom of expression internationally.
Now living on Manitoulin Island, Isobel works as a freelance writer and photographer and is a frequent contributor to the weekly Manitoulin Expositor newspaper and the annual This is Manitoulin magazine.
Her interests lie at the intersection of arts, culture and human rights.
