In a big win for tourism in the Kawarthas region, the Trent-Severn Waterway has been featured by the New York Times as one of its 52 Places to Go in 2025 — with the new Canadian Canoe Museum, Le Boat, 100 Acre Brewing Co., and Taste of the TSW each getting a special mention.
This is the publication’s 20th year for its annual “52 Places to Go” list, which has covered 145 countries and 366 cities and towns over the past two decades.
The segment on the Trent-Severn Waterway, written by AnneLise Sorensen and featuring a photo of the new Canadian Canoe Museum by Eugen Sakhnenko, describes the 240-mile “system of rivers, lakes and canals that winds from one end of Ontario to the other, flows amid rustic villages, woodlands and waterfalls, connecting Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay.”
Sorensen writes that 2025 “is the year to go” as the Trent-Severn Waterway “is experiencing a renaissance.”
She points to the opening of the new 65,000-square-foot lakefront Canadian Canoe Museum and its largest collection of canoes, kayaks and paddled watercraft in the world.
“The museum exhibits styles from across Canada — showcasing them in a curved building inspired by, yes, the canoe — and honors the vessel’s Indigenous legacy.”
Sorenson notes the Trent-Severn Waterway is “undergoing a multiyear revitalization project, which includes retrofitting its monumental hydraulic lift locks, among the highest in the world.”
In March 2023, the federal government announced Parks Canada would be investing $74 million over three years for six projects related to critical infrastructure improvements, including repairs the Kirkfield Lift Lock, which is the second highest hydraulic lift lock in the world.
Sorenson then mentions the expansion of Le Boat’s Canadian operation to the Trent-Severn Waterway. Le Boat, the top provider of houseboat vacations in Europe that also operates in Canada on the Rideau Canal, announced in May 2024 that it was officially launching its new base at the newly renovated Horseshoe Bay Marina on the Otonabee River in Peterborough.
Sorenson also singles out Peterborough business 100 Acre Brewing Co., a family-owned farmhouse brewery that opened in May 2023, which “pours brews like the floral Monarch saison, named after the butterflies that migrate through Ontario each year.”
Finally, Sorenson mentions the Canadian pastry BeaverTails, butter tarts, and other sweet treats that can be enjoyed on the Taste of the TSW self-guided culinary route.
The Trent-Severn Waterway is the only Canadian entry on the 52 Places to Go in 2025 list, which also features destinations including Jane Austen’s England, Galápagos Islands in Ecuador, New York City Museums, ‘White Lotus’ Thailand, and Greenland.
To compile the annual list, editors with the New York Times’ Travel desk ask journalists who have written for them in the past to pitch their favourite destinations. After compiling all the submissions, the editors decide which destinations will make the list based on various criteria, including whether it has experienced a major change or development, natural phenomena, and historial or cultural significance, and more.
