Water covers abut 35 per cent of Grass River Provincial Park. Everywhere you turn there is a lake, a marsh, a river, a fen, or some other body of water. Though you can glimpse the area’s scenic beauty from land, in order to experience the park’s essence you must venture into those liquid realms.

The park’s name conjures an image of a channel of water, but as the Grass River snakes through the park it repeatedly balloons to form lakes. If you take the 129-kilometre canoe route that follows the river the length of the Grass River Provincial Park, you will be paddling across lakes most of the time.

Whether lake or river, the water is remarkably clear and clean; in fact, this area was designated a park, in part, to protect the superb water quality. The largely undeveloped park also protects an ark of wildlife, notably a population of rare woodland caribou. The woodlands in which these caribou prosper consist of black spruce, jack pine, assorted hardwoods, and other boreal forest trees underlain by the granite of the Canadian Shield, which characterizes the majority of the park.