Vaughan to Chautauqua Institution: the summer-season week by chauffeured car

Chautauqua, the idea

Chautauqua is not a resort and not quite a town: it is a gated Victorian village of gingerbread cottages on the western shore of Chautauqua Lake, founded in 1874 as a summer school for Sunday-school teachers, that runs a nine-week season from late June to late August of lectures every weekday morning in the five-thousand-seat Amphitheater — a week's theme, a speaker of national standing each day — with the Chautauqua Symphony, the opera company, the theater company, a ballet, the interfaith lectures in the afternoons, a Boys' and Girls' Club and a Children's School that take the children from nine to four, sailing and swimming at the lake, and no cars inside the gate. Vaughan's readers and retirees discovered it a generation ago and their children bring their own now; the Institution's site has the season's themes and the gate passes, and the border guide has the Peace Bridge.

The road

From Thornhill the 407 and the QEW to Fort Erie, the Peace Bridge, I-190 and I-90 west along Lake Erie's shore past Dunkirk to exit 60 at Westfield, then Route 394 south through the vineyards of the Lake Erie grape belt to Mayville and the Institution's main gate at the lake — three and five-sixths hours by the estimate and four with the booth. The SUV drops the family and the week's bags at the gate's welcome centre or the Athenaeum's porch, because vehicles do not enter the grounds, and comes home; a family that wants the vehicle for the Jamestown day or the Ellicottville detour keeps it a day on daily hire.

The week's programme

Each of the nine weeks has a theme — the season's themes are published in the winter — and the weekday shape is the same: the morning lecture at 10:45 in the Amphitheater, the interfaith lecture at two in the Hall of Philosophy's open-air colonnade, the afternoon's classes at the Special Studies programme (writing, painting, sailing, bridge), the lake, and the evening's performance — the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, the opera, the theater company's plays, a ballet, a popular concert on Friday and Saturday nights. Sunday is the sacred day: the morning service in the Amphitheater, the Sacred Song Service at eight, no lecture. The Institution's calendar has the week's speakers, and a family picks its week by the theme.

The children's Chautauqua

The Children's School takes three-to-five-year-olds from nine to noon; the Boys' and Girls' Club takes six-to-fifteen-year-olds from nine to four in a day of sailing, swimming, sports and crafts at the club's waterfront that Vaughan parents describe as the best camp their children ever attended; the Youth Activities Center is the teenagers' evening. The parents' morning lecture and afternoon class are the children's club day, and the family reunites at the lake at four; the Institution's youth page has the enrolment, which fills for the July weeks by spring.

The village, the lake and the Athenaeum

The grounds are Bestor Plaza's lawn and bookstore, the brick walk's shops, the Miller Bell Tower on the lake, the Amphitheater's roof, the Hall of Philosophy's columns, the gingerbread cottages with their porches, the Smith Memorial Library and the Athenaeum Hotel — the 1881 grand hotel on the lake with the verandah, the dining room's five-course dinners and the rocking chairs — where a Vaughan family of five sleeps in two rooms, or in a rented cottage with a kitchen for the week. The lake is sailing at the Sailing Center, swimming at the beaches, the Chautauqua Belle's steamboat cruise, and the Bemus Point–Stow ferry across the narrows, the oldest of its kind still running. The travel desk holds the Athenaeum, which for the July weeks books in the autumn.

Jamestown, Lucille Ball and the Comedy Center

Twenty minutes south at the lake's foot, Jamestown is Lucille Ball's hometown — the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum with the recreated I Love Lucy sets, the Lucy Fest in August — and the home of the National Comedy Center, opened in 2018 in the old train station: a museum of American comedy that builds each visitor a profile and a laugh track, and the family's rainy afternoon with the SUV on its daily-hire day. The Comedy Center's site has the hours; the Roger Tory Peterson Institute for the birding family is beside it.

The week, in shape

Saturday at 9 from Thornhill, the Peace Bridge at 10:40, exit 60 at 12:30, the Athenaeum's porch at 1:15, the gate passes collected, the children's club enrolment confirmed; Sunday the Amphitheater service and the lake; Monday to Friday the lecture, the club, the classes, the lake and the evening's music; Wednesday's daily-hire day for Jamestown's Comedy Center; Saturday's checkout at ten, the Bemus Point ferry and lunch, the SUV at one, the Peace Bridge at 3:15 with the 48-hour exemption on the bookstore bags, Thornhill by 5. Seven nights, the SUV as a return with one daily-hire day, one number in the booking engine.

What the chauffeur replaces

The QEW and I-90 twice with a week's bags; the Peace Bridge as the driver; the gate, where the vehicle would sit for a week in a lot the family does not need; and the drive home after a week of lectures and lake, which a chauffeured family does asleep. Chautauqua is a place without cars, and the chauffeured version is the trip where the family's car does not come either.

Seasons

The nine weeks from late June to late August are the season and the reason; the shoulder weeks — the first and the last — are quieter and cheaper, and the July weeks are the fullest with the children's programmes full by spring. Outside the season the grounds are open, quiet and free, and a Vaughan couple's autumn weekend at the Athenaeum — open through October — is the lake's colour without the programme.

Pairing it

Chautauqua pairs with Ellicottville an hour east for the family's summer ropes day, with Erie and Presque Isle forty minutes west for the beach, with the Lake Erie wine country's tasting rooms along Route 20, and with Buffalo for the wings on the way home.

A day inside the gate, in order

Monday of the week for a family of five from Thornhill: breakfast on the Athenaeum's verandah at eight, the children to the Boys' and Girls' Club's waterfront at nine and the four-year-old to the Children's School, the parents' walk to Bestor Plaza for the bookstore and coffee, the Amphitheater's lecture at 10:45 — the week's theme's first speaker — the Hall of Philosophy's interfaith talk at two for one parent and the Special Studies watercolour class for the other, the children collected at four and the lake's beach until six, dinner at the Athenaeum at 6:30, and the Chautauqua Symphony in the Amphitheater at 8:15 with the four-year-old asleep on a lap. No vehicle, no drive, and the same day tomorrow with a different speaker; it is the week that Vaughan's readers describe as the best holiday they never had to organise.

The Lake Erie wine country, on the way

Route 20 and Route 5 between the Peace Bridge and Westfield run through the Lake Erie grape belt — the largest Concord grape region in the world, and the vineyards that Welch's built — with a dozen wineries' tasting rooms between Silver Creek and Ripley; the SUV stops at Johnson Estate at Westfield, the region's oldest, on the way in, and the Lake Erie Wine Country's site has the trail. Lily Dale, the spiritualist community twenty minutes north of the Institution at Cassadaga Lake, is the other stop for the curious.

Costs, plainly

The Chautauqua week is a return with one daily-hire day in the booking engine, and the gate passes — which are the season's real cost, priced by the week — the Athenaeum or the cottage and the children's club fees are the family's own; the 48-hour CAD 800 exemption per person covers the bookstore on the way home. Against the fare are the QEW and I-90 twice with a week's bags, the bridge as the driver, and a car sitting in the gate's lot for a week; a couple does this in their car, and a family of five books the SUV for the drop at the porch and the Saturday's sleep home, while two families share the Sprinter.

The Chautauqua Belle and the lake's afternoon

The Chautauqua Belle is a steam-powered paddlewheeler of 1976 that sails from the Institution's dock and from Mayville for ninety-minute cruises on the lake — the shoreline's cottages, the Bemus Point narrows, the captain's history of the steamboats that once brought the visitors — and it is the family's Wednesday afternoon when the Special Studies class is skipped; the Sailing Center rents Sunfish and gives lessons, the beaches have lifeguards, and the Bemus Point–Stow ferry's cable crossing is the twenty-minute excursion that the children ask to repeat. The Institution's site has the recreation hours.

Amish country and the farm stands

The Amish community of Chautauqua County's hills around Conewango Valley and Leon — the buggies on the roads, the furniture and quilt shops with the hand-lettered signs, the bakeries with the pies — is thirty minutes south of the Institution and a family's daily-hire morning before Jamestown's Comedy Center, with the SUV on the back roads and the chauffeur stopping at the stand with the maple syrup; the county's tourism site has the Amish trail's map. Photographs of the people are not taken; of the quilts, yes.

The shoulder weeks, for the couple

The first week of the season in late June and the last in late August are the quiet ones — the Athenaeum's rates lower, the Amphitheater's seats easy, the lake warm in August and cool in June — and a Vaughan couple without children books one as the Premium Sedan's week: the drop at the porch, seven days of lectures and rocking chairs, and the sedan back on the Saturday.

Booking it

Book a return from your Vaughan address with one daily-hire day, or a daily hire for the week; tell us the week's theme, the Athenaeum or the cottage, the children's ages for the club, the seats and every passenger's citizenship for the bridge, and the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

Book the Chautauqua week