Vaughan to Cornwall and Upper Canada Village: 1860 by chauffeured car

The village on the river

Every Ontario schoolchild of a certain age visited Upper Canada Village: the 1860s heritage village on the St. Lawrence at Morrisburg, built from buildings moved out of the way of the Seaway flooding in the 1950s, with a working sawmill, a bakery, a woollen mill and costumed interpreters who make bread and shoe horses. Vaughan parents who went on the school bus bring their own children in a Sprinter, and the trip has a second life in December, when the village becomes Alight at Night, a lights display along the village lanes that is one of eastern Ontario's winter events. Cornwall, the city at the end of the road, is the overnight base and the gateway to the Long Sault Parkway.

The two versions of the trip

Summer. A family from Woodbridge leaves at 8 a.m., stops in Kingston for lunch, and arrives at the village by two for the afternoon; the overnight is in Cornwall or at a Morrisburg motel on the river; Sunday is the Long Sault Parkway — the causeway road across the islands left when the Seaway drowned the villages — with its beaches, then home. The vehicle is on daily hire, because the village, the parkway and the Cornwall waterfront are all drives.

December. Alight at Night runs in the evenings from late November through the holidays. A Vaughan family or a group of friends books a long day: departure around noon, the village at dusk, the lights, dinner in Cornwall, an overnight, and home Sunday — or the heroic single-day version for adults, leaving Vaughan at ten and returning after midnight, which is an eleven-hour hourly booking and precisely the kind of drive that should not be attempted after a day in the cold by anyone but a chauffeur.

The road

The 407 east to the 401, the 401 past Kingston and Brockville, the exit at Upper Canada Road for the village, and the 401 on to Cornwall's three exits. The routing estimate above ignores the 407 and the real-world four and a half hours assumes one stop; with children the chauffeur builds in Port Hope and Kingston. From Cornwall, Montreal is an hour east, and some Vaughan families make Upper Canada Village the first night of a Montreal weekend.

Cornwall as a base

Cornwall is the largest city between Kingston and Montreal on the Canadian side, with a riverfront of parks and a bike path at Lamoureux Park, a downtown on Pitt Street, and hotels along Brookdale Avenue and by the 401 that a chauffeured family uses as the overnight. The city's tourism site covers the events; the Seaway International Bridge crosses to Massena, New York, for families with passports who want to see the Eisenhower Lock — a side trip a chauffeur can add in an afternoon, with the border guide covering the documents.

Which vehicle

• Family of four to six, summer or December: Luxury SUV; in December the heated rear seats matter after two hours walking a lit village in the cold.
• Two families or a multi-generation group: Executive Sprinter — the vehicle for a nine-hour round trip with children, with tables and a luggage bay for the overnight.
• Adults doing the single-day Alight at Night run: Sprinter by the hour, with the chauffeur waiting through the village.

The village itself, for planning

Plan three to four hours in the village: the mills, the farms, the church and the schoolhouse are a loop of lanes, and the horse-drawn wagon and the tow-boat on the canal are the children's rides. Food is inside — the village bakery and the Harvest Barn — and the parking lot is large and free, so the chauffeur simply parks. The Crysler's Farm battlefield monument is beside the village; the Long Sault Parkway is ten minutes west and its beaches are the summer afternoon.

What the chauffeur replaces

This is a nine-hour driving weekend, and it is the driving that families are buying out of. The fare — shown in the booking engine before you commit, tolls included — is a single number for one vehicle carrying everyone; for two families it beats two cars on cost, and for one family it is the difference between a weekend in 1860 and a weekend on the 401. In December, when the return is at night on a winter highway, the case makes itself.

The Alight at Night evening, minute by minute

The December version is the one Vaughan groups ask most about, so here is how a group of ten adults from Woodbridge runs it as a single day in a Sprinter.

• 11:00 — pickup; the 407 east and the 401 with the group at the tables.
• 1:30 — Kingston for a late lunch on Princess Street; ninety minutes.
• 4:15 — the village gates at Morrisburg as dusk begins; the lights come on as the group walks the lanes, an hour and a half in the cold with the bakery and the church as warm stops.
• 6:15 — the Sprinter warm at the gate; twenty minutes to Cornwall for dinner, or straight back to Kingston for a nine o'clock dinner and the 401 home.
• Midnight — Woodbridge.

It is a thirteen-hour hourly booking and it is bought precisely because nobody in the group wants to drive the last four hours on a December night. Families with young children do the same evening as an overnight in Cornwall with a Sunday return.

The village for children, room by room

The village is a place, not a museum, and it rewards a plan. The wagon ride from the entrance orients the children; the sawmill and the woollen mill, both water-powered and working, are the loud, memorable stops; the bakery sells the bread it bakes in the wood oven; the schoolhouse's lesson and the doctor's house are for the eight-and-up; the tenant farm has the animals for the youngest; the tow-scow on the canal and the tinsmith round it out. Three and a half hours covers it with lunch at the Harvest Barn; the village site posts the daily programme of demonstrations, and the chauffeur will have the day's list on the drive.

The Long Sault Parkway and the lost villages

The Seaway's flooding in 1958 drowned nine villages between Cornwall and Morrisburg — the Lost Villages, remembered in a small museum near Long Sault — and the Long Sault Parkway is the road built across the islands that remained. It is eleven kilometres of causeway with beaches on the river side, picnic grounds and campgrounds run by the St. Lawrence Parks Commission, and in July it is where a Vaughan family spends the Sunday morning of this trip before the drive home. In October it is a foliage drive; in December it is closed for the season and the trip is the village alone.

Vehicle and pickup notes

A family is a Luxury SUV; a group of eight to fourteen an Executive Sprinter, which is the vehicle for both the summer weekend and the December day. From Vaughan the chauffeur reaches the 407 at Weston Road, Jane, Dufferin or Bathurst depending on the community; the fare is quoted from the exact address with the tolls in. For Alight at Night, tell us the ticket date and whether you are staying; for summer, the hotel and whether the Parkway morning is wanted, and the chauffeur builds the days.

Crysler's Farm and the Seaway locks

Two stops beside the village fill out a summer day. Crysler's Farm, the 1813 battlefield on the river next to the village entrance, has a monument, a visitor centre and a lawn that runs down to the water — an hour for the older children and a picnic for everyone. And the Seaway itself is the thing that made the village: the Iroquois Lock at Iroquois, twenty minutes west, has a viewing platform where lake freighters the length of two football fields are raised and lowered in front of the family, and it is the stop a chauffeured group can make on the way home that a family in its own car, pressed for time, does not. Cornwall's tourism site lists the Seaway viewing points and the Lost Villages museum near Long Sault.

The cost of the weekend, honestly

It is a long drive and the fare reflects it: the booking engine shows a daily-hire figure for the vehicle staying two days, or a return pair for a family that will keep to the village and its hotel. For a group of ten adults doing the December evening as a single hourly day, the fare divided ten ways is close to the cost of two cars' fuel and tolls with the driving removed; for a family of four it is a comfort purchase and the site says so. What it buys in December is a chauffeur on winter tires driving the 401 home at midnight while the family sleeps, and that is the whole reason the trip exists as a booking.

Getting the group through the gate

The village admission is bought at the gate or online, and for Alight at Night the evening tickets are timed; the chauffeur drops at the entrance plaza and parks in the large free lot beside it, so the walk from vehicle to gate is a minute. Families with a stroller find the lanes gravelled but manageable; grandparents find the wagon ride the way to see the far end without the walk. In December, dress for an hour and a half outside — the warm stops are the bakery, the church and the Harvest Barn — and the Sprinter's heating is on at the gate for the return.

Booking it

Book a daily hire from your Vaughan address with the overnight town and the village date; for Alight at Night tell us the evening you have tickets for, and the travel desk can hold a Cornwall hotel, which is the scarce item on the December weekends.

Book the Upper Canada Village trip