Vaughan to Sudbury: Science North, the Big Nickel and the long road north

Sudbury, four hours north

Sudbury is the city every Ontario schoolchild visited once for Science North, the science centre in two snowflake-shaped buildings on the shore of Ramsey Lake, and for the Big Nickel, the nine-metre coin outside Dynamic Earth's mine tour. It is the largest city in northern Ontario, built on the nickel deposits of a two-billion-year-old meteorite crater, and the last generation has regreened the black rock the smelters left, so that a family arriving from the 69 sees a city of lakes and pine rather than the moonscape their parents remember. From Vaughan it is a four-hour drive and a weekend, and the chauffeured version exists because four hours each way with children is the part of the trip nobody wants.

Science North and Dynamic Earth

Science North is the reason for the trip: four floors of hands-on science on the lake — the butterfly gallery, the animal exhibits with the beaver and the porcupine, the space and body galleries, the IMAX theatre and the planetarium — a full day for children between four and fourteen, with the lakeside boardwalk outside for the break. Dynamic Earth, across the city on the Big Nickel's hill, is the mining half: a cage ride down to a demonstration mine, the tunnels, the history of the Sudbury Basin, and the coin itself for the photograph. Together they are a day and a half, which is why the trip is a weekend: Science North on Saturday, Dynamic Earth on Sunday morning, the drive home after lunch. The chauffeur drops at each door — Science North's lakeside entrance, Dynamic Earth's hilltop lot — and the Luxury SUV waits.

The Laurentian move-in

Laurentian University sits on Ramsey Lake's far shore, and Cambrian College and Collège Boréal are across the city; the September move-in from Vaughan is the Sprinter booking described in the Kingston post: the family, the student, the residence load, one vehicle, the unloading window, the parents home the same evening or after a night in the city. Four hours each way is the reason a family that did Queen's with two cars books Sudbury with one Sprinter.

The city around the lakes

Sudbury has three hundred lakes inside its boundary and the family weekend uses them: Ramsey Lake's Bell Park with its beach and boardwalk beside Science North, the Lake Laurentian Conservation Area's trails on the university side, Onaping Falls and the A.Y. Jackson lookout half an hour north-west where the painter set up his easel. The city's downtown is small; the family stays at a hotel by Science North or on the Kingsway, and the vehicle staying is what makes the lakes part of the weekend.

The route

Highway 400 north to its end past Parry Sound, Highway 69 north through the French River to Sudbury's south end, and Regent Street or the bypass into the city — four hours and a quarter from Maple with a stop at Parry Sound, four and three-quarters with a French River stop for children. The 69 north of Parry Sound is now largely four-lane; the remaining two-lane sections are the reason winter trips are a chauffeur's job. The French River's visitor centre and the bridge over the gorge is the stop the chauffeur suggests.

Which vehicle

An SUV for a family with boosters at $25 each; a Sprinter for the move-in, for two families and for a school-age group's science weekend; a Premium Sedan for a couple with a Sudbury reason of their own. The SUV is the winter vehicle without exception.

What the chauffeur replaces

Eight and a half hours of northern highway in a weekend, the French River's two-lane stretches, the move-in's second car, and the drive home from a science centre with two overstimulated children. The fare is one number in the booking engine — a return pair or daily hire — and for a Sprinter of eight it undercuts two cars; for a family of four it is a comfort purchase, and the site says so.

Seasons

Science North and Dynamic Earth are year-round, with Dynamic Earth's mine tour seasonal; summer for the lakes and Bell Park's beach; October for the drive north through the colours of the French River; winter for the science weekend with an SUV on a northern road and the city's Nordic skiing at Laurentian. The move-in is the first weekend of September.

Pairing it

Sudbury is the base for the north's other trips on this site: Killarney an hour south-west, Manitoulin Island an hour and a half west via Espanola, and the Sault four hours west on Highway 17, covered in the Agawa Canyon post; a week in the north with one Sprinter is a daily hire the travel desk books as a loop.

A science weekend for a family of five, in order

Saturday: pickup at 7:30 from a Maple driveway, the 400 with boosters fitted; the Parry Sound service centre at 9:45 for twenty minutes; the French River bridge at 11 for the gorge lookout and the visitor centre's washrooms; Sudbury by 12:15; lunch on the Kingsway; Science North from one to five — the butterfly gallery first, the animals, the IMAX at three, the fourth-floor labs — the hotel by Ramsey Lake; dinner; Bell Park's boardwalk after. Sunday: Dynamic Earth at ten with the mine tour's first cage, the Big Nickel photograph, the Onaping Falls and A.Y. Jackson lookout at one (forty minutes north-west, the painter's view of the falls), lunch at Chelmsford, and Highway 69 home with three children asleep by Parry Sound. Two days of daily hire, one number in the booking engine, and a parent who would have driven eight and a half hours has instead been to a science centre.

Science North, floor by floor

The centre is two snowflake buildings joined by a rock tunnel through the Canadian Shield; the entrance is the smaller one on the lake with the IMAX, and the tunnel leads to the big one whose four floors climb the hill: the second floor's Nature Exchange and the animals — the beaver lodge, the porcupine, the snakes children hold — the third floor's body and space galleries, the fourth's climate and technology labs and the planetarium. The Bluecoats, the centre's staff scientists, run demonstrations on every floor; the schedule is on the Science North site and a family with a plan sees three. The lakeside boardwalk outside the door is the lunch break; the vehicle is in the lot by the entrance.

Dynamic Earth and the Big Nickel

Dynamic Earth is on the west side of the city on the hill where the Big Nickel — a nine-metre replica of the 1951 Canadian nickel — has stood since 1964; the centre's mine tour takes a cage seven storeys down to a demonstration mine of drifts and stopes with the equipment of a century of Sudbury mining, and the galleries above cover the basin's meteorite origin and the regreening. It is two to three hours; the mine tour is seasonal and timed and goes in the notes; the hilltop lot takes the vehicle.

The Laurentian move-in, worked through

A student from Concord to a Laurentian residence on Ramsey Lake: the family of four, the bins, the fridge, the bicycle, the winter coat bought in August. The Sprinter at 7 a.m., the load in the bay, the residence's unloading zone at 11:30 in the assigned window, the family's lunch at the university, the campus walk, and the parents home by the same Sprinter at six — the day-return version — or a night by the lake and Science North on Sunday, the weekend version. The corporate account structure suits a family that will make this run eight times over four years.

The north's loop from Sudbury

With a Sprinter for a week, Sudbury is the hub: Killarney an hour and a quarter south-west by Highway 69 and 637, Manitoulin an hour and a half west by Highway 17 and 6 through Espanola and the swing bridge, the Sault four hours west on 17, and Science North on the return. The Sudbury-to-Manitoulin road is the one most Vaughan families take to the island, and the Killarney post explains why the park is a weekend of its own.

Pickup notes

Highway 400 for every Vaughan community — Maple and the VMC are on it, Woodbridge joins at Major Mackenzie, Thornhill crosses on Highway 7 — then the 69 to the city. Give us the hotel, the science days and the mine tour time, the residence window if it is a move-in, the seats and the loads, and the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

Onaping Falls and the A.Y. Jackson lookout

Forty minutes north-west of the city on Highway 144, the Onaping River drops fifty-five metres over a series of falls into a gorge, and the lookout at the top — named for A.Y. Jackson, who painted the falls in 1953 — has a trail down to the bridge and the base; it is the Sunday-afternoon stop of a Sudbury weekend and the reason the vehicle stays, because no bus goes there. The Chelmsford valley on the way is the farmland that surprises families who expected rock.

Costs, in shape

A family of five driving to Sudbury and back for a weekend pays fuel for nine hours, two nights' hotel parking and a parent's weekend; the chauffeured return pair is one number in the booking engine, the daily hire for the vehicle staying is another, and for two families in a Sprinter — which is how Science North weekends are often booked from Thornhill — the shared fare beats two cars. For the move-in it beats a car and a rented van without argument.

Booking it

Book a return pair or daily hire from your Vaughan address to the hotel, or a Sprinter for the move-in with the residence window; tell us the seats, the loads and the science-centre days, and the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

Book the Sudbury weekend