North Bay sits where Lake Nipissing meets Highway 11, about 350 km north of Toronto. It is a mid-sized northern Ontario city — 53,000 people, a university, a military base — and functions as the gateway to a large stretch of cottage and wilderness country. The lakes here are cold and clean, the fishing is good, and the boreal forest presses in close.
The city itself is functional rather than picturesque, but the setting is genuinely fine. The Lake Nipissing waterfront is a pleasant place to walk, with views across the lake that can stretch seemingly to the horizon. Trout Lake, on the east side of town, is another anchor for local outdoor life. In winter, North Bay is properly cold and snowy, with cross-country skiing and snowmobiling in the surrounding area.
It is also the birthplace of the Dionne quintuplets — the five sisters born in 1934 who were taken from their family and put on public display. The Dionne Quints Museum near their birthplace is a small, moving reminder of a stranger chapter in Canadian history.