I lived in my friend’s car for 3 months in Ontario during the winter and these are the things I learned. If you’re American you might mock Canada for having a much smaller population but really being from Appleton, Wisconsin isn’t going to be relatable at all trying to get from Barrie to Toronto. Ontario is the most populated province in Canada, boasting over 16 million people, which makes the network of cities along the west side of Lake Superior quite hard to navigate through.
Just to get started, the first advice I’d tell anyone driving into Ontario for the first time to reach Toronto is to have at least a note about the names of which highways you’re planning to take, the reason being there are so many cities within the Greater Toronto Area that off-ramps on the busy highways come so frequently that it’s so easy to take a wrong turn. If all you have is GPS, you’re nearly guaranteed to take a wrong turn unless you’re staring at the GPS screen as much as you’re staring at the actual road because that next turn off is coming right up but you’re in the wrong lane!
And once you reach Toronto, good luck on finding parking. Much of the city has convenient parking that’s private or paid for people who have been living there for decades but if you’re new in town then, yeah, good luck! That’s why the second thing I’d recommend to anyone visiting Toronto is to research parking near the place you’re visiting at. Just like in New York, I imagine the parking in Toronto is quite similar. You can arrive at a downtown hotel only to find that you need to park 2 blocks away because you didn’t reserve a parking spot when you had the chance!
Of course you can get lucky with parking, just like you can get lucky by making the right choices. By reading this, even if you don’t know who I really am, you’re doing a smart thing by preparing, because 5 minutes of reading a blog post is a good trade for 6 hours of wasting your afternoon away finding parking and the right turn to take when you’re supposed to be on vacation!
Something else I noticed, especially with southern Americans driving in Ontario for the first time, is that they expect everyday Ontario-dwelling Canadians to understand everything about their super-charged American vehicles. Small town mechanics in Ontario are used to working on small town Canadian vehicles. Even if that vehicle is a 2006 Dodge Ram it doesn’t mean they’re experts on the latest 2026 Dodge Ram. So if you plan to drive in Ontario for long and you happen to have a foreign vehicle then my advice is to research where you plan to get auto maintenance ahead of time. Trust me, it’s much better than pulling up to the nearest auto mechanic shop in Ontario and expecting them to meet all your needs. Most mechanics will recognize their own weaknesses, and as outsiders you must do so too if you wish for a good service on your vehicle.
When I was in Ontario I was mostly driving my friend’s vehicle, listening to my favorite song of course, and it just so happened to be a fancy Audi coop. He had all these expectations when we reached our first stop for an oil change, thinking any mechanic would specialize in his car, but because he knew more about his own car than most Ontario mechanics it took a lot of searching around before he found the right one. Doing all this searching ahead of time would’ve made this vacation much better because we could’ve enjoyed our time in the hotel room instead of calling auto repair shops. And for anyone curious we ended up finding this oil change Ancaster service that already had the right filters and synthetic oil for older Audis.
Another thing I absolutely have to mention is the Ontario weather. It’s actually a nice province but in the winter season snow and storm can dump on you at any time because even the weather channels there often predict the weather wrong. Sunny days can turn to hail without a cloud’s notice! That’s why for Ontario driving, even if it doesn’t make sense where you live, is best done with all season or winter tires. If you don’t have experience driving in sudden snow blizzards where you can’t see the car next to you and you have your windshield wipers on full blast then of course winter tires will help you from swerving off the side of the road. Getting winter tires in Ontario is just like wearing a jock strap in sports. It might seem cowardly when you’re young and inexperienced but really it’s the smart thing to do!
My last point is all about communication. A lot of outsiders new to Ontario drive around learning all the nuances blindly without any guidance. But I highly suggest that you should just be more vocal with Ontario locals, ask them for directions whenever you see a chance, because trust me the route you saw on Apple Maps on your way to Toronto isn’t as easy as it looked at first glance. Those off-ramps come passed you like a whizzing bullet and just to correct one wrong turn can take up to 20 minutes to correct on the highways around Toronto.
Be competent as a foreign driver in Ontario by expecting the large population, by knowing your route and off-ramps well, by planning your parking situation, by already having a car maintenance provider in mind if you have a needy vehicle, by having winter tires and expecting the snow, and lastly by getting advice from locals where you can.
If anything, I just hope you can have a better experience being a foreign driver than I did. Learning all these things first-hand made me want to jump out of my seat and just share them with everyone because I can predict there’s going to be times when this advice will become handy for a foreigner driving to Toronto for the first time. Good luck and drive safe!