Editor's Note: This summer, we asked you to tell us what your favourite hiking trails in Northeastern Ontario are as part of our BIG Top Five Contest. Each month, we will be publishing a story about each of the top five hiking trails in Northeastern Ontario as voted by you!
This month we are featuring the hike that earned the number one spot—Bridal Veil Falls.
With a name like Bridal Veil Falls, I expected the waterfall to be beautiful, with its delicate cascade of water spilling over a uniform rock ledge creating a pretty curtain of liquid filling a shallow pool below.
What I didn’t expect was the violent struggle of life and death happening just below all this beauty.
October is salmon spawning time in Northeastern Ontario, and what I didn’t know when I planned my visit to Manitoulin Island’s most picturesque waterfall was that Bridal Veil Falls is the end of a long journey for thousands of Chinook salmon fighting their way upriver to the place where they were born years before.