Lockport, NY Outdoor Activities

The rugged indoor playing field at Defcon Paintball’s Toronto location span more than 25,000 square feet and beckon sharpshooters to engage in multicoloured campaigns. For each session, players don their gear and load their guns before Defcon staffers helm a comprehensive safety course that outlines essentials such as equipment usage, the rules of the game, and how to ornament opponents’ backs with dramatic chiaroscuro. Participants bob and weave through a dirt-floored indoor course littered with concrete cylinders, ducking behind piles of sandbags as they fire 100 polychromatic slugs at their rivals.

Operating on a fully solar-powered farm, The Ajax Riding Academy sprawls before visitors a state-of-the-art facility complete with continuous security camera coverage. The academy's year-round selection of services helps novice and advanced riders alike earn their spurs, including lessons for groups or single riders and camps for every season. Owners can also shelter their four-legged comrades inside the facility's exclusive boarding barn, which features 20 large box stalls that are cleaned daily and stocked with rubber-matted floors, making it impossible for ponies to tunnel out and start new lives as bankers. During colder months, a pair of indoor arenas teams up with heated viewing areas to facilitate enjoyable riding throughout the winter.

Holding harbour boating licenses and certified in CPR and water rescue, Toronto Yacht Rentals’ captains shepherd passengers through the downtown harbour or out to open water. They pilot their small and medium-sized luxury yachts throughout Lake Ontario, picking new passengers up or dropping them off at any point along the shoreline. They ferry passengers on excursions with completely customizable itineraries and lengths, charting lake waters for night tours of the downtown waterfront, day trips to the islands or Niagara-on-the-Lake, and expeditions to find lost shopping carts.

In a natural wharf provided by the Toronto Islands, Harbourfront Centre Sailing and Powerboating offers avenues to a world of unbroken horizons and wave-splashed winds. Along with education and licensing services and boat rentals, the knowledgeable navigators curate special events, such as a swashbuckling Tall Ships festival for Canada Day and annual voyages to prove the harbour is round.

Power- or sail-boaters with appropriate licensing and a completist's perspective on panoramas might pursue membership for multiple voyages. With rental options for all experience levels for power- or sail-boats and even yachts, Harbourfront Centre Sailing and Powerboating provides a sense of freedom otherwise accessible only to boat owners and their boats' wise-cracking GPS systems.

At Aqua SubScuba Diving Centre, students train with the very same PADI-certified professionals who introduced Survivorman's Les Stroud to diving. When the team isn't spotting the famed survivalist during television shoots, they guide students to diving mastery at their own five-star development centre and local dive sites. Their introductory lessons begin with orientation sessions to ensure that students understand underwater safety guidelines, hand mations, and dolphin turn signals. They also lead pupils toward PADI certification with open-water dives and preparatory electronic courses. The staff can also offer referrals for open-water dives at optimal sites such as local spots or the underwater coffee shop used in the movie Finding Nemo.

During all four seasons, The team at Toronto Adventures Inc. smuggle urbanites out of their condos and A-frames and into the area's nearby-yet-faraway outdoor streams, trails, and forests. In winter, the guides lead groups snowshoeing in the Humber Valley, and in warmer months, they glide teams over two rivers for kayaking and canoeing adventures. Paddlers cast gentle ripples over waters that harbour salmon and turtles while admiring shores that shelter deer, foxes, and blue heron.

Summer enthusiasts can also bask in the warm weather by sailing on Lake Ontario in keelboats, staring directly into the sun, or standing astride a paddleboard at Sunnyside Beach. For land lovers, guided hikes explore the Huber and Rouge valleys as well as the Bruce Trail.