Three Ontario Winter Staycations.
Toronto to Ottawa Road Trip
In December we took a quick (4.5 hour or about 450km) from west of Toronto to Ottawa Ontario to visit our daughter. (More about that later!)
The Rideau Canal was not ready for skating yet – but soon! (” The Skateway opens when a 30-cm thickness of good quality ice has formed. To achieve this, our ice experts need about 10 to 14 consecutive days of temperatures between -10°C and -20°C.”)
Toronto to Lake Nipissing (North Bay area) Road Trip
Tomorrow the boys (my husband and 3 boys) will be heading (from West of Toronto) to Lake Nipissing to do some ice fishing. (3.5 to 4 hours or about 350km). Our story about their 2020 ice fishing trip is here. Hopefully they’ll get me some new pictures for another story! The ice fishing season opened on Lake Nipissing on January 1st. Happy New Year!
Toronto to Niagara Falls Ontario Road Trip
Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, our daughter took her boyfriend for a drive to Niagara Falls Ontario to see this natural wonder. (About an hour or and hour and a half or 120km – depending upon your starting point in the Greater Toronto Area).
During this pandemic “revival” it is still possible to travel around without getting too close to people. When we have been travelling in the past year, we have made a point of calling the hotels directly to make sure we get a ground floor room with an exit directly from the room, so that we don’t have to take the hotel elevator or spend time in the lobby. There are lots of interesting places to go in Ontario, and I hope to visit many this year if we are so lucky.
Ontario Staycation Travel Tax Credit
The Ontario government has introduced a small tax credit for 2022 to incent the people of Ontario to stay in hotels and short term rental accommodations within our own province.
If you file an Ontario Tax Return for 2022, (that is, you tick off the box for Ontario on your Canadian Tax Return), and save your hotel, cottage rental and AIRbnb receipts for the year, you can receive a tax credit of up to $200 per person or $400 per family.
-The Tax credit applies to vacation travel (not business) between January 1 2022 and December 31 2022 – paid for by you, your spouse or an eligible child – regardless of when it was paid for.
-A detailed receipt is required – the accommodation must have been subject to GST/HST.
-You can add up multiple stays (of less than a month) to a maximum of $1000 per person or $2000 per family. – The credit is 20% of the total.
-The booking can be directly through the hotel or accommodation or through a “bookings style” service
-This is a refundable tax credit, so even if you don’t owe tax for 2022, you can still receive this money back.
The link for the details of the Ontario Staycation Tax Credit is here.
Happy trails everyone! I’m going to start packing snacks for the boy’s ice fishing road trip!
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Your road trip around Ontario sounds like it was great fun. Thank you also for the info on the tax credit. It will certainly help businesses in the tourism sector which have suffered greatly during this pandemic. Here in Niagara it has been a very different couple of years. If you’d like an image of the falls for your blog to replace the Pexels one let me know. I have many. Thanks also for following my blog. Happy New Year!
Been all over these areas. My sister lives in Burlington. Thanks for sharing . Anita
Thank you for visiting (both literally and virtually!) and commenting. I grew up in Burlington, so I kind of take it for granted but we spend lots of time walking along the lakefront there.
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Looks like a wonderful area.
Thank you, Ontario is beautiful with lots of variety!
When our kids were still kids we spent weekends in Ottawa and skated on the canal and ate beavertails with sugar I remember those weekends fondly. Nice to see your other short trips around Toronto.
Those are nice memories. We are hoping to visit again and are looking for things that we can do outdoors now that we are restricting capacities again. Thanks for the comment and take care!
Interesting about the tax credit. Our government would never be that smart… Great idea about the hotel with an outside door. It’s the common spaces and non compliant people that concern me about public travel so that’s a great option. Ontario is definitely somewhere that my hubbie and I need to see more of together. Bernie
Hi Bernie. Thanks for the comment. The hotel outside doors are hard to find when you book through hotel’s central reservations, but eventually they can be found. Hope we both do some more travelling soon!
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