Canisbay Lake Campground Office — Hotel in Unorganized South Nipissing

Of all the camp sites I have been to this was certainly the worst experience I’ve had.

To start with the bathrooms were horrific. Mind you, bathrooms at camp sites are usually not stunning to begin with but I found the Canisbay bathrooms to be particularly unacceptable. We were within range to one outhouse style bathroom as well as one full sized functioning washroom. Neither bathrooms had light of any kind so if you wanted to go the washroom at night you had to hover with your phone (or flashlight) and put it down on any of the disgusting surfaces available. (To me, this just encourages campers to use the washroom in the forest considering the trip to the bathroom will be pitch black and gross anyways). The outhouse style one only had hand sanitizer available which maybe is typical but was still pretty gross. The full-functioning washroom had no soap to wash your hands for the entirety of one of the days we were there and clearly weren’t cleaned at all. Despite that, I still opted for the full functioning washroom just because they weren’t as disgusting as the outhouses. The full-functioning washroom also didn’t have a functioning lock mechanism on one of the girls washrooms.

The next part of my review is likely more due to my experience of being a younger camper with my friends (we’re in our 20s). Though there weren’t any warnings or precautions about the site and camping experience that we were expected to follow prior so it felt quite exaggerated.

For further context, this same group of friends and I had stayed at Algonquin last year except it was the Pog Lake campground and we were able to have fun pretty much the entire time without any issue. So this experience was drastically different from Pog lake. That being said, maybe there is a better “party” campground that we could have gone to however booking campsites in Ontario is borderline impossible these days to begin with and none are labelled as having later curfews or being for younger groups. As a side note, the campsites of Pog Lake were drastically muchhh better in terms of sizing, distance between other campers sites and bathrooms.

So to elaborate about Canisbay, the Friday night we had been around the camp fire listening to music and having a good time when a camp security (or parks police?) stormed through the forest and screamed at us about our noise level. Partially this was fair as we hadn’t realized the quiet-time/curfew was 10pm and it was 12am so we definitely respected that as we had lost track of time and also didn’t realize the curfew would be so early on a weekend. However the conduct of the security guard was absolutely unprofessional and downright aggressive. As soon as she approached, we quieted down and turned off the music as she requested and we were not contesting anything (again, we understood we were in the wrong). But the security guard continued to berate us explaining that this is a family campground and that “people come here for the peace and quiet”. Which again is fair enough, but we had no idea that we weren’t allowed to be up and having fun despite the fact that families also use the campground—this seemed like an irrelevant fact as we were also paying customers just like any family would be. After her rampage she said “If you can’t be quiet then I suggest you go to sleep”. This added to the bad experience as we had all taken the time off from our jobs to do this camping trip so to get there and be expected to go to sleep at 10pm as paying customers was hardly an exciting trip.

All of this would have been fine if she hadn’t entered the situation so aggressive and escalated to begin with. If she had approached and simply said “Hey guys I know you’re having fun but it’s way too loud, be quiet for the rest of the night” we would’ve been totally happy with that. But her unnecessary attitude and lecture was pretty dramatic and definitely put a dampener on the rest of the trip. To enter a situation so rude off the hop was extensive.

I still give the campsite one star because the Canisbay Lake...

Stayed for 3 nights starting from the Monday of the Labor day long weekend. Staff member at check-in was friendly/helpful, site itself (#21) was good. It's a walk-in site albeit it's a really short walk so still not too much of a hassle taking stuff back and forth. Slightly secluded as a result but the campground was pretty sparsely populated during the week. If it was full it would have felt more exposed. There are definitely both more and less secluded sites in this area of the campground so you need to choose carefully in busier periods.

Be warned that while the water looks close on the map it's a bit of a walk from campground 1/2 in either direction to actually get to it, same for the closest comfort station which is really closer to the day use area. Expect to be using the vault toilets primarily which are as good as you are going to get for a vault toilet. Yes, there is a smell, but overall they weren't too bad.

Being able to have the outfitters drop the canoes right at the beach here was super convenient and allowed us to paddle about with our toddler for a few days or for the more adventurous to go out to a paddle-in site.

As others have noted, the park don't want you to bring your own wood in but as expected the wood they sell is absolutely garbage. It is so wet that even the largest of logs were literally foaming as the water was heated up and out of them. It's still possible to get a good fire going just expect to end up using most of a...

We adore Algonquin Park and have been camping there each summer for over 25 years. CANISBAY has been our favourite spot. But the cleanliness of the privies (outhouses) has definitely been suffering over the years. This year with the Covid pandemic, we certainly expected better sanitation. But it was the worse we've seen. After 4 nights camping, and multiple in-person and phone complaints by me and a neighbouring camper, finally a proper cleaning was done by 2 Ontario Parks attendants. Before that, after a neighbor stopped a warden vehicle and loudly complained, 2 attendants came by for 60 seconds with a spritz bottle around day 3 to address four privy units. By Friday noon, our final day, seats were stained and filthy, paper was low,flies were everywhere and feces were piled high. I left a written complaint at the administration office before departing. To add to the insult, an attendant phones me 5 days later to tell me repeatedly how high their sanitation standards are rather than acknowledge that their cleaning services were utterly sub-par. The woman states I should fill out their online refund form for their careful review ... This level of condescension and lack of caring is truly disappointing, particularly from Algonquin, the jewel of Ontario provincial parks. Better bring your own paper and sanitizers as it could be a while before they clean for you,...