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Brighton (pop. 10,928) is a community on the north shore of Lake Ontario's Presqu'ile Bay, about 90 kilometres east of Toronto. Named after Brighton, England, its original homes are fine examples of 19th century architecture and its oldest fields are the sites of some of Canada's first apple orchards.
Today, apple orchards still play a role in local livelihoods-and so does commercial fishing in Lake Ontario. But tourism plays a much larger role. Brighton attracts a great many people interested in family camping, cross-country skiing and hiking, superb fishing, rewarding bird watching and swimming on long, wide sandy beaches that are seldom crowded.
Brighton is home to a privately owned railway museum, Memory Junction, and the Proctor House Museum, said to be haunted by the Nix ghost. It has a "widow's walk" with views of Presqu'ile Bay, and every September it holds Applefest, a grand celebration of the apple harvest.
For a visit to a friendly community with an old-Ontario feel, Brighton deserves a stopover.