Originally Posted by
cooker
... I mentioned elesewhere I might do a bit of bike touring in northwestern Ontario next summer, and checked out the progress there, and basically the "trail" from Thunder Bay to Manitoba consists entirely of designating historic fur trade canoe routes as that section of the trail. ie they did nothing.
It was years ago and could have changed, but I found car traffic in NW Ontario to be very light and the roads were good for riding. There was more traffic on the main trans-Canada highway, but it had wide paved shoulders, IIRC.
As you know, it's pretty empty land,so be prepared for long rides between towns.