Three Canadian island destinations for immersive travel

Island communities across Canada offer a slower, more considered way to travel and each visitor directly supports the local economy.

Fogo Island

Where community powers success

Life on Fogo Island – off north-east Newfoundland – has always depended on ingenuity. Boat builders, quilt makers and fishers developed practical skills shaped by the demands of outpost living. Bright fishing stages still line its shoreline – but when the cod fishery collapsed in the early 1990s, the community faced an uncertain future.

One response came through Shorefast, a charity founded by Fogo Island native Zita Cobb to help rebuild the economy by empowering community businesses. Its most visible project is Fogo Island Inn, a striking luxury boutique hotel set on slender stilts above the North Atlantic, with floor-to-ceiling windows framing the open ocean. Inside, guests are welcomed by local hosts and surrounded by quilts, furniture and food created by island makers and producers.

From the outset, the aim was not just to attract visitors but to draw on the island’s creativity to shape the experience. That idea continues at Fogo Island Workshops, where artisans craft contemporary furniture and décor in partnership with international designers.

Through Shorefast, operating surpluses are reinvested into community initiatives. The organisation also openly tracks where money flows operationally and geographically through a transparency tool called Economic Nutrition. At Fogo Island Workshops, for example, 71 per cent of income goes back into the local economy, largely towards employee salaries¹.

This is a place where dramatic landscapes and thoughtful design sit alongside something much rarer: knowing that your visit genuinely supports the community around you.

Prince Edward Island

Where businesses support each other

Red sandstone cliffs frame quiet fishing harbours and fertile farmland stretches almost to the sea. On Prince Edward Island, that geography has shaped an economy built around food, agriculture and hospitality. And across this east-coast island, oyster farmers, cheesemakers, potato growers, chefs and family-run inns work closely together, building a reputation as “Canada’s Food Island”.

At The Inn at Bay Fortune, chef Michael Smith’s FireWorks Feast gathers guests around long outdoor tables for a communal dinner cooked over open flames, using ingredients grown nearby – vegetables from the inn’s gardens, oysters from nearby bays and seafood landed in local harbours that morning.

Producers such as Malpeque Bay Oyster Company cultivate the island’s namesake molluscs – prized for their clean, briny flavour – supplying restaurants across the island and beyond. In New London Bay, Raspberry Point Oyster Company takes you out to oyster leases to see how they’re grown before tasting them fresh from the water.

A coastal drive might pass mussel trawlers unloading along the shore and should include a stop at Cows for ice-cream made with milk from local farms. End the trip with a lobster roll in Victoria-by-the-Sea, where fishing boats land the catch that appears on menus the same day.

Manitoulin Island

Where enterprise grows from culture

In Ontario’s Lake Huron is the world’s largest freshwater island – a landscape of limestone cliffs, quiet bays and forests where culture and land are connected.

The island is home to several Anishinaabe communities and many tourism experiences are Indigenous-owned and led, reflecting traditions that have shaped life here for generations.

In the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, Wikwemikong Tourism guides lead cultural walks and storytelling experiences that share Anishinaabe perspectives on the island’s landscape – from the meanings behind place names to teachings about medicines, fishing and seasonal life.

Manitoulin Chocolate Works crafts small-batch chocolates in a historic building in the village of Kagawong, just steps from Bridal Veil Falls – a broad curtain of water where you can walk along a trail right behind the cascade. On the south side of the island, Manitoulin Eco Park and DarkSky offers forest camping and guided astronomy nights in a designated dark-sky preserve, where people gather after sunset to watch the Milky Way emerge across the sky.

How to get on island time

Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador

To get to this east coast island, take a short flight from Toronto or Montreal then drive to the ferry terminal at Farewell for the short crossing.

Prince Edward Island

Reach the island via the Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick or fly into Charlottetown from Toronto, with scenic coastal drives connecting fishing harbours, farms and villages across the island.

Manitoulin Island, Ontario

Drive about four hours north-west of Toronto to Tobermory and take the MS Chi-Cheemaun ferry across Georgian Bay to South Baymouth from mid-May through mid-October.