Adventurer Jim Baird said the Haliburton Highlands stands up against any of the breathtaking landscapes he’s seen traversing some of the country’s most renowned natural havens – including the Canadian Arctic.
Familiar to fans of the National Geographic series Home in the Wild and the History Channel’s reality series Alone, where he was the season four winner, Baird has forged a reputation as one of Canada’s top outdoorsmen over the past decade.
A northern Ontario native, residing on the Magnetawan River north of Parry Sound, Baird has been a frequent visitor to Haliburton Forest recently – taking in annual trips to the 100,000-acre nature reserve. He spent three nights sleeping under the stars on MacDonald Lake, one of the property’s northernmost water bodies, Jan. 13-15.
Baird said he was filming content for his YouTube channel ‘Jim Baird-Adventurer’, which boasts 193,000 subscribers.
“I do a lot of expeditionary-type trips in remote areas – I’ve done a lot of Arctic treks, distant parts of northern Ontario, and out in Alaska… but in terms of the myriads of beautiful lakes, opportunities for ice fishing and sledding, it’s kind of hard to beat the Haliburton Forest,” Baird told The Highlander last week.
He spent time traversing the property with Steve Lukacic, an ice fishing guide with Yours Outdoors who runs excursions at the Forest. Baird said the pair have been friends for years after connecting while both freelanced for Outdoor Canada, a monthly fishing and hunting magazine.
They visited numerous lakes, catching lake, brook and rainbow trout – the biggest about three-and-a-half-pounds, Baird said. The pair ate some of what they caught, frying the fish the old-fashioned way – skewered on some sticks over a hastily thrown together fire. “They looked pretty gnarly, some people would have been questioning it, but the smoky flavour was just phenomenal,” Baird said.
His first visit came in 2022. Wanting to get an up-close look at Canada’s largest privately-owned nature reserve, he brought his wife and two children along for a relaxing family vacation. The reality was anything but, he recalls.
An ice rainstorm hit the morning of their arrival, making their foot journey to the offgrid cabin they’d rented particularly dicey. “The road was so slick you could have ice skated on it. Fortunately, we had cleats,” Baird said.
They eventually made it to their destination and spent a few days exploring the property. “One of the best trips we’ve done… and we later learned we had almost the entire place to ourselves,” Baird said, with the Forest cancelling all other reservations due to the weather.
The secluded spot he set up on MacDonald Lake is a new feature, with the Forest expanding its camping options last week. Baird was the first to try it out.
There are lots of other trips planned this year – remote ice fishing in Algoma District, a solo canoe trip in the Northwest Territories, and moose hunting in Newfoundland. Baird is also taking his brother, Ted, to the Grand Canyon and Hudson Bay.
As is becoming tradition, he’ll return to Haliburton County next year.
“Most of the time when someone is looking to experience nature, to find top quality ice fishing they don’t drive south – Haliburton is about two hours down for me, so that should give you an idea of how good that spot really is,” Baird said.
