North Bay is a small (population 55,000) tourist/university-college city about 3 hours due North of Toronto, it is built along the shore of a large and warm (in summer that is) shallow lake called Lake Nipissing.There are many beautiful old buildings along the Main st. housing all sorts of locally owned shops and restaurants. Many artists and musicians call North Bay home. There are several head shops in the downtown area as well as many independent bookshops and music stores.
There are lots of old and new hippies scattered around the area both in town and in the surrounding "bush". There’s a restaurant downtown called Greco’s and it seems like some sort of unofficial hippie employment agency since lots of young and older local hippies work there and when someone leaves, there’s always another hippie there to take their place. There are local drum circles at the beautiful waterfront park to celebrate the changing of the seasons and it’s an all around cool laid back kind of town.