November 11 · Highway 7Nine Remembrance Day ceremonies between Carleton Place and Peterborough. Find the one nearest you.Every ceremony →
The practical stuff

Drive it

Traffic, weather, gas and chargers: the unglamorous knowledge that makes the slow road easy.

Where am I on the 7? Your spot on the road, and the next town, gas, chip truck and beach ahead.

The road right now

Fetched when you open this page. Each panel says when.

Roads

  • Checking Ontario 511…

Data: Ontario 511

Ontario 511 reports on the map

Town on the 7 Just off the 7 Roadwork or incident Closed Checking Ontario 511…

Weather along the route

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Forecast: Open-Meteo. Warnings: Environment Canada

Live traffic from Waze

Crashes, slowdowns, hazards and police, reported by drivers using Waze. Zoom in to see reports along the 7.

Live traffic from Waze

Lakes, air & sky

Water levels, air quality and tonight's northern lights.

Rivers and lakes

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Real-time gauges: Water Survey of Canada. "Normal" means within the middle half of that month's record at the gauge.

Air quality

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AQHI from Environment Canada. There are no stations along the 7 between its ends, so each half shows the higher reading from its two nearest: Ottawa and Kingston for the east, Belleville and Peterborough for the west.

Northern lights

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Kp forecast: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center

Gas & EV charging

Where to fill up, the station map, and every fast charger.

You can fuel up the whole way across. Gas is available end to end: Carleton Place and Perth at the eastern end, Peterborough and Havelock at the western, and Sharbot Lake, Kaladar and Madoc through the middle. The two ends have the most stations and the longest hours, so they're the easy default if you're driving late or want a particular brand. The middle-stretch stations are the ones worth planning a stop around rather than passing — pair the fill-up with a coffee, a beach or a main street, and the money stays in the village. Kaladar's pumps do double duty for everyone turning north to Bon Echo, which keeps that junction busy and well used. Easy habit: roll into the middle with half a tank and stop where you'd want to stretch your legs anyway.

Tap a pin for the station's town page. Not every station on the 7 is plotted yet — these are the ones we've checked; tell us about ones we're missing.

Electric: fast charging covers the whole road. Going west from Kanata there are DC fast chargers in Carleton Place, Perth, Madoc, Norwood and Peterborough, with Tesla Superchargers in Perth, Madoc and Peterborough. The longest gap is Perth to Madoc, about 105 km through the lakes, with Level 2 in between at the Maberly convenience store and Silver Lake Provincial Park for a slow top-up. Since charging is a longer stop than a fill-up, it works in your favour here: plug in and you've bought yourself time for a main street.

Level 2 (slower) chargers too: Ottawa (Kanata) 31, Carleton Place 4, Maberly 1, Silver Lake Provincial Park 1, Norwood 1, Peterborough 17. Public stations from the federal charging station locator data, checked October 2026. For live availability and connector types, check PlugShare or your network's app before you set out, and tell us if one let you down.

Road notes

Passing lanes, the heavy runs, and hay wagons.

Construction and closures are in the road right now at the top of this page, straight from Ontario 511; paving season and the 7 are old friends. The rest is what the feeds can't tell you. Passing opportunities come in bursts, so settle in behind the RV rather than gambling: a passing lane is rarely more than ten minutes away. Sunday-evening eastbound (cottage traffic) and Friday-afternoon westbound are the heavy runs. And in farm country between Perth and Carleton Place, hay wagons have the right to exist; budget the two minutes.

Rest stops & picnic parks

The old roadside picnic stops still on the 7.

The 7 still has some of the old-school roadside picnic stops that four-lane highways killed off. Two worth knowing: the Skootamatta Picnic Area, on the north side of the highway right at the Hwy 37 junction at Actinolite — picnic tables, accessible facilities, and a short path along the Skootamatta River, one of the cleanest paddling rivers in Ontario. And the rest area at Arden Road (km ~143), a simple pull-off with tables at the turn for Arden — pair it with the five-minute run down to the hamlet's beaches. Ontario 511's official rest area list covers the provincial network; know a roadside stop we're missing? Send it in — this list wants to grow.

Winter driving

Dark stretches, squalls, deer, and when to wait it out.

The 7 in winter is a different road, and it deserves respect rather than fear. What changes: it's dark — long unlit stretches where your high beams are the only light for kilometres; snow squalls run through the middle section and can drop visibility to nothing in minutes even when both ends are clear; deer and the occasional moose are a genuine dusk-to-dawn hazard, worst at exactly the hours winter commuters drive; and plowing is staged, so conditions can change at municipal boundaries.

The honest advice this site will always give: if a squall is running, there's no prize for pushing through it — wait it out over a long lunch in whichever town you're in, or take the 401 that day without guilt. Given daylight and a clear morning, though, the winter 7 is one of the best drives of the year: snow on the Shield rock, woodsmoke in the villages, and every main street quieter than you'll ever see it in July. Carry the emergency kit your parents nagged you about, and check Ontario 511 before you commit.