Our Schitt’s Creek pilgrimage (part 1)

As I’ve explained elsewhere, Schitt’s Creek is a show that means a great deal to me. Its vision of a world where kindness and tolerance prevail has such a powerful appeal; who wouldn’t want to live there – or, at the very least, to pay a visit?

Well, the obvious snag with that is that the town of Schitt’s Creek is fictional. But the locations where the show was filmed, and in particular the town of Goodwood – about 45 minutes’ drive north-east of Toronto – are very much real. And long before we ever made plans to take a holiday in Canada, I had a hankering to walk in the footsteps of those beloved characters and see those places for myself.

It’s hardly surprising that Schitt’s Creek fans come to Goodwood from all over the world, given that some of the key buildings seen in the show are to be found here. The store, café and garage are clustered around a single intersection, while the mayor’s house is a few yards in one direction, and the town hall is a similar short step in the other, next to the iconic railroad tracks. As much as anywhere can claim to be ‘the real town’, Goodwood is Schitt’s Creek.

Wait though. Surely the most iconic location of all has to be the town’s motel? It’s where the Rose family are forced to live due to their newly straitened circumstances, and where Stevie manages the front desk, glancing up from her paperback just long enough to explain that she’s too busy to assist you right now. But the actual motel, it turns out, is well over an hour’s drive west of Goodwood; and many other significant locations are spread over a wide area of southern Ontario. No doubt truly avid fans, or those who already live in the region, could justify spending many days driving around spotting them all; but we didn’t have that luxury. Clearly, we needed a plan.

I’d done some research before we left the UK and reckoned that, for our ‘Schitt’s Creek day’, we should focus on three key sites: Goodwood itself; the motel; and, as something of an outlier – literally and figuratively – the lookout point that is the setting for a key scene in season 5’s ‘The Hike’. This last location only features in one episode, and would be a further hour’s drive from the motel; but that brief scene packs such a powerful emotional punch that I really wanted to visit it. All told, we were looking at a long day involving about 4½ hours’ driving, but we might never pass this way again and it was too good an opportunity to miss.

Glorious Goodwood

We set off from Toronto around 10am on a pleasant sunny morning in June. This, by chance, was the perfect time of year to visit. All the location filming for Schitt’s Creek took place in June each year, to catch the town looking its best; so we would be seeing it and the surrounding countryside pretty much exactly as it appears in the show.

Trusting our fate to the satnav, we ended up following Highway 47 north-west through green rolling countryside. All of a sudden my heart gave a little jolt as we passed the town’s boundary sign – which, perhaps mercifully, is considerably more prosaic than the notoriously startling image of Schitt’s Creek’s founder and his sister. Goodwood, it turns out, is not a town at all but a hamlet within the township of Uxbridge.

About half a mile further on we drove past a modern Esso petrol station with a branch of Subway attached, all steel and glass. This didn’t look very Schitt’s Creek-y at all. Were we even on the right road? Then, almost before realising it, we came to a set of traffic lights at an intersection; and directly opposite us was an oh-so-familiar building – Café Tropical, stripped of its ornate signage but still instantly recognisable. I turned right onto Front Street and pulled up, right alongside Goodwood Mercantile – better known as the Schitt’s Creek General Store, and in later seasons as Rose Apothecary. We stepped out of the car and looked around, slightly dazed. We were in Schitt’s Creek.

Café Tropical

The intersection is dominated by the building at 4169 Front Street, across the road from Goodwood Mercantile. This, in Schitt’s Creek, is the local diner – Café Tropical.

Built in 1895, the property was originally a country general store before being converted into a private residence. If you look at it from the side, it’s a regular pitched-roof building, but the gable end facing the street has a brick façade extending above the roof line. It’s known as a false-front design – a style of architecture used in the late 19th century to make commercial buildings look more imposing.

(It’s worth underlining here that this is somebody’s home, as is the former Town Hall, not to mention all the houses in Goodwood that actually look like houses. If you’re visiting, please respect people’s privacy. A little common sense goes a long way.)

The Town Hall

We checked out the window display at Goodwood Mercantile, but the store wasn’t due to open until 11am; so in the meantime we wandered north along Front Street to the building still recognisable as the Schitt’s Creek Town Hall.

Built in 1875, this was originally an actual community hall serving the whole of Uxbridge township; in more recent years, it was home to the Goodwood Lions Club.

During the first three seasons of Schitt’s Creek, the building was used for filming interior as well as exterior scenes. It’s amazing to think that everything from Roland’s council meetings to the Jazzagals’ rehearsal sessions was filmed right here.

For season 4 onwards, the interior was recreated as a set at the studios in Toronto as this gave the production team more flexibility. In 2019, Goodwood’s historic Town Hall was sold off and redeveloped into a private home; the Lions Club now meet at the Goodwood Community Centre on Highway 47.

• Continue to part 2