Thanks again for your replies much appreciated , although it looks like ON may not be the place for us, my son reacts very badly to mozzie bites, also gets asthma, so the high humidity could be quite bad for him . We spend allot of time outdoors, most summer evenings spent in the garden / fields or eating alfresco, think the insects would drive you insane!! Thankyou all for taking the time to reply to my post .

On Sunday morning in was about 18 centigrade. We took the dogs to the woods. We wore jackets with the hoods up and jeans. I wished I'd worn gloves. And the deer flies haven't come out yet.

If you have that much concern for the bugs then you might want to specifically check with people where there are none..or only a few.

Here in NS we have pretty much the same problem as they are describing in ON. We have black fly which are horrible. They weren't too bad this year as the weather has been nasty but the mosquitoes are loving it so they will be feasting this year.

All our windows have fly screens and the kids get shot if they don't close them as soon as they come in! Your best bet otherwise is to be in town...

To be honest I think no mozzies at all that would be Antarctica then but I agree in the big cities it'll probably be better although we had almost as much in Ottawa as we have here in the sticks. My middle daughter reacts badly and we have to give her Benadryl if she got bitten too much but the docs say that after a few years and several bites the reactions will get less and the body will develop some sort of immunity. We will see. Until then the screens have to be closed and the front door shut straight after coming in. The deer flies are much nastier I find.

Has anybody tried bat boxes? A friend hear swears by them...

Not tried them but have seen loads when we were camping last year in Upper State NY. Seems to work.

Have you thought of Prince Edward County? Hugely pretty (much of southern ON isn't), near Lake Ontario, a wine-growing area, and a couple of hours from Toronto - albeit to the East rather than West. We moved here last year and love it.

Bear in mind that just being near the lake doesn't mean there is public access to it - it's not a bit like the UK in that respect. For us Sandbanks provincial park was the deal-clincher...