Netflix's Harlan Coben adaptation 'I Will Find You' casts Sam Worthington as David, a man wrongly convicted of killing his son, with Britt Lower and Milo Ventimiglia alongside him. The story hops between Boston and New York and centres on a fictional Maine town called Briggs — but almost none of it was shot in the United States. The bulk of production happened in and around Toronto and southern Ontario.
The series' most striking setting, Briggs Penitentiary, is a real prison you can actually visit: Kingston Penitentiary in Ontario. Opened in 1835 and in operation for nearly 178 years until its closure in 2013, it's one of Canada's most famous correctional institutions, now a tourist attraction with guided tours — and a former set for 'Mayor of Kingstown'. The retro diner from episode one is the Sherwood Restaurant in Brantford, and an establishing shot of Briggs borrows footage from the real coastal town of Freeport, Maine.
Toronto plays double duty as Boston and New York throughout. The University of Toronto Mississauga's Maanjiwe Nendamowinan building stands in for Boston General Hospital, Massey College doubles as a Boston orphanage, and Rachel's Victorian rowhouse sits on McGill Street downtown. For the New York scenes, real Manhattan landmarks like Bethesda Terrace in Central Park, Washington Square Park, and Joe's Pizza on Carmine Street in Greenwich Village appear alongside Toronto stand-ins — a Sotheby's auction staged in the Omni King Edward Hotel's chandeliered Sovereign Ballroom, a pub scene at the Comrade bar on Queen West, and a rooftop chase through the historic St. Lawrence block between Colborne and Wellington Streets. One Brooklyn shot, the Coney Island boardwalk, is pure CGI recreated as a Key West boardwalk reconstruction.
The standout for travellers: the Payne family mansion is the Escarpment House, a 14,000-square-foot, five-bedroom estate in Caledon's Pulpit Ridge area — and it's bookable as a vacation rental. Fans of Amazon's 'Reacher' may recognise it from season three.
For screen-location hunters, this is a two-country trip. Toronto anchors the itinerary: you can drink at the Comrade, get coffee at Dineen Coffee Co. on Yonge Street, stay or take afternoon tea at the 1920s Windsor Arms Hotel in Yorkville, and tour Kingston Penitentiary about two hours away. New York covers the recognisable Manhattan scenes, and a detour to Caledon gets you a night in the mansion itself. Even if you skip the filming sites, Kingston Penitentiary's tours are a genuinely unusual stop on their own.
