Canada has no shortage of charisma — just like its politicians. No sooner was the prime minister Justin Trudeau dethroned than in came Mark Carney with his “middle power” swagger and George Clooney twinkle. Carney is coolness incarnate, an embodiment of Canadian compassion, drollness and unwavering politesse, but so are all of us Canucks. This is partly why Brits are visiting the Commonwealth country in droves — some choosing it as an alternative to the US, for now at least.
Those who visit will find a land of winter sports, wildlife, lakeside living, the northern lights, microbrews on patios and the world’s best seafood. Here’s what Canadians have always known but are too modest to shout about.
Malpeques grow in the cold waters off Prince Edward Island
BRADY MCCLOSKEY/TOURISM PEI 2022
They’re called Malpeques and they grow exclusively in the frigid waters off Prince Edward Island (not far from the Green Gables farmhouse made famous by the local gal Lucy Maud Montgomery). Tasters at the 1900 Paris Exposition world fair deemed them the best in the world for their perfect salty sweetness and firmness. You can judge for yourself at Raspberry Point Oyster Bar on New London Bay. Book a Shuck & Sea tour to watch the daily harvest then slurp away at a picnic table with a bottle of Tabasco (tours £17; raspberrypoint.com). Here on the north coast you’re also spoilt for beaches — Brackley, loved for its distinctive rust-red sand, is on the way to the waterfront Mysa Nordic Spa & Resort.
Details B&B doubles from £230 (mysanordicspa.com). Fly to Charlottetown
2. There are hot hockey players in abundance
Brendan Gallagher of the Montreal Canadiens
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If you haven’t heard about Heated Rivalry, you must have spent January in a coma. The sweaty ice-hockey studs of the TV show have awakened something within many of us — and nowhere more so than in Canada, where a hockey crush is a rite of passage. Visit Montreal and you can watch the most admired pros in action. The Canadiens, known locally as les Habs, are famed for high-energy, white-knuckle games at Centre Bell (tickets from £76; nhl.com). The arena is walking distance from the 400-year-old, cobbled historic district. Book an after-game dinner at the nearby Restaurant Jérôme Ferrer — Europea, newly minted with a Michelin star (set menu £27; jeromeferrer.ca). Stay at the glam, mid-century hotel Fairmont the Queen Elizabeth.
Details Three nights’ room only from £1,044pp, including flights (canadianaffair.com)
3. Polar bears come out to play…
Tour companies can bring customers up to 100m from polar bears
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Churchill, Manitoba, is not known as the polar bear capital of the world for nothing. More than 600 pairs roam the province and in autumn, with Hudson Bay still unfrozen, they leave their summer homes to hunt seals at the western shore, coming unfeasibly close to town (and occasionally wandering towards the shops). Local tour companies are authorised to bring their customers as close as 100m from the animals — three times closer than in Norway, for example. If you have two days to spare travel to Churchill on Via Rail’s sightseeing train from Winnipeg (from £129 one way; viarail.ca) or book Canadian Affair’s Classic Churchill Polar Bear Adventure.
Details Seven nights’ full board from £9,019pp, including flights, transfers and polar bear excursions (canadianaffair.com)
• Most beautiful places in Canada
4. … and so do the northern lights
The northern lights over Dawson City
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Galileo named the aurora borealis after the Roman goddess of dawn — and, fair enough, he couldn’t have known about the phosphorescent hotspot thousands of miles away in the New World. These days there is a better-than-average chance of spotting them the Canada’s northern territories, which are beneath the so-called auroral oval and as far from urban life as you get in the Americas. Yukon offers the most activity from late August to early April, when the gleaming greens and purples frolic across the big skies. With the old gold-rush town Dawson City as your base, you can dog-sled or snowmobile over the Tombstone Mountains to a remote cabin for a one-to-four-night aurora-spotting extravaganza with Northern Tales (stay during a new moon if possible).
Details Four nights’ full board from £1,174pp, including internal flights, transfers, aurora-viewing and walking tours (northerntales.ca). Fly to Whitehorse
5. Skiing six months a year
Sunshine Village in Banff is 90 minutes’ drive from Calgary
ALAMY
Opting for the Rockies over the Alps is a no-brainer. At many Canadian resorts you can ski six months of the year. At Sunshine Village in Banff, the monolithically pretty national park in Alberta, 90 minutes’ drive from Calgary, snow fiends are carving up the Lookout Mountain piste in mid-November, owing to its base elevation of 1,658m (5,440ft). And if you show up on May Day you still won’t catch the closing weekend — that would be three weeks later. The resort’s purported sunshine may not be guaranteed, but there’s a good reason for that: more than nine metres of snow accumulate here annually. What is guaranteed? Jolly après-ski with the snowboard bruhs at Mad Trapper’s Saloon. And on your rest day you can drive up the Icefields Parkway to Lake Louise. Stay at the Sunshine Mountain Lodge, a large hotel with rooms of various sizes — some with fireplaces, slate floors and balconies.
Details Room-only doubles from £220 (sunshinemountainlodge.com). Fly to Calgary
6. Our castoffs set fashion trends
Kensington Market in Toronto is known for its vintage boutiques
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Boutiques such as Rokit and Beyond Retro mark out the UK as a vintage mecca, but the highly organised second-hand network in Canada is feeding the demand. Your workwear, denim, plaid flannel, cowboy leathers or team jersey may seem like Americana, but it probably came from a Canuck. So it’s understandable that vintage shopping in Canada is stellar. For hippy denim and collegiate jackets, check out Main Street in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood of Vancouver. For luxury consignment and outrageous one-offs, try Dundas West and Kensington Market in Toronto. For 1990s retro at rock-bottom prices, walk along Rue Saint-Denis in Montreal.
7. More to love in Niagara Falls
Niagra’s vineyards have cabins in which visitors can stay
ALAMY
Niagara Falls has long been the go-to kitschy Valentine’s Day destination in Canada. Yes, heart-shaped hot tubs are still a thing in the big-name hotels overlooking the falls, but elsewhere the region has undergone a rebrand. The vineyards, orchards and farms of Niagara now have cosy cabins in which to stay, while their bounty has fuelled new restaurants such as AG Inspired Cuisine, where the menu changes daily according to what its farm has yielded (mains from £16; agcuisine.com), and bars such as Weinkeller, a bare brick, lively wine cellar (wine from £4 a glass; weinkeller.ca). Indulge after a sunset kayak on Black Creek or a waterfront stroll from White Water Walk to Niagara Glen, a gorge formed of ancient boulders and Carolinian forest. And if you do stay in a falls-view suite, the white noise of the thundering water makes for a great night’s sleep. A Hayes and Jarvis trip here includes time in Toronto (see below).
Details Six nights’ B&B from £1,199pp (hayesandjarvis.co.uk). Fly to Toronto
8. Toronto’s restaurant scene
A selection of dishes at DaNico
Canadian cuisine isn’t really a thing, so luckily our chefs work wonders with local fish and game using tricks they learnt abroad. Of the seven million people in and around Toronto, nearly half were born overseas, and they have a solid track record of blowing the minds of our spoilt foodies. When Michelin inspectors finally came calling in 2022 they anointed 17 Toronto restaurants, so if you travel to eat you can sample the barracuda sashimi at Sushi Masaki Saito, whose chef ditched Manhattan for the Ontarian capital (tasting menu from £418pp; masakisaito.ca), then shuffle over to Little Italy for cacio e pepe with sautéed honey mussels at DaNico (mains from £37; danicotoronto.com). Alternatively, you can grab a few £3 pork buns at Kin-Kin, in one of the four Chinatowns in the city (fb.com/kinkinbakery.to). Explore it all on the Canada’s Eastern Cities by Train tour from Toronto to Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec City with Audley Travel.
Details Ten nights’ B&B from £3,270pp, including flights, transfers and rail travel (audleytravel.com)
9. Even the middle of the country isn’t boring (sorry Nebraska)
Learn more about First Nations tribes at Wanuskewin Heritage Park
DESTINATION CANADA
Don’t call it flyover country. The prehistoric uplands, Cypress Hills and aspen forests of Saskatchewan belie its reputation for whistling-wheat flatness. There’s a reason that the Cree, Sioux and dozens of other First Nations tribes have stuck it out here for so long. Learn more about them at Wanuskewin Heritage Park (named after the Cree expression for “seeking peace of mind”), on grasslands outside the small metropolis of Saskatoon. During a night with the Northern Plains indigenous community you can soak up their 6,000-year history while hiking, fishing and watching herds of plains bison migrate across the prairie. Cook-outs feature Lakota produce and bison burgers, as well as drumming and dancing. Accommodation is in a 5.5m-diameter Cree-style tipi.
Details One night’s B&B from about £390pp (wanuskewin.com). Fly to Saskatoon via Calgary or Edmonton
10. The Great Lakes beaches
Lake Ontario is the smallest of the Great Lakes
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Not to undersell the Pacific coast of British Columbia, but you don’t have to leave Ontario for a SoCal-style summer. Three and a half hours’ drive west of Toronto, the old-timey village of Bayfield overlooks a precious stretch of Florida-fine golden sand that is pivoted towards the sunset and unfurls hundreds of miles into Michigan. The same journey time east of Toronto, a dragon’s back of dunes awaits at Sandbanks Provincial Park — this time you’re on Lake Ontario, the smallest of the Great Lakes, and the blue-flag beaches feel like a memory-foam mattress. The Self-Drive Great Lakes Treasures tour from Canadian Sky can deliver it all.
Details Fifteen nights’ room only from £2,449pp, including flights, car hire, ferries and some excursions (canadiansky.co.uk)
11. Spectacular leaf-peeping
There’s no place more fiery red and cyber yellow in October than southern Quebec, on the northernmost leg of the Appalachian range. Undulating paths extend hundreds of miles, with the St Lawrence River to one side and forests of maple, birch and oak to the other. The base to aim for is the remote Chic-Chocs Mountain Lodge, at 615m and where moose outnumber visitors and phone signals are non-existent. Set out from here and Land’s End, in Forillon National Park, is a few days on foot or three hours by car. Either way, you’re treated to infinite sea views, quaint lighthouses and bragging rights that you’ve (technically) reached the end of the International Appalachian Trail.
Details Full-board doubles from £512 (frontier-canada.co.uk). Fly to Quebec City
12. We all want to move to ‘Vangroovy’
The waterside Stanley Park
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Something about the vibe in Vancouver slows you right down as soon as you’re off the plane, and yet there’s so much to do here. Stanley Park is a rainforest in the city centre, with totem poles and a sea-wall trail. The ever-changing bar scene on the intimate, brick streets of Gastown gets grittier the further east you stumble. The robust Asian population and daily seafood haul mean that stellar sushi is a staple. Clothing is optional at Wreck beach, located down-cliff from the University of British Columbia. And in winter you’ll spot locals in their ski boots — you can bomb down the pistes of the nearby North Shore Mountains in the morning, as they’re only 30 minutes’ drive from the city centre (Whistler is less than two hours away), then come back to sail into the sunset.
Details Seven nights’ B&B, with two nights in Vancouver and one in Whistler, from £10,495pp, including flights, transfers, ferries and excursions (abercrombiekent.com)