Lonely Planet Best of Canada

Best of Canada

Top Sights, Authentic Experiences

Contents

Plan Your Trip

Welcome to Canada

Canada’s Top 12

Need to Know

Hotspots For …

Essential Canada

Month by Month

Get Inspired

Itineraries

Family Travel

Toronto

CN Tower

Diverse Dining

Sights

Activities

Tours

Shopping

Eating

Drinking & Nightlife

Entertainment

Information

Getting There & Away

Getting Around

Where to Stay

Niagara Region

Visiting the Niagara Falls

Wine Country

Niagara-on-the-Lake

Niagara Falls

Welland Canal Area

Ottawa

Canadian Museum of History

Parliament Hill

Sights

Activities

Tours

Eating

Drinking & Nightlife

Entertainment

Information

Getting There & Away

Getting Around

Montréal

Montréal Jazz Fest

Old Montréal Walking Tour

Sights

Activities

Tours

Shopping

Eating

Drinking & Nightlife

Entertainment

Information

Getting There & Away

Getting Around

Where to Stay

Québec City

La Citadelle

Old Québec Walking Tour

Sights

Activities

Tours

Shopping

Eating

Drinking & Nightlife

Entertainment

Information

Getting There & Away

Getting Around

The Atlantic Provinces

Peggy’s Cove

The Viking Trail

The Cabot Trail

Halifax

Charlottetown

Cavendish

St John’s

The Prairies

Exploring Drumheller

National Music Centre

Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village

Calgary

Saskatoon

Winnipeg

The Rockies

Lake Louise

Icefields Parkway

Banff Town

Jasper

Vancouver

Stanley Park

Granville Island Public Market

Skiing at Whistler

False Creek Seawall Stroll

Sights

Activities

Tours

Shopping

Eating

Drinking & Nightlife

Entertainment

Information

Getting There & Away

Getting Around

Where to Stay

Vancouver Island

Royal BC Museum

Tofino

Victoria

Port Alberni

Haida Gwaii

Haida Heritage Centre

Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve

Queen Charlotte, Skidegate & Masset

The Yukon

Dawson’s Klondike History

Paddle the Yukon River

Whitehorse

Dawson City

In Focus

Canada Today

History

Arts & Culture

Canadian Cuisine

Outdoor Activities

Wildlife

Spectator Sports

Survival Guide

Directory A–Z

Accessible Travel

Accommodations

Climate

Customs Regulations

Discount Cards

Electricity

Food

Health

Insurance

Internet Access

Legal Matters

LGBTIQ+ Travelers

Maps

Money

Opening Hours

Public Holidays

Safe Travel

Telephone

Time

Tourist Information

Visas

Women Travelers

Transport

Getting There & Away

Getting Around

Language

Behind the Scenes

Our Writers

Welcome to Canada

To experience the full gamut of Canada’s vast multifarious terrain, you’d need to be reincarnated several times. But for those with only one life to spare, plenty of unmissable highlights await.

Niagara Falls | TRPHOTOS / SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Big, handsome, rugged – no, we’re not talking about some up-and-coming Hollywood movie star; we’re talking about the second-largest country in the world, aka Canada. Variety is a prerequisite in this huge, diverse nation. Between three oceans and six time zones, you can surf tempestuous Pacific swells in Tofino, seek out dinosaur bones in Drumheller or set sail in search of icebergs from St John’s.

Although the wilderness might be Canada’s headline act, the country broadcasts its food and culture just as readily. Post hiking and kayaking, you can tear into a flaky croissant at a sidewalk bistro in Montréal, ascend cobbled streets to North America’s largest fort in Québec City, explore Toronto’s rich performing arts scene or contemplate a harmonious amalgamation of glassy skyscrapers and tree-covered mountains in Vancouver.

The bonus? Viewing everything is relatively carefree. Forget the latent worries and annoying hindrances that frustrate in other climes. Canada is one of the most peaceful, progressive and highfunctioning nations in the world.

Plan Your Trip

Canada’s Top 12

1 The Rockies

The brawny backbone of the nation

The sawtooth, white-topped mountains straddling the British Columbia–Alberta border inspire both awe and action with ribbons of hiking trails, rushing white water and powdery ski slopes. The train provides another popular way to experience the grandeur: luminous lakes, jumbles of wildflowers and glistening glaciers glide by as the steel cars chug up mountain passes and down river valleys en route to points east or west.

Icefields Parkway | feng wei photography / getty images ©

CANADA’S Top 12 PLAN YOUR TRIP

2 Montréal

Canadian cool with a certain je ne sais quoi

Witness a French-infused city that’s in love with festivals, the arts, good food, living well and enjoying life to the hilt. Toronto may be Canada’s economic capital, but Montréal remains the country’s cultural juggernaut. A standard-bearer for an entire linguistic-cultural identity, the city lives for public celebrations of the arts, architecture and food.

Montréal Jazz Fest puppet parade | JOSEPH S L TAN MATT / SHUTTERSTOCK ©

CANADA’S Top 12 PLAN YOUR TRIP

3 Vancouver

Urban sophistication collides with feral wilderness

Vancouver always lands atop the ‘best places to live’ lists, and who’s to argue? Sea-to-sky beauty surrounds the laid-back, cocktail-lovin’ metropolis. With skiable mountains on the outskirts, beaches fringing the core and Stanley Park’s thick rain forest just blocks from downtown’s glass skyscrapers, it’s a harmonic convergence of city and nature.

False Creek | EB ADVENTURE PHOTOGRAPHY / SHUTTERSTOCK ©

CANADA’S Top 12 PLAN YOUR TRIP

4 The Atlantic Provinces

Acadian, Celtic and Viking culture

Home to Canada’s craggiest coastline, loneliest lighthouses and fiercest tides, in the Atlantic Provinces you can feel the full force of nature at work. They call Newfoundland ‘the Rock’, a fitting name for an island of thoroughly elemental attractions and aesthetics. Under-the-radar New Brunswick hides culturally rich Acadian villages, Nova Scotia is a place that’s steeped in the sea, while Prince Edward Island presents a postcard-worthy picture of pastoral Canada.

Peggy’s Cove | PAULO COSTA / GETTY IMAGES ©

CANADA’S Top 12 PLAN YOUR TRIP

5 Québec City

French-speaking and deliciously seductive

Québec City is one of North America’s oldest and most magnificent settlements. Its picturesque old town is a Unesco World Heritage site, a living museum of narrow cobblestone streets, 17th- and 18th-century houses and soaring church spires, with the splendid Château Frontenac hotel towering above it all. Just walking down the street here is an aesthetic treat, unlike anywhere else in North America.

Terrasse Dufferin and Old Québec | UPDOGDESIGNS / GETTY IMAGES ©

CANADA’S Top 12 PLAN YOUR TRIP

6 Toronto

Canada’s largest and most diverse city

A hyperactive stew of cultures and neighborhoods, Toronto strikes you with sheer urban awe. Will you have dinner in Chinatown or Greektown? Five-star fusion or a peameal-bacon sandwich? In Ontario’s cool capital, designer shoes from Bloor-Yorkville are accessorized with tattoos in Queen West, while mod-art galleries, theater par excellence, rockin’ band rooms and hockey mania add to the megalopolis.

Eaton Centre | JON BILOUS / SHUTTERSTOCK ©

CANADA’S Top 12 PLAN YOUR TRIP

7 Haida Gwaii

Witness the magic and mystery of pre-colonial Canada

Haida Gwaii forms a dagger-shaped archipelago of some 450 islands lying 80km west of the BC coast, and offers a magical trip for those who make the effort. Attention has long focused on the many unique species of flora and fauna that populate lonesome Gwaii Haanas National Park, which makes up the bottom third of the archipelago, but each year it becomes more apparent that the islands’ true soul is the Haida culture itself.

Totem pole by artist Christian White | ALL CANADA PHOTOS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO ©

CANADA’S Top 12 PLAN YOUR TRIP

8 Vancouver Island

Echoes of England in a west-coast setting

Kissing the Pacific Ocean, Vancouver Island is Canada’s ‘wild’ west. Regally refined Victoria is the island’s heart, beating with bohemian shops, wood-floored coffee bars and a tea-soaked English past. Brooding Pacific Rim National Park sports the West Coast Trail and the mist-shrouded surfer beaches of Tofino. Then there’s journeyman Port Alberni at the head of a narrow inlet, hemmed in by giant trees beyond which lie welcoming organic farms and boutique wineries.

Victoria | JENIFOTO / GETTY IMAGES ©

CANADA’S Top 12 PLAN YOUR TRIP

9 The Yukon

Where gold-rush dreams are made

Few places in the world today have been so unchanged over the course of time as the Yukon. Indigenous people, having eked out survival for thousands of years, hunt and trap as they always have, and even the well-documented Klondike Gold Rush of 1898, the Yukon’s high point of population, retains an ephemeral heritage. Come to the north and lose yourself in a vast Arctic wilderness with few modern trappings.

Dawson City | JOSEF HANUS / SHUTTERSTOCK ©

CANADA’S Top 12 PLAN YOUR TRIP

10 Ottawa

Canada’s culture-heavy bilingual capital

Toronto is larger, Montréal is certainly cooler and Vancouver is objectively more attractive but, lest we forget, underrated Ottawa is Canada’s classy capital. Herein lie the country’s Gothic parliament buildings, along with ample parks, impressive public spaces, a canal that becomes a 7.8km-long winter skating rink and a cache of nation-defining museums. If you want to understand the modern success story that is Canada, Ottawa is the best place to start.

VLADONE / GETTY IMAGES ©

CANADA’S Top 12 PLAN YOUR TRIP

11 The Niagara Region

Wine, history and a spectacular cascade

Crowded? Cheesy? Well, yes. Niagara Falls is short, too – it doesn’t even crack the top 500 worldwide for height. But c’mon, when those great bands of water arc over the precipice, roaring into the void below, as you you sail toward it in a mist-shrouded little boat, Niagara Falls impresses big time. Beyond it stretches a region speckled with vineyards and home to one of the country’s best-preserved 19th-century towns.

Horseshoe Falls | OLESYA BARON / SHUTTERSTOCK ©

CANADA’S Top 12 PLAN YOUR TRIP

12 The Prairies

Fields full of wheat and dinosaur bones

The flatlands – boring? No way. Drive through uninterrupted fields of golden wheat in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta and you’ll encounter stiff winds, bruised clouds and a horizon punctuated by old grain elevators and famously friendly prairie towns. In between lie the real highlights of the Prairies: dinosaur bones, wind-eroded hoodoos, unexpected canyons and echoes of a stalwart Ukrainian heritage.

SHYLAMA PRODUCTIONS / GETTY IMAGES ©

Plan Your Trip

Need to Know

Currency

Canadian dollar ($)

Languages

English, French

Visas

Visitors may require a visa to enter Canada. Those exempt require an Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA; $7), with the exception of Americans. See the Visit page on www.cic.gc.ca.

Money

ATMs are widely available. Credit cards are accepted in nearly all hotels and restaurants.

Cell Phones

Local SIM cards can be used in unlocked GSM 850/1900 compatible phones. Other phones must be set to roaming. Coverage is spotty.

Time

Canada spans six of the world’s 24 time zones. The time difference from coast to coast is 4½ hours.

When to Go

High Season (Jun–Aug)

o Sunshine and warm weather prevail; far northern regions briefly thaw.

o Accommodation prices peak (up 30% on average).

o December through March is equally busy and expensive in ski resort towns.

Shoulder (May, Sep & Oct)

o Crowds and prices drop off.

o Temperatures are cool but comfortable.

o Fall foliage areas (eg Cape Breton Island and Québec) remain busy.

Low Season (Nov–Apr)

o Places outside the big cities and ski resorts close.

o Darkness and cold take over.

Daily Costs

Budget: Less than $100

o Dorm bed: $25–40

o Campsite: $25–35

o Self-catered meals from markets and supermarkets: $12–20

Midrange: $100–250

o B&B or room in a midrange hotel: $80–180 ($100–250 in major cities)

o Meal in a good local restaurant: from $20 plus drinks

o Rental car: $45–70 per day

Top end: More than $250

o Four-star hotel room: from $180 (from $250 in major cities)

o Three-course meal in a top restaurant: from $65 plus drinks

o Skiing day pass: $50–90

Useful Websites

Destination Canada (www.destinationcanada.com) Official tourism site.

Environment Canada Weather (www.weather.gc.ca) Forecasts for any town.

Lonely Planet (www.lonelyplanet.com/canada) Destination information, hotel bookings, traveler forum and more.

Government of Canada (www.gc.ca) National and regional information.

Opening Hours

Opening hours vary throughout the year. We’ve provided high-season opening hours; hours will generally decrease in the shoulder and low seasons.

Banks 10am–5pm Monday to Friday; some open 9am–noon Saturday

Restaurants breakfast 8–11am, lunch 11:30am–2:30pm Monday to Friday, dinner 5–9:30pm daily; some open for brunch 8am–1pm Saturday and Sunday

Bars 5pm–2am daily

Clubs 9pm–2am Wednesday to Saturday

Shops 10am–6pm Monday to Saturday, noon–5pm Sunday; some open to 8pm or 9pm Thursday and/or Friday

Supermarkets 9am–8pm; some open 24 hours

Arriving in Canada

Toronto Pearson International Airport Trains (adult/child $12.35/free) run downtown every 15 minutes from 5:30am to 1am; taxis cost around $60 (45 minutes).

Montréal Trudeau International Airport A 24-hour airport shuttle bus ($10) runs downtown. Taxis cost a flat $40 (30 to 60 minutes).

Vancouver International Airport Trains ($7.95 to $10.70) run downtown every six to 20 minutes; taxis cost around $40 (30 minutes).

Land Border Crossings The Canadian Border Services Agency (www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/bwt-taf/) posts wait times (usually 30 minutes).

Getting Around

Air Regional and national carriers crisscross the country, taking days off travel time and reaching northern towns inaccessible by road.

Car An extensive highway system links most towns. The Trans-Canada Hwy stretches from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island. Away from the population centers, distances can be deceivingly long and travel times slow due to single-lane highways. All the major rental car companies are readily available.

Ferry Public ferry systems operate extensively in British Columbia, Québec and the Maritime provinces.

Train Outside the Toronto–Montréal corridor, train travel is mostly for scenic journeys.

For more, see

Plan Your Trip

Hot Spots for…

Wildlife Watching

Up here in the wild North, humans are still but a small cog in a food chain patrolled by whales, polar bears, moose and elk.

seth k. hughes / getty images ©

Adrenaline Activities

The wilderness here is not just about good looks. Locals have been jumping in head first – sometimes literally – for decades.

stockstudiox / getty images ©

Historic Sites

Indigenous people, Vikings, the French, British, Americans and others have all left a lasting imprint on Canadian soil. Follow in their footsteps.

Meeting of Two Worlds by Luben Boykov and Richard Brixel; sebastienlemyre / shutterstock ©

Art

It’s not just outdoor action: Canada serves up unique art ranging from Indigenous sculpture to the landscape musings of the celebrated Group of Seven.

alastair wallace / shutterstock ©

Plan Your Trip

Essential Canada

Activities

While the great Canadian outdoors is undeniably postcard pretty, the wilderness here has more than good looks, with activities ranging from hiking and kayaking to cycling and snowboarding. For the daring, there’s ice-climbing and caving, and for those after something a little quieter, strap on some snowshoes or hop in a canoe.

Canadians aren’t fooling around when it comes to hockey. They play hard and well, and if they’re not playing, they cheer and catcall like they mean it. Grassroots hockey, aka pond hockey, takes place in communities across the country wherever there’s a frozen surface. All you need is a puck, a hockey stick and a few friends to live the dream. If you’d rather watch than play, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Montréal all have NHL (www.nhl.com) teams who skate tough and lose the odd tooth.

Shopping

Streets such as Robson in Vancouver and Yonge in Toronto are Canada’s retail hubs, with plenty of high-end shops. For something more authentically Canadian beyond the typical maple syrup or vacuum-packed smoked salmon, check out Indigenous art shops and the many markets that are the highlight of summer weekends for work by local potters, jewelry makers and other artists. The nation’s major museums often have excellent gift shops with quality, locally inspired products.

Robson St, Vancouver | I VIEWFINDER / SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Eating

Canadian cuisine is nothing if not eclectic, a casserole of food cultures blended together from centuries of immigration. Poutine (French fries topped with gravy and cheese curds), Montréal-style bagels, salmon jerky and pierogi jostle for comfort-food attention. For something more refined, Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver have well-seasoned fine-dining scenes, while regions across the country have rediscovered the unique ingredients grown, foraged for and produced on their doorsteps – bringing distinctive seafood, artisanal cheeses and lip-smacking produce to menus.

Tastemakers may not tout Canadian food the way they do, say, Italian or French fare, so let’s just call the distinctive dishes and fresh, seasonal fruits and veggies our little secret. Ditto for the award-winning bold reds and crisp whites produced from the country’s vine-striped valleys.

Poutine | p.f.mayer / shutterstock ©

Drinking & Nightlife

Canadian nightlife is as varied as the landscape. Cities have packed pubs serving microbrews, cocktail bars for the well-heeled, clubs catering mainly to the young, and live music bars for their parents. In small towns, you’ll mostly find at least one pub, which is as much a meeting place as a drinking establishment. Cafes are everywhere, although espresso machines are used with varying success in far-flung locations.

Entertainment

Maybe it’s the long, cold winters that drive teens into their basements to play music, but Canada has more local bands than you can shake a (hockey) stick at. Consequently, finding live music is not a challenge. Rock, folk and pop are the mainstays, while clubs have a steady stream of local and international DJs. In major cities, you’ll also find a smattering of opera, dance and drama.

Best Breweries

Powell Brewery, Vancouver

Griendel Brasserie Artisanale, Québec City

Shelter Brewing Co, Saskatoon

Bellwoods Brewery, Toronto

Craft Beer Corner, Charlottetown

Plan Your Trip

Month by Month

January

Ice Wine Festivals

British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley (www.thewinefestivals.com) and Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula (www.niagarawinefestival.com) celebrate their ice wines with good-time festivals. The distinctive, sweet libations go down the hatch alongside chestnut roasts, cocktail competitions and cozy alpine-lodge ambience.