Game, including rabbit, caribou, and bison, which have been served in aboriginal homes for centuries, are now considered gourmet dishes at cosmopolitan restaurants. A tradition of French haute cuisine is evident in most of the country’s major cities, particularly in top hotels. However, as Canada is a nation of immigrants, ethnic restaurants are common everywhere.

German, Greek, Chinese, Thai, Indian, Ukrainian, African, and Italian cuisines, along with other international favorites, provide a wide range of choice at a price to suit every budget.

Regional specialties can be sampled in their place of origin, but most of the larger towns will also offer a choice of the country’s best local produce, and in some areas this includes Canadian wines and beers.

Types of Restaurants

Eating out in Canada is surprisingly easy on the pocket, particularly compared to European and American prices. This makes a trip to a top restaurant to sample international cuisine (often made with local produce) very worthwhile. Eating places are extremely varied, with the tearoom, bistro, brasserie, and theater café competing with the more usual café, restaurant, and fast food outlet. Many pubs also serve excellent bar food, at reasonable prices.

More unusual, but no less worthwhile, is the uniquely Canadian dining experience of the delicious lobster supper.

Held throughout the summer on Prince Edward Island, these lively gatherings usually take place in church grounds on wooden tables surrounded by local fishermen. Equally unique, though by no means public, are Inuit dinners.

Traveling through the Arctic north may result in an invitation to join an Inuit family for the evening meal. Traditional dishes might include sun dried caribou sweetened with berry sauces or smoked and dried local fish. These family dinners are usually alcohol free and very lively.

There is no government sponsored hotel grading system in Canada, but the voluntary program “Canada Select” is usually very accurate.

Each establishment is rated by numbers of stars. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that a 4-star hotel in a large city such as Toronto, for example, might not have the same level of facilities as one with the same rating in a small upscale resort with a château hotel.

The Canadian Automobile Association also operates an assessment system, mostly for hotels and motels along main highways, and these, while also non-official, are largely recognized as consistent and accurate. Air-conditioning comes as standard in most of the country during summer, except in national park lodges and cooler coastal and northern regions. Central heating country-wide is efficient. Cable TV, radio, irons and ironing boards, and coffee-making facilities are standard. Private bathrooms are usual, but you will need to specify a bathtub or shower – also remember to ask for double or twin beds when booking a double room.

Prices

With such a wide range of accommodations, prices vary hugely. In a major town, the top hotel’s presidential suite may command a daily rate in excess of Can$1,000, while a hiker’s hostel will provide a dormitory bed for under

Can$25. Budget hotels and B-and-Bs charge Can$50–75 a night per person. Some prices rise in high season, but rates are discounted in low season.

Reservations

Advance reservations are always recommended in the main cities, where festivals, conventions, meetings, and major sports and musical events are held year-round. Provincial tourist offices or airlines will assist in suggesting and arranging bookings.

Luxury Hotels

Although Canada has few five-star hotels, the major cities boast some truly world class establishments. The railroad age of the late 19th century ushered in château style hotels, which are unique Canadian architectural features.

Nowadays, most of the castle hotels, including the Château Frontenac, are owned and operated by Fairmont Hotels.

Luxury chains are well represented: the Four Seasons, the Hilton, the Radisson, the Sheraton, and Westin chains operate in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver.

Chain Hotels

Canada offers numerous franchise and chain hotels and motels. Reliable and comfortable, if occasionally a little bland, chains vary in style and price from grand resort areas to the less expensive but equally well-known Best Western, Comfort, and Super 8.

Popular with families and business travelers, many of the properties have offices for use, including fax, e-mail, and telegraph equipment. Children’s facilities are usually good.

Disabled Travelers

Canada’s building laws require all new and renovated public buildings to provide wheelchair facilities with ramps, wide doors, and straight access to rooms. However, as many rural hotels date from the 19th century, facilities should always be checked in advance.

Children

Traveling with children is relatively easy. Nearly every property will supply a cot or junior-sized bed in a parents’ room. Major hotels offer babysitting services. A lone parent traveling with children may need written consent from the other parent under anti abduction regulations.

Image courtesy Flickr

MONTREAL occupies a 50-kilometer (30-mile) long island at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa River. The city core, where many sights are found, is fairly compact and lies to the south and east of Montreal’s main landmark, Mont-Royal. Vieux Montréal, the old city, is nestled on the shore of the St. Lawrence, while the modern downtown lies between it and Mont-Royal. Streets follow a fairly consistent grid pattern making the city easy to navigate.

Museums and Galleries

Musée Marc-Aurèle Fortin

THIS MUSEUM, housed in an old stone warehouse belonging to an ancient order of nuns, has an extensive collection of Fortin’s work, and it also mounts exhibitions of new painting by local artists.

Marc-Aurèle Fortin transformed landscape painting in Canada. He was born in 1888, when European styles dominated North American art.

Fortin loved the light of his native province, and used many unusual techniques. To capture the ‘‘warm light of Quebec,’’ for example, he painted some of his pictures over gray backgrounds. By the time he died in 1970, he left behind not only a staggering amount of work but a whole new way of looking at nature, especially the various rural areas of his native Quebec.

Centre d’Histoire de Montréal

THIS MUSEUM is housed in a handsome, red-brick fire station, which has a gracefully gabled roof built in 1903. The exhibits trace the history of Montreal from the first Indian settlements to the modern age, with the focus on everyday life. There are two floors of permanent exhibits. On the first floor, “Montreal, 5 Times” traces five passages in Montreal’s history, beginning in 1535 with the meeting of First Nations peoples and European explorers and ending with the cultural boom of the 1960s. The second floor houses “Montreal of 1000 Faces,” focusing on trade and immigration through the city’s history. News reel footage from the 30s, 40s and 50s is fun and informative, while a third floor observation deck offers a scenic view of the Old Port and Old Montreal.

Musée d’Art Contemporain

OPENED IN 1964, THE MUSEUM of Contemporary Art is the only institution in Canada dedicated exclusively to modern art. Located in downtown Montreal, more than 60 percent of the approximately 6,000 paintings, drawings, photographs, videos, and installations in the permanent collection are by Quebec artists. Works date from 1939, but the emphasis is on the contemporary. There are also works by innovative international talents, such as the controversial Bill Viola, Louise Bourgeois, and Andrès Serrano. The exhibits are in wide, well-lit galleries whose elegance helped to earn the Musée a Grand Prix from Montreal Council. The exhibition space is built around a rotunda, which runs up through the core of the building.

McCord Museum of Canadian History

LAWYER DAVID Ross McCord (1844–1930) was an avid collector of virtually everything that had to do with life in Canada, including books, photographs, jewelry, furniture, clothing, documents, papers, paintings, toys, and porcelain.

In 1919, he gave his considerable acquisitions to McGill University with a view to establishing a museum of Canadian social history. That collection, now more than 90,000 artifacts, is housed in a stately limestone building that was once a social center for McGill students. The museum has a good section of early history, as well as exceptional folk art. A particularly fine collection of Indian and Inuit items features clothing, weapons, jewelry, furs, and pottery.

A separate room is devoted to the social history of Montreal.

The museum’s most celebrated possession is the collection of 700,000 photographs that painstakingly chronicle every detail of daily life in 19th-century Montreal.

Musée des Beaux Arts

THE OLDEST AND LARGEST art collection in Quebec is housed in two dramatically different buildings that face each other across Rue Sherbrooke. The Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion, fronted with four white marble pillars, faces the huge concrete arch and tilting glass front of the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion. The former focuses on Canadiana, with Inuit art, furniture, and church silver from early settlers, and paintings from the 18th century to the 1960s. The galleries in the Desmarais Pavilion (illustrated here) focus on European art from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, especially the Renaissance. Linking the two pavilions is the gallery of ancient cultures, with rich collections of artifacts, including Roman vases and Chinese incense boxes.

Centre Canadien d’Architecture

VISITORS ENTER through an unobtrusive glass door in an almost windowless façade of gray limestone that fronts this large U-shaped building. Well-lit exhibition rooms house a series of regular exhibits in rotation.

The three primary exhibits focus on architecture, design and landscape architecture.

The two arms of the modern building embrace the ornate, grand Shaughnessy Mansion, which faces Boulevard René-Lévesque Ouest. Now part of the Centre, the house was built in 1874 for the president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, and has an artnouveau conservatory with an intricately decorated ceiling.

The Centre is also a major scholarly institution. Its collection of architectural plans, drawings, models, and photographs is the most important of its kind anywhere. The library alone has over 165,000 volumes on the world’s most significant buildings.

Maison Saint-Gabriel

THIS ISOLATED little fragment of New France at first appears lost among the apartment buildings of working class Pointe-Saint-Charles. It was a farm when the formidable Marguerite Bourgeoys, Montreal’s first schoolteacher and now a canonized saint, bought it in 1668 as a residence for the religious order she had founded in 1655.

The house, rebuilt in 1698 after a fire, is a fine example of 17th-century architecture, with thick stone walls and a steeply pitched roof built on an intricate frame of original heavy wooden timbers.

Marguerite Bourgeoys and her tireless sisters worked the farm and ran a school on the property for native and colonial children. They also housed and trained the filles du roy (the “king’s daughters”), orphaned young girls sent abroad to be the women of his new colony. The house’s chapel, kitchen, dormitory, and drawing rooms are full of artifacts dating from the 17th century. These include a writing desk the saint used herself and a magnificent vestment and cope, embroidered in silk, silver, and gold by a wealthy hermit who lived in a hut on the property.

Image courtesy Flickr.com

If you are looking for a unique and incredible family vacation in Canada, you might consider a train trip with Via Rail. The Canadian, an original flagship passenger train owned by Canadian Pacific Rail, began service on April 24, 1955. The original train route was a bit more southernly than what is used today, but the scenery and wildlife is just as spectacular.

The tour begins with an overnight stay in Toronto, Ontario. Spend your day taking in the sights and sounds of the biggest city in Canada. The next morning, your passenger train tour begins on its journey through Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia in 6 days. On your journey from Toronto to Vancouver, you’ll pass through Winnipeg, Saskatoon and then to Edmonton and Jasper, Alberta.

By the time you arrive in Jasper, 4 glorious leisurely days of Canadian sight seeing will have passed. In Jasper, you’ll enjoy a half day trip to the Athabasca Glacier in the Columbia Ice Fields for an Ice Explorer ride on 1000 feet of glacier ice. You can also opt for a trip up the Jasper Tramway for incredible vistas of the joining 3 valleys over the t0wn of Jasper.

After an overnight stay in Jasper, it’s another 2 days on the train trip to an over night stay in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia. If you are looking for unique and breathtaking – without the hassle of days of driving – consider a Via Rail tour on The Canadian passenger train.

Jasper is a small town of about 5,000 people that doubles in size during tourism season – July to October. Hundreds of the town residents are employees at the various hotels and tourist attractions with the largest staff of about 500 people at the famous Jasper Park Lodge on the gorgeous shores of Lac Beauvert. JPL, as it is known locally, has been around since 1921 – though a lodge was on the same location much earlier than that. Originally owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway, Jasper Park Lodge is now under the famous Fairmont Hotels and Resorts umbrella.

In addition to the spectacular sites of Jasper National Park, you will see untouched wilderness and wildlife. Visitors should beware of elk, mountain goat and smaller wildlife roaming the town site of Jasper at will. It’s not uncommon to have to cross the street and walk on the other side to avoid the small herds of the hooved kind. But don’t get too close, these wild animals really are wild – keep a good distance with your camera.

Seasonal climates vary with mild summers and the occasional severe cold winter weather. Summer or Winter, there are many things to see and do no matter how avid an adventurer you are. Activities range from river rafting, lake boat tours, hiking and biking, snow shoeing, sleigh rides and of course fantastic deep powder skiing and snowboarding. No matter what time of year you visit, Jasper is more than worth while.