Canada
Canada Travel and Destination Guide
PLACES TO SEE
Edmonton
Edmonton is the capital of Alberta, the most westerly of the prairie provinces. While Calgary milks the wild west image, Edmonton prefers to hit the headlines for housing the world's largest shopping and entertainment mall, but still enjoys an attractively wooded riverside setting.
Vancouver
There aren't many cities in the world that offer Vancouver's combination of big-city lifestyle and outdoor fun in such cheek-by-jowl proximity. Ski in the morning, sail in the afternoon and still make it back to town in time for a cocktail or three.
Ottawa
Canada's capital bearhugs the southern bank of the Ottawa River, on Ontario's eastern tip. It's a government town, dominated physically and spiritually by the neo-Gothic Parliament Buildings. While not exactly excitement central, the air's clean, the streets are wide and the people are friendly.
Basilique Nôtre Dame
Montréal's famous landmark, Notre-Dame Basilica, is a visually pleasing if slightly gaudy symphony of carved wood, paintings, gilded sculptures and stained glass windows. Built in 1829 on the site of an older and smaller church, it also sports a famous Casavant organ and the Gros Bourdon, said to be the biggest bell in North America.
Niagara Falls
These thundering falls are one of Canada's top tourist destinations, drawing over 13 million people annually. Although hundreds of the world's waterfalls are actually taller than Niagara Falls, in terms of sheer volume, these are hard to beat: the equivalent of over a million bathtubs full of water goes over every minute.
Banff & Jasper National Parks
It all seems almost too surreal to be true, so picture perfect you'll think you're dreaming. Mountains scrape the sky - a jumble of colours and shapes. Cerulean blue meets snowcapped majesty. The sparkling lakes are emerald-green or milky-turquoise - you may have to blink a few times before your eyes can absorb their gloriously intense colours.
Biodôme
This mesmerising complex is a legacy of the 1967 Olympic summer games. The one time velodrome has morphed into the Biôdome, a natural history museum with a twist: below the giant cupola are four beautifully re-created ecosystems, including a tropical forest and a polar world inhabited by playful penguins.
Elgin & Winter Garden Theatre Centre
A restored masterpiece, the Elgin & Winter Garden represents the last operating double-decker theatre in the world. In 1913 the breathtaking Winter Garden was built as the flagship for a vaudeville chain that never really took off, while the downstairs Elgin was converted into a movie house in the 1920s.
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