Canada’s Stunning Landscapes – A Journey Through Nature’s Masterpieces
Canada is large enough that a single trip can only ever cover a fraction of it, but that fraction tends to be substantial. This article moves through the country’s main natural regions – the eastern forests and waterways, the prairie interior, the Rockies, and the Pacific coast – covering what each offers and how to approach the country as a journey rather than a list of stops.
Eastern Canada – Forests, Rivers and the St Lawrence
The stretch between Toronto and Montreal takes in the northern shore of Lake Ontario, the Thousand Islands where the St Lawrence river begins, and the transition from Ontario’s mixed forest into Quebec’s French-speaking towns and farmland. Montreal itself sits on an island in the St Lawrence and has a compact, walkable old quarter – Vieux-Montréal – with cobbled streets, nineteenth-century warehouses converted to restaurants, and the Basilique Notre-Dame, a neo-Gothic church with an interior that takes most visitors by surprise. East of Montreal the St Lawrence widens into an estuary and the land on both sides becomes lower and wilder; beluga whales feed in the Saguenay Fjord where cold freshwater meets the salt of the gulf. Families travelling this corridor by rail find the train from Toronto to Montreal one of the more comfortable ways to cover the distance – around five hours on VIA Rail, following the north shore of the lake before cutting northeast through Kingston and the river valley. The Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal are a low, rounded range of ancient rock with lakes, trails, and small towns that fill in summer with hikers and canoeists.
The Prairie Provinces – Sky, Grain and Open Ground
Saskatchewan and Manitoba between them contain some of the flattest and most open terrain on the planet, and that flatness is the point rather than a shortcoming. The sky above the prairies is proportionally enormous – cloud formations and weather systems are visible at distances that compressed landscapes never allow. Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba sits on an escarpment above the surrounding farmland and contains boreal forest, lakes, and one of the healthier bison herds in Canada. The town of Churchill on Hudson Bay is reachable only by air or rail and is one of the few places in the world where polar bears can be observed from vehicles at close range during their autumn coastal migration. Winnipeg, Manitoba’s capital, has a serious arts and food scene that surprises visitors expecting a transit city, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is one of the better purpose-built museums opened anywhere in the past twenty years. The prairies work best for travellers who are willing to stop in small towns rather than driving between major centres – the grain elevators, Ukrainian Orthodox churches, and roadside diners of rural Saskatchewan carry a particular North American character that the cities have largely moved past.
The Rocky Mountains – Banff, Jasper and the Continental Divide
The Canadian Rockies begin west of Calgary and run northwest through Banff and Jasper National Parks along the continental divide. The train from Toronto to Vancouver on VIA Rail’s Canadian route passes through the Rockies over two nights, crossing the continental divide and descending through the mountains to the Pacific coast – a journey that covers the transition from prairie to mountain to rainforest in a single continuous movement.
Banff is the more visited of the two parks and has the infrastructure to show for it – the town of Banff has hotels, restaurants, and a ski resort, and the Icefields Parkway connecting it to Jasper is one of the more dramatic paved roads in North America. Jasper is quieter, larger, and has the darker skies – it is a designated Dark Sky Preserve, and the star visibility on a clear night away from the townsite is genuine. Lake Louise, a glacial lake with water the colour of powdered turquoise sitting below Victoria Glacier, draws large crowds in summer but the crowds thin quickly on the trails above the lakeshore. Wildlife in the Rockies is not incidental – elk walk through the town of Banff with apparent indifference, black bears are common along the Icefields Parkway, and grizzlies are present in both parks.
British Columbia – Rainforest, Coast and the Pacific
British Columbia’s south coast sits in a temperate rainforest zone where annual rainfall supports Douglas fir and Sitka spruce growing to heights uncommon elsewhere in Canada. Vancouver Island, reachable by ferry from Vancouver in around ninety minutes, contains old-growth forest on its west coast at Pacific Rim National Park Reserve – the Long Beach unit has kilometres of open Pacific shoreline backed by dense rainforest, with grey whales feeding offshore in spring. The Okanagan Valley in the BC interior is a semi-arid plateau with orchards, vineyards, and a lake large enough to have its own alleged monster – Ogopogo, sightings of which have been reported since the nineteenth century. Whistler, two hours north of Vancouver by road, is known primarily as a ski resort but the surrounding Coast Mountains have summer hiking and mountain biking trails that operate on the same lifts. The Great Bear Rainforest on BC’s central and north coast is one of the largest intact temperate rainforests remaining anywhere, and the area has a significant population of the Kermode or spirit bear – a white-coated black bear – which draws wildlife photographers and families willing to reach remote lodges by floatplane.
The North – Yukon, the Aurora and Genuine Wilderness
Canada’s north is genuinely remote in a way that the southern provinces are not, and that remoteness is the primary thing it offers. The Yukon covers an area larger than California with a population of around 45,000 people, most of them in the capital Whitehorse. Kluane National Park in the southwest Yukon contains the largest non-polar icefields in the world and peaks that remain largely unclimbed. The aurora borealis is visible from Whitehorse and Dawson City on clear nights between August and April, and both towns have accommodation and tour operators set up around aurora viewing. The Dempster Highway runs 740 kilometres north from near Dawson City to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories, crossing the Arctic Circle – a gravel road through tundra, mountain passes, and river crossings that is driveable in a standard vehicle in summer but requires preparation. Indigenous culture in the Yukon – primarily the First Nations of the Council of Yukon First Nations – is accessible through cultural centres, guided land-based experiences, and events in Whitehorse that are worth seeking out rather than treating as background.
Canada rewards travellers who treat distance as part of the experience rather than an obstacle to manage. The rail corridors in the east and across the Rockies cover the country’s range in a way that flying between cities does not, and the regions between the major stops tend to be as interesting as the destinations themselves. Start with one region, move slowly through it, and accept that the rest of the country will require another trip.
