Not to miss

Toronto

Although the famous Niagara Falls are nearby, Toronto isn't a city with a checklist full of attractions. But its summer festivals, the spicy corners of its markets, the beachfront boardwalks and the music pouring out of its neighborhood eateries will slowly and surely seduce you.

This is Canada's business capital and largest city: a clean, safe and vibrant metropolis where real estate prices are high and blood pressure levels are low. The center of Anglo-Canadian culture and media, it's also one of the great ethnic melting pots of the world.

Edmonton

Edmonton? Is that the place with the big mall? Yes, that's Edmonton's greatest hit, but there's a whole album worth of great tracks to check out here. There are groovy neighborhoods, great museums and galleries, and an urban wilderness area that municipalities from around the globe would kill for.

The province's famed mineral legacy is explored in the Royal Alberta Museum, and there's also Canada's largest planetarium, unsurprisingly accompanied by an IMAX theatre. The gem south of the river is Old Strathcona, a residential area of gorgeous old buildings dating from 1891.

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.

Vancouver is still a city of new immigrants - wander the streets and you'll hear a dozen different languages. The city also attracts young professionals and artists from the eastern provinces who come here to enjoy its recreation and laid-back sophistication.

Nunavut

The immense Northwest Territories were subdivided in 1999 to create Canada's newest territory, the eastern Arctic Inuit region of Nunavut. It's wild and isolated, stretching north above the tree line from Hudson Bay up to Ellesmere Island National Park, within spitting distance of the North Pole.

Halifax

Perched on one of the world's largest natural harbors, fog-bound Halifax has gone from old-salt port to deluxe destination, with its historic areas gussied up into sleek tourist precincts. More and more travellers are setting course for Nova Scotia's capital.

Ottawa

Descriptions of Ottawa read like an appealing personal ad: young, vibrant, clean, bilingual, likes kids, long walks on the river.

The attractive capital continues to impress in person, with its postcard-perfect Parliament, inspiring jumble of pulsing districts, and scenic hills in the distance.

The city has the usual plethora of impressive buildings common to capital cities: the Canadian War Museum, the Royal Canadian Mint, various grand old homes inhabited by ministers of state and a swag of museums to do justice to the country's icons: nature, aviation, science and technology, skiing and agriculture.

Montreal

Montreal's charm lies in its old-world atmosphere rather than its star attractions. Nonetheless, this city of immigrants has managed to carve out a place for itself as Quebec's economic and cultural centre. That it's friendly and easy to get around helps.

Quebec's largest city keeps one foot in the past and one in the present, with 19th century churches nestled in the shadows of soaring modern skyscrapers. During the day, the city has a typically North American bustle - while French-speaking Montreal takes pains to retain its linguistic heritage.

German Embassy

Canadian Parapalegic Association

Excellent resource for information about facilities for mobility-impaired travellers in Canada.

Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA)

For details on quarantine and customs rules and regulations. CBSA offices are available all over Canada.

UK Embassy

USA embassy

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.

The glaciers cling to rugged precipices, intense ice blue merges with slate gray. Rivers rush by, fed on melted snow and spring rains. Lush forests and high alpine meadows explode in a kaleidoscope of colours when the wildflowers bloom. A grizzly bear ambles past, swinging his head from side to side, searching for food. A moose pauses at a fast flowing river for a drink.

Welcome to Banff and Jasper National Parks, heart of the Canadian Rockies, and home to some of the most spectacular scenery on the continent. Much of the Rocky Mountains area of Alberta, running along the British Columbia border, is contained and protected within these two huge, adjacent national parks: Banff to the south and Jasper to the north. The Icefields Parkway links the two, though there is no real boundary. Adjoining the southern boundary of Banff National Park is Kananaskis Country, a provincial recreation area.

Musée de l'Amérique Française

Purported to be Canada's oldest museum, this entertaining and educational institution exhibits artefacts relating to French settlement and culture in the New World. It's not dry and employs some very creative, changing displays. The admission fee also covers some adjacent seminary buildings, with their religious artefacts, and quiet courtyards.

If the gates to the left of the basilica are closed, enter the grounds at 9 Rue le l'Université.

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.

The Ontario Heritage Foundation saved both theatres from being demolished in 1981. During its multi-million restoration effort, bread dough was used to uncover original rose-garden frescoes, the Belgian company that made the original carpeting was contacted for fresh rolls, and the beautiful foliage hanging from the ceiling of the upstairs Winter Garden Theatre was replaced, leaf by painstaking leaf. Seats were bought from Chicago's infamous Biograph Theater.

Toronto Music Garden

This sculpted garden was designed in collaboration with famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma. It aims to express Bach's Suite No 1 for Unaccompanied Cello through landscape, with an arc-shaped grove of conifers, a swirling path through a wildflower meadow and a grass-stepped amphitheatre where free summer concerts are held.

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.

The interior looks especially impressive during an otherwise overly melodramatic sound and light show staged from Tuesday to Saturday nights.

The basilica made headlines in 1994 when singer Céline Dion got married under its soaring midnight-blue ceiling, and again in 2000 when Jimmy Carter and Fidel Castro shared pall-bearing honours at the state funeral of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec

This standout museum in the park is really an art gallery. The worthwhile Musée du Québec houses the province's most important collection of Québecois art, as well as international paintings, sculptures and ceramics. The holdings include work by Riopelle, Borduas, Dallaire and Leduc.

Be sure to look out for art by James Duncan and Cornelius Krieghoff and the statues of Québec's best-loved sculptor, Louis-Philippe Hébert (whose 22 bronze works adorn the facade of the Assemblée Nationale).

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.

The falls themselves are certainly impressive, particularly the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. They look good by day and by night, when colourful spotlights flicker across the misty foam. Even in winter, when the flow is partially hidden and the edges frozen solid - like a freeze-framed film - it's quite a spectacle.

Very occasionally the falls stop altogether. The first recorded instance of this occurred on the morning of Easter Sunday 1848, and it caused some to speculate that the end of the world was nigh. An ice jam had completely cut off the flow of water. Some residents even took the opportunity to scavenge the riverbed beneath the falls.

It is said that Napoléon's brother rode from New Orleans in a stagecoach with his new bride to view the falls and that it has been a honeymoon attraction ever since. In fact, the town is sometimes humorously but disparagingly called a spot 'for newlyweds and nearly deads'. Recently, it's been called Viagra Falls.