The Current - Where’s the best place to vacation in Canada?

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Would you rather visit the expansive beauty of Canada’s Arctic, or watch humpbacks breach as you ramble along Newfoundland’s coast? Perhaps you’d be surprised by the Prairies, or get lost in rainforests of Haida Gwaii, the “Galápagos of the North”? Robin Esrock, author of The Great Canadian Bucket List, shares his top picks for holidays closer to home.

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Find Uncover wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. Hold on, ignore that. This is an American tourism ad featuring the singer Roseanne Cash targeting Canada and a few other countries. Instead... Try something new. Try Canada.

Try Canada. That is the message from Destination Canada, formerly known as the Canadian Tourism Commission. The message is from some political leaders as well. BC Premier David Eby is encouraging Canadians to rethink vacations to the United States in light of Donald Trump's tariff threats. It's late January. It's cold outside from coast to coast to coast. This is the time of the year when many people might be dreaming and planning that next trip, perhaps somewhere it will take you out of the winter blaze. For those of you who are planning March break or summer vacations in Canada instead of the United States or elsewhere, we have got help for you. And a challenge, stay tuned for that. First, the question, where to go?

Joining me now with his top picks and travel tips is Robin Esrock, columnist at Canadian Geographic and author of the great Canadian bucket list. Robin, good morning. Good morning, Matt. We're gonna get to the bucket list in a moment. But for you personally, what is the best part about traveling in this country in Canada? Canada is so underrated.

You know, we go into, we always look abroad for inspiration for some reason. And the fact that when you discover something in Canada that you didn't expect to discover, that's when it whacks you over the head and just blows your way with the diversity and just blows you away with the diversity and the beauty of the country. Tell me more about that. You've been to what, 120 countries? Is that right?

Yeah, I've reported from 120 countries on all seven continents. So how does Canada compare? Well, like many people, I'm an immigrant to Canada and I always thought Canada would be a place I'd get to eventually. We don't look in our own backyards all that often, especially with the Canadian psyche of kind of in the shadow of the US and looking to the Europe and looking south of the border. And I always set out to find unique experiences you can only do in Canada. I thought there wouldn't be that many.

I spent years traveling to every province and territory and discovered there are a ton. My second edition of my book is as thick as a brick and there's a third edition coming out. There's just so many amazing things. When you put yourself on the ground and you interact with the locals and the indigenous experiences and the environment, you suddenly realize that I actually think we've got the best country in the world. All right. So prove it. Let's go. You have the bucket list.

Give us the first place on that list, the place that you would recommend Canadians travel to. Okay. Look, when people tell me what's number one on the list, I always say, well, it depends on what you're into. If you're into nature or culture, food, history, I'm going to give you a different answer.

Um, but you know, there's some places I'll say you just have to go to and there's no way you'll come back and be disappointed. I think every Canadian should start up north and go to the Arctic. Get to Whitehorse, get to Yellowknife, get to Nunavut if you can. Just experience the vastness and the beauty and the culture of the Arctic, of the high Arctic. It's just so much land, there's so much space, the sky's so big, the wildlife is all there.

If you can get north, even in winter for the Northern Lights and summer for the hiking, do it for sure. All right, keep moving your way through the list. Where else should we go? Haida Gwaii, I just sing the praises of, they call it the Galapagos of the north. I've been to the Galapagos a few times, and I can tell you that I think

the comparison's entirely apt. You can only access it by boat. You sail around the archipelago, you interact with wildlife, old growth forest, it's protected from ocean floor to ocean top. But unlike the Galapagos, you've got the Haida people and their art and their culture and their language stitching the whole thing together,

a spectacular part of the world. Okay, wanderlust is beginning to stir, where else? The East Coast Trail in Newfoundland. This company that will shuttle your bags up ahead, it's easy coastal walking with the most spectacular views. You see humpbacks breaching off the coast. You roll into these wonderful, boisterous Newfoundland communities, you know, fantastic seafood,

and music, hospitality, and every day it's just the most immaculate walking you can do. I mean, I've done hikes again all over the world. I'm on a hike ride at the moment. It's just absolutely beautiful. So yeah, definitely put that one on the list. Okay, keep going. Well, the prairies. Everyone thinks there's this flatness in the middle of Canada that you just kind of got to go from the Rockies onto Ontario. I love the prairies. It's underrated,

full of surprises. And the key to any successful travel is to lower your expectations and your entitlement. I think that's something our friends south of the border often get wrong. When you arrive without any expectations, you're just going to always leave completely surprised at what you discover, and the prairies are full of these kinds of things. Canada's Dead Sea in Watros, Saskatchewan. It's a saltwater lake, you can float on your back just like the Dead Sea. There's the mineral rich therapeutic mud just like the Dead Sea, a beautiful part of the world, totally off the radar. Just one of these things you discover on a prairies road trip through Saskatchewan and Manitoba,

going up to Churchill in summer to kayak with beluga whales or in the fall to see the polar bears. I mean, this stuff you can't do anywhere else. No, I've looked. Are there hidden gems in this country? I mean, part of this is the underrated places, places that people perhaps might not think of that is a real... It's somewhere that you have to go, but you wouldn't think that you have to go. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And I mean, we're an underrated country.

I think we kind of look down on ourselves to some degree, and we got underrated provinces with underrated experiences. New Brunswick, I think, is a perfect example of this. Again, it's a country that has got this reputation as being some place kind of like puberty that you have to get through on your way to some place better. But if you actually stop the car and you're-

I'm gonna send out your email address because people in New Brunswick might be complaining, but continue. It's an amazing province. There's incredible things to do. I mean, you walk on the ocean floor at the Hopewell Rocks, something as quirky as Magnetic Hill where you can put your car in neutral and roll up a hill, it's fantastic. It's a quirky roadside attraction, but you can't do this stuff in other parts of the world. You can't

just roll up and roll a car uphill with a crazy optical illusion. The Hopewell Rocks, I went kayaking last summer under the stars. I walked the ocean floor in the morning and I took my kid and we kayaked in the evening and it was just beautiful, absolutely amazing. And again, the people, Canada's people, the hospitality is just stitching the whole thing through. Is there a city in this country that you love? Yeah, well, Montreal always soaks up the big city kind of interest, the eclectic, the vibe of it, the place that you feel like somewhere different.

I love Quebec City, especially in winter, in February when you can go to the world's biggest winter carnival and have ice parades in the streets and check out the ice hotel, which is realistically more less an endurance than romance, but absolutely beautiful. I think Quebec City is like nowhere else on the continent, so it's really special. And of course, Vancouver is just beautiful as well. I live in Vancouver and I always walk around the seawall and I hear people visiting going, can you imagine people live here? And I'm like, yes, we do and we love it. We spend something like what, $28 billion a year

on tourism to the United States. How do you go about convincing Canadians to spend that loot here? For years, I've been singing the praises of tourism in Canada. I'm an immigrant, I happen to make my living traveling around the world, reporting on unique experiences. I personally didn't think there were so many things to do in this country until I looked.

And once I discovered that, you know, between the variety and the diversity of experiences and cultures and food and history, there's so much in our backyard. And often we have, I hear this comment, why should I go to Newfoundland when I can go to Ireland? But, you know, going to Newfoundland when I can go to Ireland? But, you know, going to Newfoundland is a completely different experience, and only one of those destinations will give you a much better understanding of the country in which you actually live. So that when you hear some news about St. John's, you can go, I've been there, I know what they're talking about, I've met the people who live there. So they're completely different experiences. And that's the same, you know, if you're going down to the U.S.,

I mean, just look in your own backyard and you don't have to travel to the far ends of the earth to tick off a bucket list experience. I don't want to turn this into a rant about airlines, but one of the reasons why people perhaps travel to the States or elsewhere is because it's so expensive to get around in this country. How does that impact, do you think, people's choices in terms of where they want to fly and where they want to go? People might love to go?

People might love to go to the Arctic, but if you are not close, it's really expensive to get up to Whitehorse or to Yellowknife. It is, it is. And we can definitely have a rant about airlines and their practices, especially the new one that you can't even bring a carry-on on the lowest ticket. Fortunately, we live in a country that's made for road trips.

We've got an incredible road infrastructure and a rail network. Get in the car, hop in the car and drive north as north as you can, given the time that you have. Drive east, drive west. That's when the magic really happens. When you're just driving along, you see a sign and you go, I wonder what that is. And you pull over and you discover something you had no idea existed. It is way too expensive to fly in the country. But it's expensive to fly everywhere. Tourism is booming around the world post pandemic. There's a lot of stress on the industry. You can look closer to home. You don't have to, like I said, you don't have to go to the real Galapagos, which will cost a lot more than going to Canada's Galapagos in Haida Gwaii. Okay, pick us one place. If there was one, this is hard, but if there was one destination

in this country to recommend, where would it be? Oh, there's so many and the book is thick, but the one that surprised me recently was Waterton National Park. You know, there's a lot of, there's so many crowds going to Banff and to Jasper. These are beautiful places in the Rockies. They are iconic. They're absolutely gorgeous. Less people go south of Calgary to Waterton, which is majestic.

It is beautiful. The lakes, the mountains, the hikes. It's a small community. Again, it's very welcoming. It's slightly off the radar. And yeah, I would definitely put that on people's radar. I found it was a very special place. Perfect. Robin, thank you for this.

Thanks, Matt. Travel well. Robin Esrock is a columnist, a Canadian geographic author of the great Canadian Bucket List. Alright, so the challenge is, what is your top vacation destination in this country? Make the case for where we should travel in Canada and why somebody perhaps looking to a vacation in Canada should go to that particular spot. Could be your favorite spot in the community, could be a place you visited in a different

province that you can't wait to go back to, a place that you return to each year, anywhere in this country, somewhere that somebody else needs to know about, a place that perhaps is overlooked, hidden gem or just the thing in this country that makes you think, yeah, that's where I want to be right now. Where should we go in this country? Convince us why we should visit your number one spot versus a different spot. Email us. TheCurrent at cbc.ca or better yet, send us a voice note.

Just send it to TheCurrent at cbc.ca.