Canada travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises spa and resorts

Of the hundreds of churches on the island of Montreal, Notre-Dame’s interior is the most stunning with a exquisite detail. This 19th Century Basilica is in the historic district of Montreal, in Quebec, Canada. Basilica was opened in 1829, making it the largest religious edifice in North America at the time. It is a very beautiful, interesting and cultural attraction!
According to records, it took two years to erect the walls of the basilica and the facade up to the base of the towers. Much of the interior is carved from rare woods – which are gilded or painted and large rose windows. It is filled with hundreds of intricate wooden carvings and several religious statues. The eastern tower of the Notre- Dame Montreal holds a ten-bell carillon, while the western tower, named Temperance, holds a single bell, the Jean-Baptiste bell. This ten ton bell is only rung on special occasions and can be heard 25km away. There’s also a chapel in the back which is just as amazing.
The original church, designed by Father François Dollier de Casson sufficed for the first 150 years. Then a New York architect named James O’Donnell was brought to Montreal to build a new church.
This striking interior is the work of architect Victor Bourgeau, who transformed the originally stern interior into the current design between 1874 and 1880. The great organ is a Casavant and the recitals held in the church throughout the year are very popular. The basilica offers musical programming of choral and organ performances.

Anthony Island is an Island in the province of British Columbia, located at latitude – longitude coordinates of N 52.1 and W -131.2167. One of the most southerly of the Queen Charlotte Islads , Anthony Island (known as SGang Gwaay by the Haida) holds rich culture.

Today, a columns are like giant arrows directing attention to the West Coast aboriginals’ life of yesteryear on Anthony Island, some 60 miles off the British Columbia coast.

On the southern tip of the island, the protected Ninstints village has been transformed into an open-air museum of sorts, with ten cedar dwellings offering the last links to a former world.

The park has the first historic traces of a European presence in the Americas, the ruins of a Norse settlement from the 11th century, with wooden and earth houses similar.

The Montreal Expo 67 defined today Montreal as a design spot to watch. Though Montreal isn’t booming quite like Toronto or Calgary, the European stone streets of the Old City are still a favorite of tourists—and of the American under-21 set looking for a beer. Many famous architects have designed university buildings and museums all over Montreal like the Faculty of Music Building at McGill University and several boutiques.

The truth is, Montreal is a place to discover. The people there are very welcoming and if you talk to them they will help you see. There isn’t some organized system to discovering the city as the chambre de commerce presents. I suggest dear traveler going to smaller, lesser-known places, and that’s where you find wonderful food or nightlife. It’s all very organic there, but there’s no system to discovering it, or one place or neighborhood to go. One of the best, most established places  there is Café L’Express and they don’t even have a sign.

Montreal is also an initiative city, which makes a new center in Old Montreal. It’s lovely down there and the stone buildings are amazing, but it’s very touristy by the St. Lawrence. The western part of Old Montreal is developing in a really natural way, though. McGill Street is coming up. The way the west part of Old Montreal is going, it will help re-create the natural fabric of the city.

In the past, the east side of Montreal was Francophone and the west was Anglophone. It’s still that way to some extent, but you will enjoying a moment of harmony there. The new leadership has said that the referendum is on ice for some years in order to establish a healthier, more connected city. This is a wonderful city and it’s the only place I know where everyone really does speak two languages.

You see, Montreal is all about surprise. You come here expecting one thing and then you see a guy surfing in the river. It’s on YouTube.

ContaineR is a traveling film house dedicated to the cultural countdown to the winter Olympics in Vancouver 2010. The creators are a wonderful trio form of architect Robert Duke, designers Keith Doyle and Iain Sinclair, and artistic directors Nicole Mion and Evann Seibens. The containeR can fit up to 25 guests who look up to the screen in the vaulted space where they watch projected short films about movement, dance, and sports.

The structure speaks art as well. Graphic drawings of hands, eyes and cartoon cameras cover the steel walls of the originally cream and orange colored containers.  On a walk around the structure, viewers experience large-scale graffiti, and can watch a documentary of the construction on a video screen built into the container’s exterior.

The first public appearance of containR is at Moshe Safdie’s coliseum-esque Vancouver Central Library, and will continue its journey to and from different festivals over the next year, potentially taking on new capacities as a gallery, performance venue and retail space. Springboard is still in talks with the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad organization, hoping that other containRs can be built in public venues like Whistler, the Richmond Skating Oval, Cypress Mountain and downtown Vancouver.

Hopefully the structure will also continue to inspire and spark innovative uses of sustainable materials well beyond the city limits.

Just a 45 – minute drive from downtown Monreal is located Sucrerie de la Montagne, a beautiful yard known as a cabane a sucre or sugar shack, where rustic accommodation and traditional food combined.

The picture displays the shack, where the evaporateur, a tremendous steel trough in which sugar maple sap is boiled down to syrup. Seventy – five percent of the world’s syrup supply is produced in Quebec.

This is Pierre Faucher, who is the owner of Sucrerie de la Montagne. He filters the syrup to perfection. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon pure syrup.

A celebration of traditional Quebec food at Sucrerie de la Montagne.

Ingredients of a sugar-shack feast, including, of course, maple syrup.

All the buildings at Sucrerie de la Montagne were constructed by hand, many of them by the owner himself, with ash and cedar hewn from trees cut down on the land. Mr. Faucher bought the property in 1978, then in 1981 started serving food year-round, a radical idea for the time.

I will present you a ski event at Whiteface Mountain outside Lake Placid, N. Y. In 2010 ski cross will receive the ultimate sporting sanction as a new sport for Vancouver Winter Olympics.

In ski cross, four to six racers simultaneously dash over banked turns and bumpy surfaces, and make soaring leaps, all while elbowing and pushing their way to the finish line.

Ski cross is a bit like motocross and Nascar except there are more midair accidents, and because the course is in a compact space, there is no such thing as a comfortable, or safe, lead.

The ski-slopes where the racers race between themselves have huge jumps forming by bulldozers and snow-grooming machines, that send skiers 15 feet in the air as well as dips, off-camber hairpin turns and successive dips and bumps called whoop-de-dos.

Located in the Laurentian Mountains, Mont Tremblant ski area is 75 miles (120 km) northwest of Montreal. Mont Tremblant as the most diverse runs and offers all the amenities, right on the hill. Mont Tremblant activities and recreation such as golfing, skiing, biking and skating. Tremblant offers guests 600 acres to ski and ride on with 121 acres of glades. Thirteen lifts service 94 runs.
The resort is modern yet charming, the locals speak French as well as English. A cute cobblestone village at the foot of the mountain makes strolling and supping as much fun as the schussing.

After dark Tremblant has a lively après-ski scene, with attractive shops and excellent restaurants. Restaurant fare ranges from French  to Italian, Japanese, and pizza.

Banff is the largest town in Banff National Park in Alberta’s Rakies, Canada. The city is not a Park City, overrun with celebrities, however it’s a place of remarkable purity.

The town is surrounded by mountains and situated above Bow Falls near the junction of the Bow and Spray Rivers. A skier near the Bow Summit in Banff National Park.

At Banff you can focus on what really matters: deep snow (30 feet per year in some spots). Day tickets start at 75.95 Canadian dollars (about $62).

The picture displays a skater skating on Lake Louise.

The Elk & Oarsman is a popular pub, where everyone seems to gather after a long ride in the mountains.

Arctic region between Greenland and eastern Canada can be define as a staggering scenery with rich history and abundant wildwife. In this picture tourists sail through the Ilulissat Icefjord, which is the most active glacier.

In the harbor town of Sisimint, Greenland, the local tourist office organizes hiking, sailing, kayaking.

Fishing boats in Sisimiut, Greenland.

Coastal Greenland is lined with massive icebergs and walls of glacial ice.

A bottlenose whale in the Davis Strait, located between western Greenland and Baffin Island, Canada.

A polar bear on the remote rocks of Monumental Island, Canada. The region’s polar bear population is at risk because warming temperatures are melting the sea ice they use as hunting platforms. These days the Arctic lands are beginning to draw attention from tourists who want to see the effects of climate change for themselves.

Vancouver, British Columbia is a host city for the next Olympics Games, 2010. Despite of the fact that it is only 35 miles north of the U.S. border, Vancouver feels and looks different from any other big city in the United States or, for that matter, Canada. With its glass-and-steel towers, Vancouver could be in Asia.

There has been a lot of construction going on in Vancouver in preparation for the Games — and beyond. After the Winter Games, the 16-building Olympic Village, which will house about 2,800 athletes, is to be converted into a 730-unit luxury condominium complex called Millennium Water. About half the units have already been sold.

Most of the part of the peninsula is surrounded by a sea wall, which is ideal for walking, biking and jogging.

There are no freeways through the city. Those who want to head north to Whistler, where the Olympic skiing events will be held, can use the Lions Gate bridge, which spans the first narrows of the Burrard Inlet.

A statue of runner Harry Jerome stands against the Vancouver skyline.

No one knows for sure what Vancouver will be like after the Games!

Ottawa is the capital of Canada and this summer this huge city celebrates its 50th anniversary. The city is spectacular and has enough green spaces, trails and water, which can satisfied the most hyperactive travelers.

This is the Parliament Hill, which is just steps from downtown.

This picture displays the Rideau Canal, which is part of a 125-mile-long waterway that links Ottawa River to Lake Ontario.

 

A show at ByWard Market.

Ottawa is home to a wealth of national museums, offical residences, memorials and heritage structures. As well as is home to major sports such as kayaking, swimming, baseball and hokey during the winter.

 

We show you a night photo tour in the largest city in Canada – TORONTO

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The Desert Cultural Centre is designed to be a specific and sustainable response to the building’s unique context – the unusual Canadian desert found south of the Okanagan Valley in Osoyoos, British Columbia. Sited adjacent to a remnant of the Great Basin Desert, this interpretative centre is a part of larger 200-acre master plan that includes a winery, golf club and a resort hotel.

The building features outdoor and indoor exhibits that celebrate the culture and the history of the band and is designed to be an extension of the remarkable site, and reflects the brand’s role as stewards of the land. The desert landscape flows over the building’s green roof, held back by a rammed earth wall. The partially submerged buildings is sited very specifically to focus the visitor’s eye away from the encroaching development of Osoyoos to the west, with the height of the wall set to create a layered view of the desert rising up in the middle ground and the mountains in the distance.

The mountains of Quebec are hidden jewels of the latish ski season. Just a 15 minutes from the enchantments of Quebec City is located Le Relais Ski Center. As well as a short drive out of town, the Mont Ste.-Anne ski area offers modern lifts, a wide variety of trails and plenty of snow. This mountain is the biggest in Quebec.

Just 20 minutes north of Quebec City is Stoneham Mountain, very popular of its park-and-pipe set and new school skiers, but also attracts families with children. In Quebec City, winter pleasures include skating at the Place d’Youville by the walls of the old town.

The Fairmont Château Frontenac hotel in Quebec City.The palce is across from a delightful park that leads up to Chateau Frontenac. It is a very old hotel and the rooms are very very small but clean. Moderate rate for room and great location. There is also a breakfast at hotel restaurant’s outside terrace each morning-very nice.

Qubec City is also famous with the Ice Hotel, which include guest rooms, bars, art galleries and wedding chapels, are made almost entirely of ice, and they are dazzling. But are you really fancy to spend a night in such a icy atmosphere? Given that you can tour the Ice Hotel by day for 15 Canadian dollars and that an overnight will cost at least 400 Canadian dollars, it’s a fair question.

In British Columbia is located Silver Star village, which is a small glamorous town sprawling cousin to the west. Sitting in the Okanagan Valley, Silver Star is one street village includes board sidewalks and Victorian storefronts that have a very cosy feel to them.

During the winter, Silver Star suggest 115 ski and snowboard trails, including 13 double-black-diamond runs. If you are rested in such a wonderful snow-world its advisable to hangout in Bagaboos Bakery, which is a lovely place with tables inside and out. There fresh European- style pastries and Dutch hot chocolate ordered at the counter make for a comfortable end-of-the-ski-day ritual.

The atmosphere in Silver Star is very delicate.There is no real grocery store in town, only three shops in which to buy souvenirs and experience little crazy night life. Many of the boutiques serve more than one purpose!

During the years the resort has becoming ski area with fantastic way of living. The village is very small as I mentioned and it’s easy to coordinate skiing with wall-climbing lessons.

As investment in the resort has increased, so have the housing prices, real estate agents say. An older two-bedroom condominium can still be found for 219,000 Canadian dollars, but some houses are starting to sell for a little more than 1 million dollars, and a three-bedroom condominium at the new Snow Bird Lodge, left, sold for 1.6 million.