Lok and Catherine

After spending a bit of time in Quebec City we jumped on the VIA Rail destined for Moncton. You just have to love the special discount section of the VIA Rail website because we managed to snag another deal and get a sleeper cabin for the same price as the budget seats. We jumped off the train in Moncton, New Brunswick, a few hours later than scheduled and hopped straight onto the bus destined for Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (PEI). A couple hours later and we were crossing the Northumberland Strait on the seriously long Confederation Bridge that links Prince Edward Island to the Canadian mainland. The bridge is 12.9km long and has a fascinating history (Lok even read a book about it while we were there), but we won’t bore you with all of the ... read more

We came to Ottawa with a bit of a soft spot for national capitals. After spending so much time in our own nation’s home of politics, we are used to the taunts that are afflicted on such cities - expensive, sterile, full of civil servants, boring. We didn’t find Ottawa to be a cheap city, and there were a lot of government buildings and civil servants around, but boring...No, not all. In 1857, Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as Canada’s capital even though she had never been to Canada. Ottawa lies between Toronto and Montreal, in the province of Ontario, just across the river from the French-speaking Quebec province. Locating a nation’s capital in no man’s land between two established major cities is certainly a tried and tested concept. Whilst strutting to the sounds of the wheels ... read more

With a tinge of sadness we left Winnipeg and jumped on Via Rail for a 39 hour rail trip to Toronto. While this might sound ghastly, it was made all the better by being able to be in sleeper class. A bed made for you every night, a shower and three cooked meals a day. All we had to do was read, sleep and the proverbial. And we were the youngest there by around 20 years. Travelling by land doesn’t really get much easier than that. Having said that, apparently the trains are European and not really made for Canadian conditions. The shower drain in our car froze closed at one point when Catherine was in it, sending water overflowing all over the floor. Then in the evening the toilets froze and wouldn't flush. They have ... read more

There is something very cool sounding about the name Saskatchewan. This is one of the low profile provinces - sparsely populated, known for its extensive flat prairies on which vast quantities of wheat are grown, a growing oil and gas industry, and increasing mineral extraction, particularly uranium. The province even has a city called Uranium City. On Canadian Thanksgiving, we jumped on the Greyhound from Edmonton to Saskatoon. Ah Saskatoon, the city of bridges and the Paris of the Prairies (as they call it). It is a beautiful small city of around 200,000 people situated around the South Saskatchewan River. We had a great few days exploring the city and its’ riverbanks. We stayed at the College Drive Lodge which had a nice panoramic view of the river and the university from the lounge room. It ... read more

In order to take advantage of some very unseasonal warm weather, we decided to hire a car for a couple of days and check out some of the sites of Southern Alberta Drumheller is about 130km out of Calgary and is almost certainly the Dinosaur capital of world. The town has a bit of an obsession with these prehistoric beings and is home to the Royal Tyrell Museum (one of the world’s largest dinosaur museums), the world’s largest dinosaur and a dinosaur of some form or another can be found on nearly every street corner. We didn’t see a copy of Drumheller’s tourism strategy, but we are pretty confident it read something like: ‘when in doubt, a dinosaur is the answer’. If nothing else, a visit to the Royal Tyrell Museum eliminated another occupation off the ... read more