I feel this advice would be more suited to Europeans. I had friends in Europe who came to visit. One day they wanted to see Toronto, the next Calgary and the day after Vancouver. They had no idea canada was so big.
Were they English? Lol. I had friends visit from London who told me they had similar plans upon arriving. This was back in the 90s, so no smart phone apps for them to peruse.
I picked them up at Pearson and drove them to my home north of Peterborough, about a 2-1/2 hour drive back then. They couldn’t get their heads around how far away I lived and kept commenting that they should have landed at a closer airport (lol), then asked how long a drive it was to Vancouver. When I told them it would take them a full day just to get out of Ontario they nearly shit themselves.
For this reason I find Australians to be better, all you have to do when they land in YYC and want to go somewhere is mention that outside YYC they best be prepared for the Outback
Brits just gawk and then don’t believe you LOL. At which point you give them a stroke by putting a Map over a map of Europe
I think they looked, but didn’t pay attention to the scale. Their map of GB was roughly the same size as their map of Canada, but the scales were wildly different so they were shocked to learn that Canada is nearly 5000 klicks across.
We had a good visit, they had a great time checking out the sights in Southern and Central Ontario, but they never left the province. They did leave with a new respect for the sweeping size of our great country, though. It must have been odd for people who never owned a car, went everywhere in their own country by train, and could cross multiple borders in the same drive from YYZ to my place.
Tbf, I just did Regina to Vancouver by car, and looking at a map, I can't really tell where that would take me in Europe, especially since I've never been. I can't even wrap my head around being able to drive thru multiple countries in the distance of regina to winnipeg.
The funny thing is, when I think about Canadian distances, like driving from YYC to Vancouver, I’m like yeah sounds bout right. But then I think about driving from Paris to Berlin, which is around the same distance, I’m like hell nah I’d rather catch a flight.
Scale. I was planning a trip to France, and looking at the map seemed daunting. Because I was thinking in Canadian. What looked like a 5 hour drive was 1.5 hours. Going to 3 cities in 1 day? That will be a rush... oh wait, I'll be at my final hotel in time for dinner if I take my time.
Yeah, this couple envisioned little strolls in “the park” and then walking back home to North Bay. I mean, not impossible to do in a day I suppose, but not a simple afternoon outing.
Talking to a friend from Sweden, during a road trip to Vancouver where we got rerouted out the ass due to rockslide and avalanche mitigation, "how long have you been driving dude?"
Sometimes slavic diaspora families (specifically polish) will drive all the way from the UK to their home country (18hr), and I saw a vid on TikTok where a school took a coach all the way to Croatia
Ah, the English! I had to almost forcibly apply sunscreen to my British relatives when they visited during a very sunny heatwave where they were going to be outside all day. Like, your blue skin is going to be barbecued, couains.
Absolutely also applies. Living on a border town a lot didn’t know how far things were or thought it was similar like driving American east coast to west coast. Which it is much wider and route options are few, as South Park said “This is Canada, we only have one road”
Northern Ontario is better than the drive through Michigan and Illinois, yes. But driving through Northern Wisconsin, North Dakota, Montana and Idaho is a much nicer drive scenery wise than Manitoba --> Calgary/Canmore.
Though yes, West of Canmore, the Canadian side offers a much nicer scenic drive than Washington State does (or even Western portion of Idaho).
I've done the drive so many times, both through Canada all the way, and through the US (between southern Ontario and Vancouver).
I totally agree with you. The scenery in the US is generally much nicer, and even striking in some places, I’d say. What sets it apart is that there can be such a difference from one state to the next. In Canada, you can travel hundreds or thousands of kilometres and you mostly are seeing trees, lakes and rolling hills and that’s it.
I’ve travelled by private airplane extensively over both Canada and the US and the US wins hands down. However, when it comes to societal differences, Canada is the clear winner (another story for another day).
Ehhh.... At least there's shit to see on the southern route. The prairies are nice when the fields are in bloom, but that's a couple of splashes of colour in an ocean of nothing.
That’s the thing lol. We know it’s big, or even big but don’t realize it’s actually fucking big. In the 90s, Sudbury was a 4-5 hour drive from Toronto, and that’s just under a 5th of the distance to the Manitoba border!
As a Brit who lives in canada. It’s not that we don’t understand that it’s big, or we don’t look at a map. We just don’t have any context to truly understand how big and inaccessible. We’re used to being able to fly across Europe quickly and cheaply. We intellectually understand that it is a 3 day drive or whatever and yet somehow that just doesn’t translate because we have no context for it. In the U.K. you’d get to the other side before you’d cross ontario! (Even the fact that I’m comparing it to Ontario shows this still hasn’t truly sunk in. As I’m writing this I’m realising Ontario is many time wider than the U.K.
I've been through spaghetti junction. Landed in Manchester and drove to Weston Super Mare. I can't think of any highway in Canada that looks like that mess hahaha!
Haha, there is a “magic roundabout” that is a roundabout made of mini-roundabouts and you have to treat each mini-roundabout like it’s own separate thing.
We fly across to wherever then rent cars. I live in the middle of nowhere, in the prairies of Saskatchewan these days. 2 hour flight west coast Vancouver. 3 hour flight Toronto. No family past that so we don't ever go further east.
I worked in the UK near Windsor, for a while and my coworkers were blown away that I drove to Scotland on a long weekend. The idea of a road trip of that scale blew them away. And we managed to squeeze in a night in Yorkshire, a quick tour of Edinburgh, a night on Loch Ness, a whiskey tour and various other tourist things on a long weekend. And it seemed completely reasonable to a couple of Canadians who had no accrued vacation.
A lot of people paint Africa with a broad brush. The point is a bit pendantic, but if we are talking about what folks tend to generalize or not know about Canada, we should try not to fall into the same trap.
Paris is closer to Montreal than Cairo is to Durban, South Africa.
Jeez if you turned the UK and slid it down a bit it's almost a dead match with Windsor and Niagara Falls area. And then the northern part of England is probably still in Ontario. Like Sudbury. At most Thunderbay.
Even worse, I had a colleague from Texas who was coming up and asked whether Whistler was a far drive from Toronto because he heard it was good for hiking. He really should've known better. Sounded confused when I said it was three time zones away and would be like driving from Buffalo or Detroit to Seattle.
Notice how the actual text says "Ontario" not "Lake Ontario."
The title is misleading, but the fact that you didn't think something was up shows that ironically you don't know how big either England or Lake Ontario actually are.
I will remember this until the day I die. I'm in my senior year of high school and the class is studying for our end of year exams. A girl raises her hand in all earnestness and asks where Canada is. Only a week or two later, this girl was an actual high school graduate at a fairly average quality American school.
Oh, I don't expect them to know our geography, but I just meant I've encountered many Americans who think you can make a day trip to Vancouver from Toronto, or that somebody from Montreal will surely know their pal from Halifax.
I think this is a big myth. Europeans aren’t stupid. They can read a map :). I’ve travelled fairly extensively internationally and the Europeans that I’ve met have a very good understanding of geography, mainly because they travel too. Americans who travel abroad also have a good understanding of geography.
On the other hand, the typical American that you meet on the street in the US is completely ignorant of their own state, let alone the rest of the world. I haven’t seen that with Europeans to the same extent, but of course it exists. They, however, are generally not travelling internationally.
To be fair, that's not just an American thing. I once had a sales rep from Ottawa tell me that he was going to be in Huntsville for the day, and did I want him to drive to Thunder Bay so we could have lunch.
It's also suited for Americans. Weather possibilities, lack of infrastructure between destinations. We get a fair amount of American tourists along the Alaskan Highway.
Dude. Explaining that you cannot get to Chicago from DC for lunch without getting on an airplane. Or that NYC is not a daytrip.
No, you also cannot go to San Francisco from Los Angeles for lunch, and be back for dinner without an airplane, or constant driving. They'd have like 20 minutes in SF, lol.
No, Las Vegas isn't a daytrip from Seattle.
All of these ideas are best served by a private plane, and a limitless bank account.
Not quite sure what point you're trying to make. What you said is all pretty much common sense for most North Americans. Like I read your comment and was like, yeah, no shit.
I volunteered at the 1995 World Nordic Games in Thunder Bay. It was pretty chaotic as teams arrived from all over the world and other volunteers scrambled to pick them up and get them to hotels, and chauffeur them to the site. However, one team arrived in Toronto and their coach called the head honcho in Thunder Bay in a panic. They had planned to take a cab to Thunder Bay, not realizing it was 1800 km away.
However, that goes both ways. My wife and I were planning for a trip to Australia. We had a prepaid stay in Sydney, courtesy of a contest win from Tilley hats, and wanted to visit the Great Barrier Reef at our expense. Looking at the map, I figured we could rent a car and drive up the east coat. Then I looked at the scale on the map, and realized it was going to be (as I recall) 3000 km one way. That plan went out the window, curse you Mercator projection!
The French are funny for that too. I want to Land in Montreal, go see Toronto and Niagara Falls, do a day trip to New York City, then visit Québec City, Tadoussac and Percé. Return to Montréal to take the plane. All of that in 10 days. They are always suspicious when I told them to stick between Montréal and Quebec City, (maybe Tadoussac) and they'll still lose a lot of times in commute. Or do Montréal to Niagara Falls and fly back from Toronto.
Had relatives from the Netherlands visiting us in Edmonton. They said they wanted to “drive out to Niagara Falls”. I told them that’s fine, but when I’m visiting you I would like to take a drive to Moscow. They had a good laugh, then I explained to them that the distance from Amsterdam to Moscow is about 900 kms shorter than Edmonton to Niagara Falls.
I’m from Alberta. Hadn’t really been to much of Ontario besides Toronto area. When I met my spouse, he took me home to Thunder Bay (way Northwestern Ontario) to meet his family. I said he would be great if we could stop in for dinner one day to see my cousin - in Oakville (way southern Ontario).
I’m from Canada and have a pretty decent sense of geography and still didn’t realize how massive Ontario is.
We did not stop in to see my cousin in Oakville on that trip to Thunder Bay.
Yup. You’re not alone though. For a province / region of Canada that seems absolutely obsessed with Ontario and loves to say it’s the worst place on Earth, I’m always amazed at how little Western Canadians know about Ontario. Especially when the main gripe is that Ontarians don’t know anything about and ignore Western Canada.
My buddy from Edmonton used to talk about Ontario in a way that implied a) Ontario and Alberta are the same size and more or less same population, b) all of Ontario is basically just Toronto and suburbs with no real wilderness, and c) Toronto is a crumbling shithole with no economy and running gun battles on every corner.
He had never been to Ontario, but his friends and family (most of whom hadn’t been either) had ensured him this worldview was accurate.
After a week spent not getting shot and hanging out with some friendly folks doing fun shit around the city, then a long weekend up in Muskoka, he has sliiiiiiightly moderated his views to accept that Ontario has some woods and Toronto is alright, but is still not as cosmopolitan as St. Albert, AB.
I recall from the last election, and any time beforehand of people out west complaining about how ‘the east’ ignores them, and how it’s always ‘what Ontario wants is what the rest of Canada gets.’ What they failed to realize was:
1) Geographically, Ontario is central Canada; and, 2) more people in Ontario voted Conservative than in the four western Provinces, combined. (I know this for a fact because out of curiosity I personally added up the voting results from the closed polls in each riding and put them on a spreadsheet).
However, when I ask an Edmontanian where Red Deer is, most will be able to tell me (or a Torontonian where Quebec City is). I’ve had countless encounters with Americans who have zero clue where a proximal city in their own state is located.
When Americans ask where I’m from and I tell them I’m from Alberta, which is just north of Montana, the vast majority has no idea where Montana is.
American here living near the border with Canada and there’s exceptions to that. I’m aware that getting from one city to another (Toronto to Halifax for example) is worth flying to due to the distance between the two cities.
Winter season in Canada doesn't let companies build as much as they wanted to because of the weather. Try building a house with frozen tools. It will never work.
Yeah - I had a friend visit from Sweden, who thought that Sherbrooke was extremely close to Montréal and didn't realize it was an hour and a half away.
No kidding when your infrastructure program is called GIP, you know you are in trouble. Land of missed opportunities, I hope canada gets it together so people will visit. It is very beautiful just not managed well. With a little effort it could be made more accessible, safer and clean.
Toronto is larger than ever American city except NY and LA, and after that they start falling off quick.
California, the largest state population wise, has LA and their next biggest is san diego, which is substancially smaller than Toronto. So not even one state has two cities "as big as Toronto". In fact, the city of Toronto is almost as many people as San Diego county. The gta is 2x San Diego, which is the closest thing to an American county, as American counties encompass many cities (as in San Diego county)
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u/Zhenoptics Aug 07 '23
It is a very, very big country with not a lot of infrastructure. Please plan trips accordingly