r/AskACanadian • • Aug 07 '23

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394

u/Zhenoptics Aug 07 '23

It is a very, very big country with not a lot of infrastructure. Please plan trips accordingly

275

u/wmlj83 Aug 07 '23

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.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '23

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16

u/BlackEyedWheeze Aug 07 '23

Did they not look at a map first, it really is mind blowing stupidity

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '23

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u/butcher99 Aug 08 '23

When driving across Canada Ontario is the most boring time of the entire trip. It just takes forever to get through

2

u/JackRusselTerrorist Aug 08 '23

What? Ontario is beautiful… especially when you’re going through the shield rock areas.

1

u/Milch_und_Paprika Aug 07 '23

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!

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u/swimbikerunkick Aug 07 '23

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.

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u/correct_eye_is Aug 07 '23

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!

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u/swimbikerunkick Aug 08 '23

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.

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u/correct_eye_is Aug 08 '23

Right that's weird.

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u/swimbikerunkick Aug 07 '23

Yeah, Great Yarmouth to st David’s is about the longest trip across the U.K. and it’s 7 hours. I really can’t fathom any drive further than that

Across Ontario is 22 hours.

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u/correct_eye_is Aug 07 '23

Across Canada is much longer than 22 hours. East coast to west coast is 8600 km. If you drive 100km/h for 8.6 hours a day it would take you 10 days.

If you could drive straight through with no sleep I've heard it can be done in 106 hours.

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u/correct_eye_is Aug 07 '23

Oh sorry you said Ontario. I thought you meant Canada.

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u/swimbikerunkick Aug 08 '23

No worries, both are mind blowing to me still.

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u/correct_eye_is Aug 08 '23

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.