New Ideas For U.S. Travelers, Thanks To Canada’s Musicians

Except for Canada’s famous sites and biggest cities, most American travelers — including travel writers — know very little about other places to see and restaurants to dine in when visiting our northern neighbor.

That’s why, for years, I have asked Canadian musicians, who frequently tour their country, to provide travel tips and recommendations about favorite destinations, sites and restauarants. Many of their tips were published in past stories, but this is the first time they are consolidated in a single story, with some other recommendations added.

Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are the three most likely big-city targets of Canada-bound American vacationers, but Winnipeg holds a special place in the heart of Randy Bachman, who has scored well-known hits worldwide for songs in his bands Bachman-Turner Overdrive and the Guess Who. At age 81, he is still rocking and touring, so, as the writer of the hit song “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” and maybe the most experienced voice, he may be the best choice to kick off the travel tips. Other Canadian musicians follow.

Randy Bachman

“When I was a kid, I’d ride my bike to West Kildonan Park along the bike trail beside the river bank,” Bachman posted about Winnipeg in an Instagram post last year. “We called it ‘the monkey trails!’ I always noticed the bridge to nowhere. I dreamed of buying the bridge, putting a house in the middle of the Red River and living between East and West Kildonan. Imagine walking out your front door to East Kildonan and your back door to West Kildonan!”

The Red River winds through the 96-acre park, which features 17 miles of walking paths, according to the City of Winnipeg. The park has an open-air theater called the Rainbow Stage where musicals are performed in the summer, a duck pond, a winter ice skating rink, toboggan slides, athletic fields and a Hansel & Gretel Witch Hut for children.

The nonproft company Rainbow Stage says it is “Manitoba’s premier musical theater company, Canada’s leading not-for-profit musical theater company and Canada’s largest and longest-running outdoor theater.” The theater seats 2,300 people and can be transformed to a more intimate space with 780-1,400 seats.

Winnipeg is like Chicago, Bachman told this journalist in an interview. The Canadian city is at the top of the Great Plains, a transit center where railroads converge, and trains carry oil, cattle, wheat and other farm products, he says.

American travelers should go to Calgary or Edmonton, Bachman says, and travel through the Rocky Mountains by car or train.

“It’s like a cowboy movie. There are mountains, snow, lakes, rivers and wildlife. It’s fantastic and pretty much untouched by civilization, because it’s wilderness.”

Bruce Cockburn

Cockburn, one of Canada’s greatest singer-songwriters who has been releasing albums since 1970, recommends travelers experience the Canadian Arctic. The region has boundaries difficult to define, according to the Arctic Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit organization.

“Maps published by the Canadian government show a boundary that follows the 60th parallel north, dives abruptly south along the banks of the Hudson Bay and then cuts back onto land as it crosses northern Quebec and Labrador,” the Arctic Institute says. “This massive swath of land represents over 40% of Canada’s landmass and 25% of the global Arctic.”

Everyone “should experience the Arctic before they die,” Cockburn said in an interview. “Although for the health of the landscape, I hope they don’t. It’s the closest thing I’ve experienced to the world the way God made it. Banff is pretty great, too.”

Serge Fiori

Fiori, whose 1970s group Harmonium has been praised as one of prog-rock’s best, lives in Saint-Henri-De-Taillon, adjacent to Lac Saint-Jean, a large lake in Quebec about a 5 1/2-hour drive north of Montreal.

“I'm right on the beach of the lake,” said Fiori, who grew up in Montreal. “Imagine a magnificent, beautiful beach — it looks a lot like Maine. The first time I came here I said, ‘Okay, if I have to leave Montreal, I have to be in a space where it is absolutely beautiful. Looking out the window now, I don't believe how beautiful this is. It’s just paradise.”

Murray McLauchlan

McLauchlan, an acclaimed folk and country singer whose songs were covered by Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Tom Rush, lives in Ontario and praised the province for its more than 250,000 lakes.

He recommended travelers visit the Bruce Peninsula, which is about a 2 1/2-hour drive northwest of Toronto, and has two national parks in the peninsula’s northern sector. “One of the great hiking trails in the world,” he said, extends 553 miles from Niagara to Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula.

McLauchlan also pointed out his favorite places in other Canadian provinces.

In British Columbia, he loves the Okanagan Valley and the country outside. “It is semi-desert, but, in the spring, it blooms, and the hills are a carpet of black-eyed susans. It’s the best wine-growing country in Canada.”

In Manitoba, travelers should go north to Thompson and Lynn Lake, McLauchlan said. “If you like fishing, it doesn’t get better.”

In Saskatchewan, he recommended travelers visit Saskatoon. “It has a great art gallery, and it’s a very artistic little town. How cool is a city that has a statue of Gandhi on the main drag instead of some military geezer?”

In Alberta, Edmonton is a must, McLauchlan said. “There are miles and miles of terrific bike trails along the North Saskatchewan River, and it is also the home of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. It’s a very vibrant place culturally.”

Colin James

James, a blues-rock guitarist, was born in Regina, Saskatchewan — “smack dab in the middle of the prairies of Canada” — but headed west to Vancouver at age 16 in pursuit of a music career. He loves Vancouver and also praised two small, remote coastal towns on Vancouver Island — Tofino and Ucluelet — that are unknown to most Americans, .

“Vancouver is such a beautiful city,” James said. “You can be boating in the morning, tanning at noon and skiing high up above Vancouver, all on the same day for a lot of the year. Winters are wet but rarely have much snow, and summers are super sunny and hot. Bike lanes get you anywhere around town, and the food scene is on fire.”

Getting to Tofino and Ucluelet, which face the Pacific Ocean and are situated about as far west as one can go in North America, takes about 5 1/2 hours by ferry and automobile from Vancouver. Wildlife abounds, and Tofino is the place for viewing black bear, humpback whales, sea otters and tufted puffins.

“Tofino and Ucluelet are magic — even in rainy weather,” James said about the two towns with plentiful rainfall.

The Penticton area in the British Columbia interior is also a special place, he said. It’s “becoming very much like a Sonoma with wineries and killer restaurants.”

Sue Foley

Foley, a blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, grew up in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city.

“Ottawa is a beautiful town with parks, great neighborhoods and loads of natural beauty,” the guitarist and singer-sonwriter said. “We ran around the whole city when we are kids. I learned to speak French from the time I was a child and always enjoyed the multicultural and bilingual vibe. Our home was a few blocks from the Ottawa River, which runs right through the city, and I’ve always loved being next to that body of water, walking or biking along the paths that run alongside it. The Ottawa River is a bit fierce with rapids in parts, but that added to the allure. It was mighty and a little dangerous.”

Catherine MacLellan

MacLellan, a folk singer and brilliant songwriter, lives on Prince Edward Island and told Alberta’s CKUA radio last year that she appreciates the locale for providing a calm and relaxed lifestyle.

“It’s a hard place to leave and an easy place to come home to,” she told CKUA. “I like to travel and meet new people and then also come home and nestle in here.”

Several years ago, MacLellan toured Canada and told this journalist about other Canadian destinations she enjoyed.

“I just got back from a lovely trip to Ontario and had an amazing time wandering around folk festivals, new towns and old cities,” she said. “We made it to Ear Falls, in northwestern Ontario, for the Trout Forest Music Festival. I've never felt quite so far from a coast, but, with the thousands of lakes filled with pristine water and pelicans flying over head, I felt close to the water.”

MacLellan then traveled to Toronto, which is also in Ontario but about 1,160 miles southeast. There, she said she ate some amazing food at a Cuban restaurant, visited friends and then departed to Meaford, about a 2 /12-hour drive north.

“We made our way to the beautiful hall in Meaford, a gem of a theater in a sweet town on Georgian Bay,” MacLellan said. “Again, even though we were very far from the shorelines of Prince Edward Island, we felt very much at home on the white sandy beaches and waterside towns.”

Ruth Moody

Moody, a solo artist and one of the three members of the Wailin’ Jennys, lives on tiny Mayne Island, one of the Southern Gulf Islands. It’s north of Washington’s San Juan Islands, southwest of Vancouver and just east of Vancouver Island.

Moody said she first visited Vancouver Island with her first band, a Celtic and old-time music group from Winnipeg, when she was 21.

“When we got to the West Coast, I felt like I had entered a portal into another universe,” she recalled. “I couldn’t believe how different it was from the prairies. We played in the Cowichan Valley and on Saltspring Island, and I was amazed by the big trees and lush forests.”

Moody’s parents relocated to Victoria more than 15 years ago, so she has often visited the city in southern Vancouver Island.

“I love being so close to the ocean, the smell of the air, the blossoms in the spring and the proximity to hiking,” she said.

Moody said Victoria’s restaurants are great, including two favorites: Be Love and Sushi Jiro. Fernwood and Bows and Arrows are two “exceptional” coffee roasters, and “an unusual number of very fine bakeries” include Fry’s, Wildfire, Patisserie Daniel and Fol Epi.

“There are lovely rocky beaches everywhere, and the harbor is very picturesque,” Moody said. “There is great thrift shopping, if you’re into that kind of thing! I love Beacon Hill Park and hiking in Mount Douglas Park, which is in Saanich, a little north of the city. Two other places that are great for hiking and not too far from Victoria are Goldstream Provincial Park and East Sooke Park. Last fall, I saw three humpback whales while I was hiking in the latter!”

Gordon Lightfoot

In memoriam, a mention of one of Canada’s most acclaimed folk and folk-rock singer-songwriters seems appropriate. Lightfoot, a popular artist worldwide who died at age 84 two years ago, provided the following travel information to Canadian music website exclaim! in 2020.

He said he made 10 canoe trips in Canada during a 15-year period.

“I've done a lot of the major rivers in northern Canada — the Coppermine, the Back River, the Nahanni, the Churchill,” he told exclaim!. “I feel very fortunate about being born in Canada.”