The weather is a harsh mistress in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  The natives have fought back by establishing a modern wonder, Montreal’s Underground City.  The underground, as the locals call it, is a remarkable pedestrian network of train stations, shops, hotels, restaurants, museums, and more, under downtown Montreal.

The underground city got its start in 1962 with the building of the Place Ville-Marie office tower and underground shopping mall.  That first mall connected to Central Station (subway) and the Queen Elizabeth Hotel via tunnels.  Since then the underground has grown to more than twenty-two miles of pedestrian walkways.

Residents of Montreal are extremely proud of their “inside city” (not all of it is underground), the largest underground complex in the world.  There are more than 150 access points to the subterranean city and more than 60% of the businesses in downtown connect to the underground.  Over 500,000 people traverse the belowground pedestrian walkways and subways of Montreal each day.  Several residential towers connect to the underground as well, allowing some locals to go from home to work to play without ever going outside.

Some of the most stunning features of the underground complex are the subway stations.  Each station is, literally, a work of art.  When the subway was built 1% of the budget for each station was devoted to procuring and displaying art in the underground.  A different architect designed each station in a different style and no two stations are the same.

A number of well-known tourist spots in Montreal are accessible from the underground city.  Things to check out without going out include Olympic Park and the Olympic Centre (built for the 1976 Olympics);  the Place des Artes, home to the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art (Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal);  and Molson Centre, home of Montreal’s hockey team, the Canadiens.

Travel in western Canada can be adventurous, romantic, and fun.  All you have to do is take the train. VIA Rail, Canada’s federal Crown corporation railway system, offers several routes to travelers who want to see Canada without having to drive through it.

The Canadian is the western transcontinental train, a three-day journey from Toronto to Vancouver with stops along the way in Winnipeg, Jasper, and Edmonton, among others.  Truly adventurous travelers who want to plan their own vacation can even request special stops anywhere between Sudbury Junction and Winnipeg, a service the rail line touts to outdoor enthusiasts.

The Skeena takes riders for a breathtaking trip along the Canadian Rockies and out to the Pacific, traveling from Jasper to Prince Rupert in British Columbia with an overnight stop in Prince George.  Be warned, though, the Skeena does not have sleeping cars and passengers need to take care of their own accommodation needs in Prince George.

The Malahat is a four and half hour trip up or down Vancouver Island, from Victoria at the south end to Courtenay in the north central part of the island.  Malahat only offers one class of rail travel, the comfort class, but this fare includes the unique privilege of getting on and off the train as many times as you want from one end of the line to the other.  The train departs once daily from each end of the line and, at C$28 is a great bargain for the budget-minded traveler.

In 2007 VIA Rail added the winter-only Snow Train Express from Edmonton to Jasper, departing Friday and returning on Sunday—perfect for a weekend ski getaway.  Since this is a new route, and a seasonal one, check in advance to see if this service is still available before making your plans.

If you are traveling in Canada near Vancouver, be sure to visit Cortes Island.  The island boasts a number of attractions, but none is as unusual as Wolf Bluff Castle.

Wolf Bluff is not your average castle.  It is new enough that its age is measured in years, not decades or centuries.  It is not crumbling or falling down—probably because it is made of cinder blocks.  You can even meet the man who built it.

Karl Triller, owner and builder of Wolf Bluff Castle (known locally as King Karl’s Kastle), grew up in Hungary dreaming of castles.  When he moved to Cortes Island, he decided to make his dream a reality.  When Karl was building the castle wolves were abundant on the island, hence the name.

Karl designed and built the five-story, triple-turreted, eight-bedroom castle from the ground up.  He even made all 13,000 cement blocks used to construct the castle and spent 12 years completing it.

In the past, Wolf Bluff Castle was a bed and breakfast, but age has forced Karl, a former professional chef, to stop preparing and serving guest meals.  The castle’s modern full-service kitchen is available for self-catering during longer stays.  It is also a base of operations for caterers serving events in the dining hall, a room with space to seat up to one hundred people. 

What castle is complete without a dungeon? Karl’s dungeon is also a torture chamber and features homemade dummies in various states of torment with placards announcing their sins. 

Karl himself, who does not charge admission but does ask for a donation, leads castle tours.  Do you want to relive that childhood fantasy of being lord of all you survey or a damsel in a tower?  It can happen – talk to Karl about staying the night in Cortes Island’s Wolf Bluff Castle.

Yukon, formerly The Yukon Territory, is Canada’s most northwestern province, bordered on the north by the Beaufort Sea and the west by the state of Alaska.

Visitors to the region will need to be hardy and prepared for the sub-arctic climate.  The temperature in the province goes over 50° F (10° C) less than four months of the year.  The average winter temperature is between -4° F and -26° F (-20° to -32° C) but, since it is drier than many parts of southern Canada, the cold is considered more bearable than the same temperatures would be further south.

The Yukon is so sparsely populated that it is the only Canadian province not subdivided for the Census.  The entire province, all 186, 661 square miles of it (483,450 sq km), is a single Census division with an estimated total population of 31,500.

The Yukon is best known for the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896.  The rush to hunt to for gold ended 3 years after it began and by 1902 most of the hopeful miners had left.  Gold production peaked in 1911 and the last dredge shut down in 1966.

The Yukon capital of Whitehorse is the logical place to begin exploring the history of Klondike Gold Rush.  Be sure to visit the Tourist Information Center before heading down the Klondike Highway to Dawson, ex-fishing village, ex-boomtown on the Yukon River; closest town in Canada to where the gold was found.

Today the main industry in the Yukon is tourism.  In the Yukon tourism is a $164 million per year business, a number that has grown steadily since 1996.  The recent discovery, in the 1990s, of diamonds in the Northwest Territories has led people to wonder if the precious stones might not be the next big thing in the Yukon, too.