The story of the doomed ocean liner Titanic has captured the imagination of people all over the world since the day it sank.  Halifax, in Nova Scotia, Canada is a largely unknown part of Titanic history.

After the Titanic sank, the White Star Line chartered four ships from Canada to search for survivors.  Two of them, the MacKay-Bennett and the Minia, were from Halifax. 

Of the 328 bodies recovered from the disaster site, 119 were so badly damaged or deteriorated they were buried at sea.  The remaining 209 were brought to Halifax for identification, where possible.  150 of those people were buried in one of three Halifax cemeteries, based on religion (Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish), giving Halifax one of the largest concentrations of Titanic passenger burials in the world.

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax houses the largest collection of wooden Titanic artifacts in the world in their permanent exhibit, Titanic: The unsinkable ship and Halifax, which opened in 1998. 

One of the centerpieces of the collection is a wooden deck chair, one of the only intact ones in the world known to match those in photos of the ship.  A grandchild of Reverend Henry W. Cunningham gave the chair to the museum. Reverend Cunningham received the chair in recognition for his services in conducting many of the sea burials for Titanic victims.

One of the most moving items on display is the log of wireless operator Robert Hunston, from Cape Race, Newfoundland.  It is a condensed log of all the distress calls from the ocean liner the night it sank.  Reading the log brings home the reality of the disaster and the amazingly short time in which it occurred.

For more information on Halifax’s role in the Titanic aftermath, visit the city’s Titanic web page at http://www.halifax.ca/history/titanicmain.html.

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.

Toronto, capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario, is an art enthusiast’s dream.  The city, the fifth largest in North America, is home to several major galleries and museums.

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is the largest in Canada with more than 40 galleries.  The museum displays both art works and natural history items and has the largest collection of avian and mammalian skeletons in the world.  The museum’s Far East Collection, the largest collection of far eastern artifacts outside of China, is anchored by the Ming Tomb, a complete seventeenth century warriors tomb and the only complete Chinese tomb in the West.

The Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art was, at one time affiliated with the Royal Ontario Museum.  This specialized museum is home to more than 2,000 pieces of ceramic art.  Their collection features everything from pre-Columbian pottery to classic European porcelains of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Art Gallery of Toronto has strong collections of European and Canadian art.  One of the main attractions of the Gallery is its collection of Henry Moore sculptures, one of the largest in the world.  Henry Moore personally designed the exhibit space for this collection in 1974.

For more than thirty years the Textile Museum of Canada has celebrated international fiber art. Their permanent collection contains more than 12,000 textiles, from pieces as much as 2000 years old to modern designs, with samples from more than 200 regions of the world.

The Bata Shoe Museum is housed in a whimsical, shoebox-shaped building designed by architect Raymond Moriyama.  The museum is home to a 4,500-piece, semi-permanent “History of Shoes” exhibit that highlights examples of footwear spanning time and the globe, from ancient Egyptian sandals to the sleekly sexy stilettos of 1990s.  The Bata also has three additional galleries that display special exhibits throughout the year.

The tides in the Bay of Fundy, the waterway between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, are the highest in the world, with an estimated 100 billion tons of water rolling in and out of the bay twice daily.

One of the best places to see this phenomenon in action is Hopewell Rocks Park.  These “flowerpot” rocks are tree-topped rocks only partially visible at high tide.  Low tide reveals their delicate, sculpted bases.  During low tide it is possible to actually walk on the revealed sea floor.  As the tide comes in, footprints left on the flats literally disappear before people’s eyes as the water rises six to eight feet per hour.  In some parts of the bay the difference between high and low tide can be as much as 46 feet (14 m).

Whale enthusiasts will appreciate the bay area for the variety of marine mammals attracted to its krill-rich waters during the summer months.  Up to fifteen different species of toothed and baleen whales make their summer home in the waters just outside the bay.  Whale-watching tours depart daily from June to October each year.

For a glimpse into the planetary past, make a trip up the bay to the Joggins Fossil Cliffs.  These sandstone cliffs are rich with 300 million year-old fossils of everything from invertebrates to lizards and the trees of the primordial forest they lived in.  The powerful tides in the Bay of Fundy are constantly eroding the cliffs, constantly revealing more fossils.

No visit to the Bay of Fundy would be complete without seeing the Reversing Falls of St. John.  The St. John River flows into the bay through a series of rapids.  When the bay’s legendary high tide occurs, the flow of sea water forces the river water back up its course, reversing the direction of the falls.

The first Stampede was held in 1912 and attracted almost 40.000 visitors its first year, far more than anyone expected.  Attendance at the 2006 Stampede was a record-breaking 1.26 million people.  Stampede organizers recommend that anyone who wants to attend the event make reservations well in advance.

The Stampede is famous for its chuck-wagon race, reminiscent of the races cowhands would have in celebration at the end of long trail rides.  Other rodeo events include pro and novice bareback competitions, bull riding, saddle bronco riding, both pro and novice, barrel racing, wild pony racing, and several roping events.

Not even nightfall slows down the Stampede.  When the sun sets, visitors enjoy the nightly Grandstand Show, a pageant that features Canadian performers and changes every year.  Each evening, stages all over Calgary light up with performances from country music stars, comedians, dancers, and more.

The Stampede’s Midway keeps growing, too, and now averages over 30 adult rides and 20 kids-only rides each year.  Midway guests can test their skill in one of 20 or more games.  When they get hungry, attendees can find refreshment at one of the dozens of food and beverage vendors—and that is just on the Midway!

Agricultural events have been part of the Stampede since it merged with the Calgary (Agricultural) Exhibition in 1932.  Aggie Days is a family-friendly look at how milk gets from cow to table and wool from sheep to sweater plus other fun activities for kids.

One of the Stampede’s best-known events is the Caravan Breakfast.  Each morning of the Stampede, a group of dedicated volunteers puts out a free breakfast for Stampede attendees, a tradition going back over 80 years.

Bernard Callebaut grew up in Belgium next door to the factory where his family had been making chocolate for the previous four generations.  In 1980, when the family decided to sell the Belgian chocolate business to Swiss chocolate giant Suchard Toblerone (they still owned, among other things, a brewery), Bernard decided to emigrate.

We wanted to bring truly excellent, gourmet chocolate to the Americas.  After touring cities throughout America and Canada, he fell in love with the mountains and culture of Calgary.   There he began anew with Bernard Callebaut chocolates.

His family was convinced he had gone mad, making high-quality chocolates for a people who, generally, would not know the difference between that and paper-wrapped bar from the gas station.  They were wrong. The first day his chocolate shop was open he made $700 and by the end of his first year in business he had made $200,000.  He doubled that the following year.

What is his secret, the thing that will get North Americans to pay more for his delectable treats?  There is no secret.  Callebaut is happy to tell people how to make his chocolates and even occasionally teaches courses at his Calgary factory and world headquarters. 

The trick is to use fresh, organic ingredients with no additives.  His chocolates do not contain preservatives or vegetable oils.  He is so open about his methods he even has recipes for some of the things they sell in the shop posted on his website at www.bernardcallebaut.com.

At Bernard Callebaut they are happy to give visitors a tour of the factory as long as it is arranged in advance.  The tour is great and the best part is, of course, the free samples.

The Canadian Museum of Civilization is dedicated to the preservation and display of Canada’s history and to the culture and art of the First Peoples (a common Canadian term for the pre-European native population of Canada).

The Museum, in Hull, Quebec, is across the Ottawa River from Parliament Hill, Ottawa.  Douglas Cardinal designed the two massive curvilinear buildings that make up the museum and the curatorial department.  The design was intended to be evocative of the formation of the North American continent and its subsequent reshaping by glaciers, wind, and water. 

The Grand Hall exhibit space is a little over 19,000 square feet (1,782 sq m) and contains six full-size reproduction facades of houses and totems.  Each facade represents a typical chieftain’s home in one of six Aboriginal communities from coastal British Columbia.  The Museum is working with the Native people of each region represented to create a cooperative exhibit for the houses’ interiors.

The First Peoples Hall celebrates the contributions of Canada’s First Peoples.  Exhibits include works of art, audiovisual presentations, artifacts, and archival documents.  The exhibit is self-guided or a guided tour is available for an additional fee.

Housed on the third level of the Museum, the Canada Hall illustrates the history of the country for the last 1000 years with a series of life-size displays.  Visitors may catch a performance by Dramamuse, the Museum’s in-house theatre company.  The troupe stages re-enactments of scenes from the country’s past in the exhibit area and are available to answer questions.

The Canadian Children’s Museum, on the second level, takes children on an interactive adventure around the world.  An art studio, puppet theatre, and game section round out the exhibits.