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Fodor's Exploring Guides are the most up-to-date, full-color guidebooks available. Covering destinations around the world, these guides are loaded with photos, essays on culture and history, descriptions of sights, and practical information. Full-color photos make this a great guide to buy if you're still planning your itinerary (let the photos help you choose!) and it's a perfect companion to a general guidebook, like a Fodor's Gold Guide.
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CanadiansArts and CultureGrass Roots
One of the great surprises of many small Canadian towns is the sheer variety and vitality of their cultural life. Most villages have a lovingly presented museum, or a modest gallery of arts and crafts. Few are without an arts center or community theater, and many are dotted with posters proclaiming a recital or exhibition.
Wilderness
A young country needs to work harder -- and quicker -- to establish its cultural credentials (which in turn contribute to the sense of national identity). The isolation of rural communities is also a significant factor in the development of culture, for wilderness not only means that you have to make your own entertainment, it also means that survival itself is often dependent on the type of cooperation and community that is engendered by shared culture.
Literature
Canada's highbrow cultural contribution has perhaps been most marked in the fields of poetry and literature. Writers of international renown include the novelists Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler, and Robertson Davies, while Alice Munro ranks among the world's finest living short story writers. Poets include Leonard Cohen -- better known as a crooner of angst-filled ballads -- and Robert Service, whose gold-rush poems have remained in print for over 50 years. Other authors of note include Elizabeth Smart (
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept) and L.M. Montgomery (
Anne of Green Gables), while in the field of social and narrative history few can match the outstanding works of Pierre Berton (for example,
Flames Across the Frontier).
Performing Arts
Most Canadian cities have fine orchestras, in particular Montréal, whose Orchestre Symphonique has achieved world-wide renown. Past musicians include virtuoso pianist Glenn Gould while in popular music Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Celine Dion and k.d. lang all have Canadian roots. Michael J. Fox and Donald Sutherland hail from Canada, having started their careers in the flourishing world of Canadian theater (Toronto s surpassed only by London and New York as a theater city). Ballet companies thrive in most cities, especially Winnipeg and Vancouver, while opera -- notably in Toronto -- attracts large audiences and world-class performers.
Festivals
Canada probably hosts more festivals than anywhere else in the world. Some of these are smalltime affairs, events that form part of the same cultural impetus as a village's museum or arts center. Others have achieved worldwide fame. Among the latter are Montréal's Juste Pour Rire ("Just For Laughs"), the world's largest festival of comedy, and the Montréal International Jazz Festival, the world's largest jazz festival of its type. Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver all have major film festivals, and in Québec the Festival d'Été is the largest celebration of francophone culture in North America. Other festivals include Calgary's famous Stampede; Ontario's Glenngarry Games, North America's largest Highland gathering, and the Whitehorse's Festival of Storytelling.
GeographySize
Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Canada has become the world's largest country, spreading across 3.84 million square miles, or roughly the area occupied by Europe as far east as the Urals. Its most northerly point lies just 500 miles from the North Pole, while its most southerly point (on Lake Erie) occupies the same latitude as Rome and northern California. The total distance from north to south is around 2,800 miles, and from east to west the distance is 3,400 miles. Three oceans border the country's shores: the Pacific, Arctic, and Atlantic. Six time zones separate its east and west coasts.
Emptiness
Canada's dominant geographical feature is the Canadian Shield, a region that occupies much of the north and east of the country (or around 43 percent of its surface area). Its rocks -- mostly granite and gneiss -- are over 500 million years old, some of the oldest on the continent. Its landscapes are a rugged combination of forest, lake, and tundra, interspersed with vast swathes of impenetrable "muskeg" bog. Few people live here, and farming is scarce, but the region contains huge amounts of mineral and hydroelectric wealth. Some 15 percent of the world's fresh water is also locked in its lakes and rivers. To the north, the region merges with the still more inhospitable wastes of the Arctic Lowlands, a region covering almost 10 percent of Canada's landmass.
