Top perks of being a Canadian traveller
The best things about being a Canuck
To mark Canada Day, the editors at Cheapflights.ca have put together a list of the best things about being a Canadian traveller.
We can benefit from the goodwill that generations of well-mannered Canadian travellers have built up around the world. We've heard that some travellers from a country to the south will sew a Maple Leaf decal on their backpacks in an attempt to harness that goodwill. We call such travellers Pretend Canadians.
We know good beer. Canada measures the percent alcohol by volume, not by weight, so when we get to the US or Europe, we can sample all their fine brews without ending up on the floor.
Our dollar goes further. The soaring loonie has made our travels more affordable over the last few years.
With our Canadian passports (held by 70 per cent of the population) we don’t need visas to travel to about 155 countries including the US, European Union countries, parts of Africa and South America and South Pacific.
We have a higher tolerance for extreme weather. Therefore it doesn’t get us down when we run across bad weather elsewhere.
Distances don't faze us. Barcelona-Belgrade? Who cares that that's halfway across Europe. It's no further than Vancouver-Saskatoon in kilometres.
Many Canadians already speak French. The list of countries that has French as a national language runs from Belgium to Vanuatu so many of us will feel right at home.
We can play Find the Canadian in the pages of celebrity gossip magazines. William Shatner? Bryan Adams? Ryan Reynolds? Michael J. Fox? Kim Cattrall? Pamela Anderson? American? No. All Canadian.
Canada is well served by domestic and international airlines and air services are being added all the time. Now there are new flights to Brussels from Montreal, Tokyo from Calgary, and Barcelona, Athens, San Diego and Portland, Oregon, from Toronto (by Air Canada). Following China's designation of Canada as an approved travel destination, the flag carrier will add flights from Toronto to Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong this fall. EVA Air is adding flights to Taipei from Toronto. WestJet will serve Frankfurt from Edmonton. Air Transat will fly to Samana, Dominican Republic, from Toronto. Virgin America is now operating in Canada too (Toronto to Los Angeles and San Francisco).