Summer brings precious vacation time. Here are some choices for your wish list of where to go. The places listed are best enjoyed one at a time, unless you have access to a credit card with no maximum. Further details available from many sources, including the author. (Editor’s note: Here at rabble.ca, we’re goin’ fishin’ for a few days. It will give you a chance to check out some of the stories and columns you might have missed first time round. We’ll be back August 8.)

1. Stanley Park, Vancouver. Sits out in the water between English Bay and the Burrard Inlet. Everything you could want to do by yourself, or with your family is here, from a petting zoo, to pitch and putt golf, the nature walks and the beaches. A tribute to forethought and public planning, only Banff and Jasper National Parks are in the same category.

  • Best food: used to be the fish and chips at English Bay Beach, now not good. The Sequoia Grill at Third Beach is unbeatable for brunch, or to watch the sunset over Vancouver Island.
  • Top treat: cycle the nine km seawall.
  • Best sight: the great blue herons nesting near the tennis courts; the foundlings try out their wings in July.
  • Best news: city council has made the seawall a feature of the city, extending along Coal Harbour to downtown, and around False Creek. Eventually, you will be able to hike or bike some 50 km, a true urban park of the linear variety, as important a public policy decision to the 21st century as the creation of Stanley Park was to the 19th century.
  • Literary accompaniment: the novel Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor, memorable, creative, powerful.

2. Maison des Etudiants canadiens, 31 Boul. Jourdain, Paris 75014. Pierre Trudeau once stayed here, room #39. Canadian-owned student residence features 100 plus spaces divided between Canadians (two-thirds) and foreigners. Summer rooms available for daily rental. Or better yet, put your French immersion skills to use as a graduate student living in the Cité Universitaire Internationale, in the world student capital, with 12 universities, and an untold number of Grandes Ecoles. Tuition is non-existent, and your undergraduate degree gets you into graduate studies. Canadians also take up residence in the Mexican, German, Swiss or other national pavilions on the beautiful grounds of the Cité.

  • Best food: for residents of the MEC used to be Chez Yvette in the 14th arrondissement; as always it’s your choice in the city that invented fine dining.
  • Top treat: The Rodin Museum in the 7th — sit down in the garden and enjoy the sexiest sculpture in the world. Or, walk around Place des Vosges, and visit the Maison Victor Hugo (on the Place), and the Picasso Museum close by in the Marais.
  • Best news: The French love ideas, admire intellectuals, and treat students with great respect, having an appreciation for the effort involved in study and learning. A welcome change from the “when are you going to get a job” attitude, you may have bumped into.
  • Literary accompaniment: Slip down to Shakespeare and Company across from Notre Dame, and ask owner George Whitman for: That Summer in Paris by Morley Callaghan, or read a novel by Camus or de Beauvoir at a cafe like Les Deux Magots where they used to meet and argue.

3. Highway 16. Head West from Edmonton. Take Jasper Avenue or go out Stoney Plain Road towards Jasper. As you come up a rise in the road just past Edson, slow down. Across the horizon for as far as the eye can see: the Rockies. Stop the car. Enjoy the view; it does not get any more majestic than this, anywhere.

  • Best food: Robin’s Doughnuts in Edson.
  • Top treat: Continue on to stay at Tekara Lodge in Jasper. Have a stroll around the grounds of the Jasper Park Lodge. You used to own it before Canadian National was privatized. Now at least it is unionized.
  • Best news: The mountains get better, the closer you get.
  • Literary accompaniment: Cowboy poetry from Ian Tyson on the CD player.

4. The Legislative Buildings, Winnipeg. I am not sure whether it is the architecture, the stone used in the construction, or the site and grounds, or the magnificent bison sculptures, or the statue of Golden Boy on the dome, but this building has unusually great presence. Somehow it succeeds in representing the best of what representative democracy is supposed to be about. It has gravitas, yet is open, and welcoming to the public.

  • Best food: East India Company. Marvelous buffet, next to the convention centre, has a branch in Ottawa, and in New Delhi, but started here.
  • Best sight: from the back of the legislative grounds, walk along the river to the Fort Garry Hotel, and further on to the Forks where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet, a staging ground for the fur trade.
  • Top treat: waking up under the prairie sky. If the sky is the limit, you just got a lot more room to live.
  • Best news: homeland of the Canadian left, Winnipeg is an historic political centre. It gave us the General Strike, the socialists and communists of North Winnipeg, leaders for the CCF and the NDP. It’s the home of Canadian Dimension magazine, and until recently, the Society for Socialist Studies. Oh yes, it has an NDP government. Former NDP Premier Howard Pawley is much admired.
  • Literary accompaniment: A Prophet in Politics: a Biography of J.S. Woodsworth by Ken McNaught.

5. Georgian Bay. Through a friend, or a friend of a friend, (or make a new friend or take out a personal) just get yourself invited to a family cottage on Georgian Bay. Otherwise, try a small inn, or a campsite. A few hours north of Toronto finds you in this empire of pink granite, explored by Champlain, and enjoyed by generations of canoe-ers, campers, cottagers and fine old Ontario families (aka FOOFs) as well as the original inhabitants, and the locals.

  • Best food: it’s drink âe” Pinot Grigio or Sleemans draft.
  • Top sight: former Premier Bill Davis’s cottage designed by Raymond Moriyama offered to him in consideration for services rendered by the Big Business guys that run Ontario.
  • Top treats: the sunset, and a swim at sunrise.
  • Best news: you do not have to maintain, and look after the cottage, the boat, and the grounds, and figure out who gets invited, and who gets dropped. Just do the dishes, carry stuff to the dock, and refrain from leading singalongs that include Kumbaya.
  • Literary accompaniment: any copy of The Walrus that contains an article by Marci MacDonald, or her book Yankee Doodle Dandy.

6. L’Express, rue St. Denis, Montreal. Now some of the truly great places to go for dinner are in Canada. This was one of the first. It has style, cuisine, service, ambiance, a buzz in the room and a nice combination of regular people, glamour, young and old. No one takes notice of celebrities, from in town, or out-of-town, but this is see-and-be-seen territory.

  • Top sight: the menu.
  • Top treat: Have the server bring a bottle of cornichons, as a snack for the table, even if no one ordered the pâté.
  • Best news: it has been here for a while, and is likely to stay around.
  • Literary accompaniment: for the latest in French language novels and essays stop by the Librairie du Square down the street across from St. Louis Square ( Michel Tremblay comes in every day when he is in Montreal) and ask Françoise for a recommendation, or read anything by Tremblay in translation.

7. The Gaspé Peninsula. Start in Quebec City, and if you really must — and a lot of people do like it that much — relax and stay for a week or two and come back next year for the Gaspé visit. Otherwise, proceed east towards St. Jean Port Joli, Métis-sur-Mer, Matane, and then on to Parc Forillon, before reaching Gaspé, Percé, Chandler, Nouvelle and the other villages that give this area such charm. The campsites occupy the best locations in the villages along the Baie des Chaleurs, and at Cap des Rosiers.

Old money from Montreal colonized the area known as the lower St. Lawrence between Quebec City and the Gaspé, and it offers good seasonal rental accommodations, especially if you require 10 or more bedrooms.

  • Best food: Matane shrimp.
  • Top treat: Drive the full distance around the peninsula. The Gaspé is the size of Belgium, and features lobster, as well as moules frites, and here you can try the poutine. Small splurge: stay at the Stanley House Inn in New Richmond; that is the same Stanley as the Park and the Cup.
  • Top sights: A boat trip around the bird sanctuary at Bonaventure Island, across from Percé. The botanical gardens at Métis are extraordinary.
  • Literary accompaniment: Any work that explores the history of French colonial Canada, or take along the Canadian Encyclopedia (three volumes or on CD Rom) and make up quizzes as you drive.

8. Anywhere in Nova Scotia. When Champlain established the first European winter quarters here in 1605 at Port Royal, he founded “the order of good cheer”. He anticipated what many later discovered, life is better in Nova Scotia, and so is the bread, and the beer. People somehow belong in Nova Scotia, even if they just arrived.

  • Best food: Digby scallops, lobster roll.
  • Best treat: Book into The Manse, and hang out in Mahone Bay.
  • Best sight: anywhere in Cape Breton
  • Best news: you are close to New Brunswick or P.E.I., and visits to the neighbours are never a mistake in the Maritimes.
  • Literary Accompaniment: Nova Scotia titles from Formac Publishers (Halifax) such as the guide book Exploring Nova Scotia by Dale Dunlop and Alison Scott or Best Maritime Short Stories edited by George Peabody.
Duncan Cameron

Duncan Cameron

Born in Victoria B.C. in 1944, Duncan now lives in Vancouver. Following graduation from the University of Alberta he joined the Department of Finance (Ottawa) in 1966 and was financial advisor to the...