Exploring Canada: the Perks of Family Holidays

[dropcap]M[/dropcap]y first trip to Canada, and my first time skiing, happened very suddenly in Easter 2010. Having booked to spend three days in a caravan in rainy Derbyshire (a thrilling prospect to nobody but my dad), my mum stumbled across a last-minute family ski trip deal online on the last Friday of term. By the following Wednesday we were on the slopes in Banff, Alberta, still quite surprised, with ski gear bought hurriedly that weekend.

Six years and three more similar trips later, I spent ten days this Easter in Quebec with my family; this time exploring a different part of the country to those I’d previously visited. When I excitedly told my friends I was going back to Canada, the fact that some responded with “wait, you still want to travel with your family?” was surprising. Maybe it shouldn’t have been – I’m a student now, why would I still tag along with my parents and brother when I could travel on my own and ‘find myself,’ or spend a week abroad with friends getting thoroughly hammered?

I’m a student now, why would I still tag along with my parents and brother when I could travel on my own and ‘find myself,’ or spend a week abroad with friends getting thoroughly hammered?

The answer is (aside from genuinely enjoying spending time with them) that these trips are a fantastic travel opportunity otherwise unattainable to me. Ever since our first trip, my parents have made late, often cheaper bookings with companies that create tailored holiday plans at a reasonable price. While I’m not going to pretend that this type of holiday is ever ‘cheap’ – and I’m incredibly grateful that my parents have saved enough money every few years to do this – the value for money has always been outstanding.

Without these bespoke family ski holidays, I would never have been able to afford the combination of two very different types of travel – a week’s skiing in Mont-Tremblant, followed by a city break in a four-star hotel in Montreal.

Mont-Tremblant’s ski village is vibrant and colourful to look at, if slightly lacking in things to do other than eat. Though the food is nothing short of delicious (one of the perks of French-speaking Quebec is definitely the food’s French influence – namely crepes), the town offered little in the time spent not skiing. Instead I took the opportunity to go for walks away from the village to view the amazing vistas of mountains and frozen lakes, which were startlingly different, but no less breath-taking, than the dramatic landscapes of the Rocky Mountains I was used to seeing in western Canada.

On a day off from skiing, we drove a hired car to Ottawa, which for Canada’s capital city seems surprisingly lacking in things for shameless tourists to do and see, in comparison to its big-city counterparts such as Montreal and Vancouver. Chosen for its close proximity to both English and French-speaking regions, aside from an impressive Houses of Parliament tour, we found little else to fill our day trip.

Another afternoon, we took the car to a local safari park. It was comforting to see the fascinating range of Canadian wildlife, from bears to wolves, in their natural habitat, with entire forests of space to roam around in – though visitors are encouraged to meet and feed carrots to the numerous species of deer, which greatly appealed to my inner child’s love for cute animals.

The city of Montreal was an entirely different experience. Far from the remote surroundings of the ski resort, where we would drive for miles and only spot a single house every ten minutes or so, Montreal offered towering skyscrapers, packed together amongst older architecture such as basilicas and churches.

Image: Natalya Smith

Aside from the streets upon streets of shops and amazing food in downtown Montreal, we found much more to explore here than in Ottawa, including a mountain walk culminating in a beautiful view over the city skyline at the top. Also interesting to visit was the 1976 Olympic Park, converted into exhibitions such as a biodome and a planetarium, alongside a tower giving an even more impressive view over the city.

Like any other travels, the trip had its fair share of undesirable moments; from the woman sitting behind me on the flight, who decided her bare foot could take up my whole armrest while she slept for hours, to the fact that Montreal was by far the coldest place I have ever experienced, more so than any ski slope (walking round a city in -15⁰C made my face so painfully numb that I even lost the ability to blink properly).

if any students are offered the chance to go on one more family holiday – say yes! The breadth of experiences offered by some bespoke family holiday packages is unlike any other.

However, if any students are offered the chance to go on one more family holiday – say yes! The breadth of experiences offered by some bespoke family holiday packages is unlike any other. It’s worth putting up with your parents’ awful jokes or your teenage brother’s questionable music tastes for a week; I hugely enjoyed their company and am extremely thankful for an opportunity I simply could not have had travelling as just a student.