Canada is vast ~ a massive 4,800 miles wide ~ and is the second largest country in the world, after Russia. The untamed wilderness stretches from the rugged Atlantic shores of Newfoundland, (which, when you break it down into its three words ~ New Found Land ~ you automatically picture early immigrants arriving, mightily relieved to get off the sea, having faced the treacherous North Atlantic, all the way to the Pacific). and the latitude of Rome in the south to beyond the Magnetic North Pole in the North. With about 27 million people, of which 90% live in the major cities, you get an impression of how uninhabited and wild the place is.

The scenery in Canada will take your breath away. It’s an outdoor adventure park on a grand scale. Because of its size and location, much of Canada is frozen over for nearly six months of the year. Resorts that attract skiers in the winter, welcome them back in the summer for white water rafting. This means that apart from British Columbia, most sport is played during the summer season.

To fully appreciate this amazing country, you have to experience the vibrant cities as well as the contrasting outdoors. We’re going to break the country down into five regions so that you get the best perspective of each region and what is has available to the visiting sportsman and woman:  British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, Ontario and Newfoundland.

The Best Times for Touring each of the above regions is listed below in Fixtures.

• British Airways ~ Operating two flights daily (and three on Wednesday), non-stop from London Heathrow to Toronto, as well as one non-stop flight daily to both Montreal  and Vancouver  BA also offer a 5 times weekly service direct to Calgary.
• Air Canada ~ Operating daily from London Heathrow to Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, and Calgary, offering one/two non-stop flight(s) from London Heathrow, and several via other major Canadian cities, occasionally using Jazz and Swiss, depending on the stop-over destination.  There are no direct flights to Edmonton, so you will have to stopover at one other major Canadian city.  
• Air Transat ~ Departing twice weekly (Saturdays and Sundays) from London Heathrow direct to Toronto, and once weekly from Manchester. 

There are also various charter airlines that fly in to the country. Zoom offers services from London Gatwick to 8 main cities across the country, as well as regional flights from Cardiff (to Toronto), Belfast (to Toronto and Halifax), Glasgow (to Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax) and Manchester (to Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto).

Internal transportation is carried out by high quality air conditioned coaches, not the typical yellow school buses you’ll often see plodding around towns.  You can be assured that you’re being transported by a very experienced operator whom we have used for many years.

One of the world’s greatest train rides is from Edmonton to Vancouver. Now, there is only one railroad company. In the olden days, there were two who used to race each other across the continent very often on opposite sides of a river!

Most of our fixtures within Canada are organised directly with our contacts at local clubs by Jen and Catherine in our Americas Department.    

As you’d expect in a major country like Canada, you have the full range of accommodation.

At the less expensive end, we use University Halls of Residence very successfully. All are very well located so that you are very accessible to whatever attraction you want to visit. Canada has a very good history of billeting, which is available in certain cities.

We’re very traditional with our accommodation  suppliers as we have been using both of them very successfully over the years. The “Y” in Vancouver is excellent value and brilliantly situated, and we continue to receive excellent reports from this accommodation.   We also use the excellent Harbour Towers & Suites Hotel in Victoria, Vancouver Island.

As the schools operate an excellent sports programme, depending on what time of the year you go, you can be billeted by schools or by clubs. Practically all of the British Columbia schools have toured the UK many times, consequently you can be confident that they are very experienced at billeting.

In Alberta, billeting is very popular with tours to this area. As most of our sports are played in their summer, games and billeting are against clubs and not schools. Good quality inexpensive accommodation is quite widely available.

The Halls of Residence at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and the University of Calgary are also often used.