Griff Rhys Jones was worried that Canada might be a little bit “samey” – boy, was he wrong…

 

 

 

So began a cavalcade of wonders. Canada is genuinely rich and strange. Strolling up St John’s quay, I found massive marine hardware, ready to confront icebergs out in the north North Atlantic. In Québec, nothing prepared me for a chunk of authentic stone-roofed, 17th-century St Malo on the water. Nor was I expecting the reconstructed First Nation longhouse in Wendake to be an architectural gem. Toronto’s main railway station is simply fantastical. It was the train that unified this 4,000-mile-wide country: before 1962, when the Trans-Canada Highway got going, there were really no main roads to take you anywhere much. I’d recommend any visitor to stay in one of the railway hotels: they’re luxury, carvedstone affairs, reminiscent of ocean liners, built to usher immigrants to the prairies. Coming to Canada, you need to prepare for awesomeness fatigue: the overwhelming, unmissable majesty of the Rockies, for instance.

 

 

Gawp at Niagara. Board the Maid of the Mist and go right under the crashing cascade. Clearly Niagara long ago realised that it needed something more to distract its visitors, which means an empire of honeymoon hotels, casino slots and general tat huddled together. Everywhere else, pristine scenic magnificence stretches out before you. The Canadian Shield – a great granite plateau covering three million square miles – delivers jaw-dropping views of pines and lakes. In the snow, it is unimaginably beautiful. The rail service hardly tears itself away from the US border – after all, this part of Canada is where 90 per cent of citizens live. It’s sometimes difficult, in crowded south Ontario, or suave, urban French Montreal, to understand that miles of hinterland stretch away north. Up there, the great boreal forest beckons. Beyond that lies empty, frozen waste. Canada revels in extremes. Climate-wise, Winnipeg can dive from 30 degrees above to 30 below in a single year. But the great outdoors is tempered by the great indoors. In winter there are actual underground cities to explore.

 

 

Jumping aboard a jeep as part of research, I crossed much of the prairies: a wonderland of undulating countryside and vast skies. Yes, they may be kind of repetitive – the roads are built with bends to stop drivers nodding off – but I kept pulling over to marvel at their unearthly magnificence. In Calgary, I got a white cowboy hat handmoulded to my head. I paused awhile in the quiet ski resort of Jasper. I dropped down the far side of the Rockies to the Pacific coast, where the archipelago of Haida Gwaii is scattered off the coast of British Columbia. This is the ancestral home of the First Nation North American Haida people, who have created some of the finest artefacts known to civilisation. I was knocked out by the beautifully crafted baskets and carvings in the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Canada is the product of dozens of wildly varied, unique communities. Setting off, I foolishly thought that I would explore homogeneity.

 

 

But I found a melange of different voices and diversity; this is a richly varied nation, from the Badlands to Saskatoon, French Canada to Chinese Canada, First Nations to the huge Ukrainian population of Saskatchewan. That poutine is made of cheese curds and gravy poured over chips is just unfathomable. And why, in an ice hockey game, are the players allowed to physically assault each other over minor disagreements? It’s astonishing, especially since the cliché is true: Canadians really are nice. The most charming people you could meet in the whole wide world.