Best Canadian City: my awards

Quick! What's the best Canadian city? The subject has led to a lively discussion on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree, something so prickly that Toronto-based author Andrew Potter suggested could actually bring about a civil war.

Most people equate Canada with its natural beauty, or hockey, or Mounties, or beaver nickels. Last year I visited Canada six times, mostly to focus on Canadian cities (resulting in this string of videos on Canadian cities). I like Canadian cities. So thought I'd put together my awards.

(Note: I've not been to Halifax, among others.)

Canadian city most want to live in: MONTREAL. Montreal is ridiculous. A top-five city in the world to me. I love a place that takes bikes seriously (public-use bikes clean-up canal rides), and the city truly beats NYC with bagels. Plus all sorts of playful architecture, like a orange-shaped food stand (that serves as my Twitter photo) and the unreal Habitat '67 (above).

Canadian city with most interesting neighborhood: TORONTO's post-hippie Toronto Islands. You get there by ferry, it has super views looking back on TO (above), a fun community of locals that have survived development, a hokey amusement park, nude beaches and the spot where Babe Ruth hit his first homerun.

Canadian city that's best in winter: QUEBEC CITY. Its winter carnival has dog-sled races and a huggable snow man, and there's free open-air skating rinks, minor league hockey with NHL buzz, ferry rides over the icy St Lawrence. Plus curling.

Canadian city with most energy: right now, WINNIPEG. I enjoy having French food across the river in St Boniface (and seeing the atmospheric cathedral ruin), but I've never seen more energy than at the Winnipeg Jets' first win (above). (If you don't think Peg is a hockey town, watch Guy Maddin's hilarious 'My Winnipeg' documentary.)

Canadian city with them most tunefully suggestive name: SASKATOON, SASKATCHEWAN. Pronounced as SASKaTOON by locals. It's the place I zeroed in on during back-seat atlas-scavenger-hunts on long roadtrips as a kid. Plus the saskatoon berry makes for a nice pie.

Canadian city that’s most beautiful: Easy, VANCOUVER. Views from False Creek ferries are worthy, as is a revolving meal up Landmark hotel (above).

Canadian city that most surprised me: EDMONTON. Expected a flat oil town, and immediately struck by the deep river valley linked with shady trails and crossed by a historic bridge to Strathcona's theaters and bookshops. (I bought a used copy of the full transcript of Louis Riel's trial. Yet to read, must say.) And I was surprised when 12-year-olds agreed to teach me hockey in the second-biggest mall in North America.

Canadian city most want to return to: ST JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND. It's not just the apostrophe, seafood, rugged coast, local kids with Bieber haircuts and the voice of 70-year-old pirates, but its friendly vibe of a place that really sees itself as its own nation.

Going to Canada

Tomorrow I head on a three-city visit to Canada: Toronto, Montreal and St John's in Newfoundland. It's part of a series of seven videos of seven Canadian cities and how one can 'experience a place like a local.'

It's far from my first time there (that would be age nine to Alberta; above). But to prep, I've been reading books like mad. Canadian books. Getting distracted on tangents like, hey, 'what is Canada?'

A lot of people think of Canada as just this:


But it's not the subject most Canadian authors seem to dwell on. 'Canada' -- as a nation, an identity, a concept -- is much more confusing. The question has a history.

The country's relationship with the US and Europe weighs heavy. In the 1943 book Unknown Country, Bruce Hutchinson tries to explain his nation for an American audience. He calls it a 'dual personality - not fully formed' but touts its name -- an Iroquoian word for 'village' (that for the world's second-largest country!) -- as 'wondrous and sweet': Canada!

He writes, 'The very word is like a boy's shout in the springtime!' I love that.

Karen Connelly, meanwhile, says of Canada in her book Touch the Dragon, that much remains unanswered. 'Even the name is a question.' (Can a da? Get it?)

Some define Canada by its niceness. Apparently a woman found with amnesia in California was taken for a Canadian simply by how incredibly nice she was (turns out she was from Edmonton). And in Moose Jaw Beauty Secrets, Albertan author Will Ferguson notes how the Trans-Canadian Highway marks each end as 'Mile Zero': 'two separate (but equal!) Mile Zeros.' Negotiation is nice.

Most of these books seem to begin their survey with Quebec. Canada seems ever fascinated with its relationship with, what some call, the ROC ('Rest of Canada') -- something made fun of by Why I Hate Canadians author Will Ferguson.

The Great Canada Novel -- Hugh MacLennan's wonderful Two Solitudes from 1945 -- takes on both sides of English/French-Canadian Montreal. In it, he calls Canada 'a large red splash on the map... still raw' and proclaims, 'if this sprawling half-continent has a heart, here it is.' In Quebec.

It's perhaps interesting to note that the Great Canada Novel is not currently in print in the USA.

Rather than join the discussion, yet, maybe I'll just shout that next spring.

Random Photo: More Rush

I've long believed there are five principal reasons we travel: to see people we know ('telephone travel'), to veg out ('TV travel'), to learn stuff or work ('ABC travel'), to stack up places visited ('tick-off travel') and to get experiences merely to boast about later ('show-off travel'). So I'm going to show off a bit. There's me, above, sitting at the Rush offices in Toronto surrounded by awards and gold records. Serious cocktail-party fodder right there.

Rush! Live!!

Every time I hear a Rush song -- which is often -- I fall into a sad silence. Of triumphs unclaimed. Possibilities deflated. Failures realized.

It's not simple sentimentality, but the '76-Second Travel Show' episode that never was.

A few months ago I went to Rush's hometown Toronto and 'followed the band' -- with stops at the Rush office, Alex Lifeson's club, Alex and Geddy Lee's favorite sandwich shop and high school, and -- most memorably -- the suburban high school where they shot their quintessentially Rush video 'Subdivisions'; the principal suggested they do a Rush musical and invite me back, we talked while going through old yearbooks to find the subject of the video, Dave Glover, whom I'd later meet for coffee to talk Rush, rock, teen life and the meanings of that song's immortal line 'conform or be cast out.' He had a lot to say on it.

But my external mic had a short. Essentially all of the footage was lost.

As part of my healing process, I saw Rush for the first time in 25 years Sunday. I joined a sea of goatees, Giants jerseys, tummy pudge, raised fists and guys willing to sing along to songs from days long after Rush's albums started to mean less and less.

Rush have funny fans. Even in my peak Rush days, I was never sure I qualified as a 'Rush fan.' It takes a special quality to accept the band's distrust of anything resembling danceable rhythm, along with impossible time signatures, 12-minute songs and lyrics dealing with black holes, necromancers, Kubla Khan and Ayn Rand. Rush fans? Mostly male dorks in their 30s and 40s. And very very very few, if any, women.

In Toronto, a local fan -- and there weren't as many as you'd expect -- explained that the lyrics were 'too smart' for women. But it's not true! (Watch this stunner scene of young models dancing to Rush in BRAZIL.) And I was happy to see several women at Madison Square Garden, singing along to some songs and even swaying to brief moments when drummer Neil Peart stooped to the 4/4 beat.

Still, my lost interview with Dave Glover really smarts.

Rush's Toronto (Under Construction)

Just back from GoMedia, a Canadian tourism conference in Toronto. I squeaked out a little free time to follow Rush -- the bronze medal winner in total gold and platinum records (after the Beatles and Stones), though completely snubbed by the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, which found a place for the Hollies.

More to come, but meanwhile, please enjoy a still of my serious conversation with Dave Glover, aka 'the kid in the Subdivisions video,' along with the 'high school halls' of L'Amoreaux Collegiate Institute, where the video was shot in 1982.

I am delighted by travel.