Canada 2026: Outtakes

Every trip has a finished cut and a cutting-room floor. The destination posts were the finished cut: Vancouver, Toronto, Montréal and Québec City, tidied up and sent out into the world. This is everything that happened while the tape was still running — the stuff that didn’t fit neatly into a city, but was too good to lose. Roll the outtakes.

The Great Canadian Coffee Disappointment

Australia is known for its coffee culture, and I’m sorry to report that this has completely ruined me for the rest of the world.

The coffee in Canada was terrible. Not occasionally disappointing — reliably, coast-to-coast, impressively terrible. It tasted like it had been shown a sniff of a coffee bean at some point in the distant past and then promptly forgot about the whole encounter. What you actually ended up with was beige-coloured water.

I failed to find a decent cup of coffee anywhere across Canada. For a caffeine addict, this was not a minor inconvenience — it was a genuine, recurring problem that followed me from the Pacific to the St. Lawrence.

An Unscheduled Extended Stay in Québec

Our journey from Québec City was meant to be a relaxed, uneventful transition back to Montréal. We were booked on VIA Rail 39, departing at 2:57 PM, which would get us into Montréal with plenty of time to check into the Aloft at the airport, have a relaxing evening, and get a decent night’s sleep before our flight back to Vancouver the following morning. It was a nice plan. Naturally, the travel gods had other ideas.

About twenty minutes before departure, our train was abruptly cancelled. It turned out the train before ours had broken down, and ours had been sent to rescue the passengers stranded on it. Which was all very well for them, but it left around 250 of us in Québec City wondering how we were supposed to get to Montréal.

VIA Rail promised buses that never materialised, and we were all left scratching our heads as to why these mythical buses weren’t being sent to rescue the passengers on the broken-down train instead of leaving the rest of us stranded. Meanwhile, the staff at Québec City station were trying to accommodate everyone on the next service, VIA Rail 29, scheduled to depart at 5:40 PM. To their credit, they were helpful and professional throughout, doing their best to sort out a situation that was clearly well beyond their control.

Somehow, we managed to get seats on the replacement train. By this point, our leisurely afternoon had turned into a rather less leisurely exercise in hoping we’d still make our flight the following morning. The train eventually departed about an hour late, thanks to congestion further up the line, but at least it was moving in the right direction.

There was just one small wrinkle: its catering arrangements hadn’t exactly accounted for a few hundred extra passengers turning up unexpectedly. Catering was abruptly cancelled, which left a trainload of hungry travellers with rather limited options. Enter an enterprising individual who appeared at a station a couple of stops after leaving Québec City carrying an enormous stack of pizzas. The onboard staff then proceeded to hand out pizza slices to the passengers, which was probably not how anyone had imagined dinner would work that evening, but was certainly welcome.

Again, the staff onboard were helpful and professional, doing what they could to look after everyone despite the circumstances. Nobody working on that train had caused the mess, and they were honestly making the best of a bad situation. We eventually rolled into Montréal at around 10:30 PM, considerably later than planned.

Surely that was enough excitement for one day? Apparently not. When we arrived at the Aloft, we discovered a massive queue at reception, thanks to a cancelled flight that had left another batch of passengers needing somewhere to stay. An hour later, we finally had our room. To give the hotel its due, the room was very nice.

We just didn’t get much time to enjoy the room. Roughly five hours later, we were heading back to the airport to check in for our flight back to Vancouver.

So much for a leisurely train trip, a relaxing evening, and a good night’s sleep. The room was lovely, though.

The Waitress Who Wasn’t Having a Good Day

I won’t name the restaurant, other than to say it was near Château Frontenac in Québec City. We were waiting for our tour to start that morning, which meant we had limited time available and were hoping to grab a quick coffee and a croissant before heading off. A perfectly innocent request, you might think. Apparently, we had committed a horrendous breach of restaurant etiquette.

When we politely asked our waitress if we could order a coffee and a croissant, rather than one of the restaurant’s elaborate fancy breakfasts, she reacted as though we’d personally insulted her entire family. She stormed off in a huff, leaving us to scurry out of the restaurant in deepest shame, presumably to reflect on the terrible offence we’d committed by wanting a simple breakfast. We were clearly expected to order the full production, not just the opening act.

Curiosity got the better of us later, and when we looked up the restaurant’s online reviews, it turned out we weren’t the only travellers to have encountered this particular brand of customer service.

An Aquabus Adventure to Granville Island

On our last day in Vancouver, we decided to take the Aquabus from The Village, near Main Street and Chinatown, across to Granville Island. I was expecting a big ferry. What we actually ended up on was a little ten-seater that chugged across the water, making a couple of stops along the way. My first thought was that this was a real boat — not some giant people-moving machine, just a small craft and the water underneath it. Not that I was complaining. I like being out on the water, and it was a fun little adventure.

Granville Island Public Market, on the other hand, was a rather different experience. It was a Sunday, it was packed, and after several weeks of travelling I found the whole place a bit overwhelming. The markets themselves were probably missable, at least for me, but the little boat ride to get there was the highlight.

The Keg Waiter I Nearly Smuggled Home in My Suitcase

I have great memories of going to The Keg for my birthday in previous years. They do a decent steak, and their prime rib sandwich is unmatched. To welcome in the fall season, they also have a Pumpkin Spice Sour cocktail that goes down very nicely. On one of our last nights in Vancouver, we stopped in for dinner.

But on this particular night, there was something else on the menu that caught my attention. Our waiter, who we’ll call T, was super friendly and quite adorable. The only question that remains is, will he fit in my suitcase so I can smuggle him back home? These are the sorts of difficult decisions one has to think about when travelling internationally.

Fifty Thousand Photos and One Interesting Twig

My friend has a rather different approach to documenting a holiday than I do. While I’m busy experiencing Canada, he appears to be attempting to photograph every square inch of it from every conceivable angle. There are close-up shots, shots from a distance, shots from above and below, shots in daylight and shots at night. If something exists, chances are it’s been photographed. If it doesn’t exist, I suspect he’s working on a way to photograph that too.

Of course, I don’t want to discourage him. Photography is his thing, and it’s no secret that photographs aren’t exactly a major attraction for a blind traveller. But somewhere along the way, his enthusiasm became a running joke. Whenever he stopped to take yet another photo, the inevitable question was whether he’d found an interesting twig to photograph.

He’d actually purchased a new iPhone before the trip, and I’m reasonably confident it’s now full to capacity.