Canada

Canada's capital on the Ottawa River, Parliament Hill, the UNESCO-listed Rideau Canal, and an officially bilingual city of museums, embassies, and a frozen-canal skateway every winter.

Alberta's energy capital and gateway to the Rockies on the Bow River - home of the July Stampede, chinook winds that shift temperatures 20 degrees in an hour, and 210 kilometres of urban pathways.

Manitoba's institutional polar-bear-capital, the institutional 1717-Hudson's-Bay-Company-fort, Hudson-Bay-coast - 900 metro on the Hudson Bay sub-arctic, the institutional 1717-Prince-of-Wales-Fort, 1782-French-naval-attack, 1929-Hudson-Bay-Railway-completed, the institutional 1980s-onwards-Tundra-Buggy-polar-bear-tourism, the institutional 1,500-polar-bear-population October-November, 60,000-beluga-whale-summer, Northern-Lights-aurora-borealis.

Quebec's largest city - 4.3 million people on an island in the St. Lawrence, French as the working language, the Old Montreal cobblestone core, the bagel-and-smoked-meat institutions, the jazz festival in summer, and Mont-Royal as the daily backdrop.

Quebec's capital on the St. Lawrence cliffs - 800,000 people, the only walled city north of Mexico, the Château Frontenac silhouette, the 1608 founding by Champlain, and February's Carnaval as the year's set-piece.

Canada's largest city on Lake Ontario - 6.8 million residents speaking 200+ languages, the CN Tower, the Distillery District, the Toronto Islands, and gateway to Niagara Falls 90 minutes south.

British Columbia's coastal city - 2.6 million people on the Pacific between the Coast Mountains and the Salish Sea, Stanley Park's 400-hectare seawall, Granville Island, the gateway to Whistler 2 hours north and Vancouver Island 90 minutes by ferry.