Canada - Prepare

Leave the lumberjack shirt at home, but bring sturdy boots and hiking gear for walks in the woods or mountains and a sweet tooth for all that maple syrup.

There's no fun like snow fun at Quebec City's Winter Carnival in January or February or Ottawa's Winterlude on February weekends. Slope off to Whistler for ski wizardry and free concerts at April's TELUS World Ski &Snowboard Festival. July in Montreal means sax in the city at the Montreal Jazz Festival and giggles galore at comedy festival Just for Laughs. In the same month Alberta goes rodeo ga-ga at the Calgary Stampede. Shakespeare fans OD at Stratford, Ontario's Stratford Festival from April through to November.

New Year's Day (1 Jan), Good Friday (Mar/Apr), Easter Monday (Mar/Apr), Victoria Day (May), Canada Day (1 July), Labour Day (Sep), Thanksgiving Day (Oct), Remembrance Day (11 Nov), Christmas Day (25 Dec), Boxing Day (26 Dec).

Canadian summers are warm and long – hot in British Columbia's Okanagan, where the July average tops 28°C. Autumn brings spectacular colours to the wilderness before snow and ice grip most places in winter. Heavy snowfall in the BC and Alberta mountains is perfect for skiers, but warm chinook winds can bring sudden changes, raising temperatures by 25°C in one hour. BC's coast enjoys a mild maritime climate; Victoria even has palm trees and golf is year-round. Canada's frigid north shivers with winter lows down to -40°C but bursts into life during the brief summers.

120V AC, 60 Hz, two-pin plugs are standard.

+1 (national).

Canadian dollar (C$) is the currency.

Canada encompasses six time zones: GMT -3h 30 (Newfoundland Standard Time), -4 (Atlantic), -5 (Eastern), -6 (Central), -7 (Mountain) and -8 (Pacific). Clocks go forward from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, except in Saskatchewan.

Canadian Tourism Commission website

Laugh, and Canadians will almost certainly laugh along with you. Their sense of humour is akin to that of the British and they have a good grasp of irony.