Canada is a combination of modern urban living and natural splendour the likes of which can be found nowhere else on Earth. The country’s famously liveable and dynamic cities, like Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, are exciting and pleasant in equal measure, while the country’s national parks offer pristine encounters with the natural world. Most travelers will understandably head for Banff National Park, a place of unreal beauty with rocky precipices, evergreen forests and translucent turquoise lakes, but it would be a mistake to neglect the island-dotted waterscapes of the Thousand Islands National Park or the rugged wonder of Nahanni National Park Reserve, to name but a few. There really has been no better time than this to visit the world’s second largest country.