Getting Around Canada
Inside Toronto, Vancouver, or Montreal, public transit plus Uber/Lyft covers everything — skip the rental car. Between regions, book a domestic flight (Toronto–Vancouver is 4.5–5 hours with no fast train option) rather than assuming VIA Rail connects the country; VIA only really shines on the Toronto–Montreal–Ottawa corridor. Budget $15–40/day for transit, more if you're renting for the Rockies or wine country.
Getting to Canada
Toronto Pearson (YYZ), Vancouver (YVR), and Montreal (YUL) are the three big international gateways, each with its own catchment — you're not funneling through one hub the way you might elsewhere. From the US it's a short 1–3 hour hop and often under $500 round-trip. From Europe, figure 7–9 hours and $600–1,000 round-trip; from Australia/NZ it's a long haul at 13–16 hours, usually with a connection through the US or Asia.
Getting around: the real options
Canada's size is the whole story here. It looks like one country on a map and behaves like several, connected mostly by air, not rail.
- Trains — VIA Rail runs a genuinely good service in the Toronto–Ottawa–Montreal–Quebec City corridor (comfortable, city-center to city-center, no security theater), but it thins out fast elsewhere. The transcontinental VIA Rail routes (like The Canadian, Toronto to Vancouver) exist, but they're a multi-day scenic bucket-list trip, not practical transportation — budget 4 days, not a travel day.
- Buses — Greyhound shut down all Canadian routes in 2021, which caught a lot of travelers off guard. Regional operators filled some of the gap: Rider Express and Ontario Northline cover parts of the prairies and north, Megabus runs some Ontario/Quebec corridor routes, and Flixbus has expanded into a few provinces — but coverage is patchier than it used to be, so double-check a route actually exists before planning around it.
- Domestic flights — the real backbone for cross-country travel. Air Canada, WestJet, and Porter connect every major city; Toronto–Vancouver runs about 4.5–5 hours and $200–400 round-trip if booked with normal lead time. If two cities are in different provinces and more than a day's drive apart, just fly.
- Car rental / driving — worth it for the Canadian Rockies (Banff/Lake Louise/the Icefields Parkway), Niagara wine country, or Nova Scotia's Cabot Trail — not for getting between major cities. Drive on the right; winter tires are legally required in Quebec (Dec–Mar) and strongly recommended anywhere snowy Nov–Mar. Toronto's 407 ETR is a pay-by-plate toll highway — worth it to skip gridlock, but the bill arrives by mail/plate lookup, not a booth.
Getting around inside cities
Toronto's TTC (subway, streetcar, bus) runs a flat fare around $3.30 and covers the city well, though the subway system itself is only two real lines. Vancouver's TransLink SkyTrain is fast, driverless, and connects the airport directly to downtown. Montreal's STM Metro is clean, frequent, and the easiest way to skip that city's notoriously confusing one-way streets. Uber and Lyft both operate normally and widely in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa — there's no local-app quirk here, it just works like it does at home.
| Route/option | Typical cost | Typical time |
|---|---|---|
| Toronto Pearson to downtown (UP Express train) | $9–12 | 25 min |
| Toronto–Vancouver (domestic flight) | $200–400 round-trip | 4.5–5 hrs |
| Toronto TTC day pass | $13.50 | — |
Buy VIA Rail tickets in the corridor (Toronto–Ottawa–Montreal) at least a couple of weeks out — fares are dynamically priced like airline tickets and can triple close to departure. The same trip booked early is often cheaper than the bus.
Common transport mistakes
The single biggest one: assuming you can casually drive between Canada's major cities. Toronto to Vancouver is about 4,400 km — over 43 hours of straight driving, not a weekend road trip. Plan regions, not a coast-to-coast loop, unless you genuinely have a month and love long highway stretches. The second mistake is assuming Greyhound still runs everywhere; check a specific regional operator's current routes before building an itinerary around a bus that may no longer exist.