It's not called the Great White North for nothing. Opportunities for snow vacations stretch across the very big country of Canada.
Snow vacations offer much for families. Every ski resort has kids programs: even toddlers can start to ski, while snowboarders typically start at age 7 or 8. Most ski resorts offer daycare, some at snazzy kids' centers; some also offer teen programs. Adults too can easily learn to ski, thanks to new ski gear. Other snow fun includes tubing, snow-shoeing, sleigh rides, snowmobiling, horseback riding, even dogsledding.
Eastern Canada: Mont Tremblant
Mont Tremblant is in the province of Quebec, in the Laurentian Mountains an hour and a half north of Montreal, and easily accessible from the northeast US. (And don't worry, you'll have no trouble being an English-speaker at this ski resort, even though Quebec is a French-speaking province.)
Mount Tremblant has a respectable vertical drop of 2116 feet, and is the best-known ski resort in eastern Canada. Visitors will find a village, shops, and lodgings that include a Fairmont hotel with ski valet, for those who like luxury. See photos of Mont Tremblant.
Mont-Sainte-Anne
Just a half-hour from the charms of Quebec City -- think mini-trip to Europe-- is this family-friendly ski resort. Stay in Quebec City and shuttle to the mountain, or stay at the mountain base with ski-in, ski-out lodging.
Canadian Rockies
The marquis mountains in Canada are of course the Rockies: skip west a couple of thousand miles to the province of Alberta and the Banff / Lake Louise area, about 90 minutes from the Calgary airport. Some popular ski resorts for families:
- Sunshine Village: three mountains, 3358 acres skiable terrain, top elevation 8752 feet, vertical of 3574 feet.
- Lake Louise: 4200 skiable acres; limitless off-piste; 3250' vertical.
- Norquay: this smaller ski resort bills itself as "Banff's best family ski resort", and "a family tradition since 1926". Vertical drop 1650 feet.
British Columbia
Meanwhile, the best-known ski resort in Canada is in the west-coast province of BC: Whistler-Blackcomb is about an hour and a half inland from Vancouver BC on the "Sea to Sky Highway". (You can fly to Whistler, too.) Whistler-Blackcomb is often ranked as the top ski resort in the world, with a winning combo of terrain, lodgings, village ambiance, efficient lifts, and dining and apres-ski.
Mountain stats are huge: over two hundred trails, over 8000 acres of terrain, nearly a mile of vertical drop on Blackcomb, 5020 feet on Whistler mountain. Ski season lasts into June.
Whistler-Blackcomb is very welcoming to families: you'll find kids programs, week-long kids' camps, Magic carpet kids-only lift, on-mountain Kids Adventure Zones (with magic castle, secret fort), terrain garden, "Ride Tribe" for teens 13 to 17. Whistler is dog-friendly, too! Even the finest hotels (and we're talking Fairmont, and Four Seasons) welcome Fido, who can spend the day in a doggy day-care right in Whistler Village.
Okanagan BC
Vancouverites love to ski at Whistler... but you'll also find a stream of skier/boarder traffic heading another way out of town. They're driving farther (4-1/2 hours or more) to enjoy a completely different climate zone, and four family-friendly ski resorts with "champagne powder". The Okanagan region of BC produces wine in the summer, and light dry snow in winter-time.
Read about one of these family-friendly ski resorts: Sun Peaks, near Kamloops BC. Visitors can fly into Kamloops or into Kelowna, which has a bigger airport and is an hour away.
The Okanagan resorts are smaller compared to Whistler, but have mountain stats that would be enviable anywhere else: Sun Peaks, for example, has 121 runs on 3,678 skiable acres on 3 mountains, and a vertical drop of 2891 feet.
*photo © Teresa Plowright
