Canada

Canada's coastal cruising encompasses two very different maritime worlds: the rugged Atlantic shores of the Maritime Provinces — Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland — where fishing villages and lighthouse-studded headlands define a seafaring nation; and the spectacular Pacific coast of British Columbia, where the Inside Passage winds through the Great Bear Rainforest.

The Atlantic Maritime cruises are at their most spectacular in autumn, when the maple forests of Eastern Canada blaze with the famous Fall Foliage. Halifax is an elegant harbour city; Quebec City, the only walled city north of Mexico, is a UNESCO site of extraordinary French colonial character; and the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton Island is considered one of the world's most beautiful coastal drives.

British Columbia's Inside Passage rivals Alaska for wildlife spectacle: grizzly bears fishing for sockeye salmon, orca pods hunting between Vancouver Island and the mainland, and the rare spirit bears — white-phase black bears — found only in the Great Bear Rainforest, one of the most biodiverse coastal ecosystems on earth.