The Great Canadian West: Rockies, Whales & Victoria

The Rockies road trip begins in Calgary and doesn't disappoint for a single kilometre. Banff delivers Lake Louise and Moraine Lake; the Icefields Parkway delivers the Athabasca Glacier; Jasper delivers Pyramid Lake and the kind of silence you can only find in a wilderness of this scale. Two national parks, two extraordinary hotels and scenery that resets your sense of what dramatic means.

The drive from Jasper to Vancouver is a day-long revelation. You descend from the Rockies into the drier terrain of BC's interior, then climb again through the Selkirk and Coast ranges before dropping into the Fraser Valley. A night at Harrison Hot Springs Resort — a grand lakeside hotel with natural mineral pools — breaks the drive perfectly. The next day you reach Vancouver with the ocean in view and the mountains at your back.

A short flight to Anchorage and the journey enters a new register entirely. The Alaska Railroad carries you to Denali — a park the size of Wales where grizzlies fish the rivers and wolves move across the tundra in packs. Back in Anchorage, a bus carries you south to Seward for the Orca Quest Cruise — one of the great wildlife encounters anywhere. Humpback whales, orcas, sea otters and glaciers calving into the sea. Alaska does not underdeliver.

Return to Vancouver and check into the Fairmont Waterfront — the city's finest harbour hotel. Vancouver from this vantage point is extraordinary: seaplanes skimming the water, the mountains of the North Shore reflected in the inlet, container ships moving in silence. Two days is enough to cover Stanley Park, Granville Island market and Gastown — but not enough to exhaust the city's food scene, which is among the best in North America.

The seaplane from Vancouver Harbour to Victoria Inner Harbour takes 35 minutes and is worth doing for the views alone — the Gulf Islands, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Olympic Mountains behind them. Victoria is a city that has its own identity entirely: afternoon tea, whale watching from the harbour, and the Fairmont Empress — a century-old château hotel that still manages to feel genuinely grand. Zodiac whale watching takes you out to the southern Gulf Islands where orcas are resident year-round.