Travelling to Ontario in a week...

[Jennywren8]

What do I need to know?

I'm here now! Where are you travelling to exactly?

Toronto, Niagara, Huntsville and Manitoban Island. What's the weather looking like, it's rubbish here

It's pretty nice today from where I'm sitting (not far from Huntsville). It's generally sunny, high 20s with the odd day of rain.

Enjoy!

Anything I need to remember, I nearly didn't realise about the international driving permit 🙈

Is there any white water rafting around there?

Do you need one? When I drove in Canada a few years ago I didn't.

I got it just in case

Have you done your ETA? No-one told us when we went and had to do them the night before which wasn't a great start....

I 'think' IDPs are for 3+ months?

Yeah you need an ETA and you can complete your customs declaration in advance to save time

All foreigners coming to canada have to obtain a visitor's visa before entering. You can apply for it online before you travel - it takes only a few minutes and costs 5 quid or something like that.

You can use your regular British driver's licence to hire and drive a rental car.

And I'm sorry to report that most major liquor stores in Ontario (which are government controlled) are closed at the moment due to strike action. They might reopen 19 July but unclear.

To avoid confusion OP needs an ETA which is a travel authorization similar to the ESTA for the US, it's different from a visit visa which requires an application to an embassy, a lot more details/information, documents, is more expensive and time consuming and in many cases requires an interview.