Toronto - Newfoundland, Whale spotting, nature watching

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Has anyone done a fly drive on this route?
We've been to Vancover/VI a few times and love it so thought we'd try the Atlantic Coast. We love nature watching. Any advice/recommendations much appreciated!

We did Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and it was amazing.

Have you considered Nova Scotia? It’s lovely, quite compact but lots to see. Nice little towns to stay in.

Oh amazing, I literally have no preconcieved plans at all! I will research Nova Scotia!
Do you have any specific recommendations?

@Latenightreader I am looking at PEI now, would you be able to tell me any more about what you really enjoyed? Thanks so much

Drive from Toronto to Newfoundland??

@puppyparent Sorry, we have to fly to Toronto so planned on spending 2-3 days there and then flying on and doing a fly drive 😂
Although we did drive from Darwin to Adelaide once so we have form for lunacy

We did a fly drive holiday in Newfoundland- was beautiful, not really very touristy but there are hotels and bed and breakfast type places.

We enjoyed staying in Baddeck in Nova Scotia. The Alexander Graham Bell museum there is excellent. We also played golf ( not for everyone!) and went to the brilliant little summer theatre. Another highlight was Louisburg where we did a ghost tour and visited the Fortress, which is very interesting with lots of historic reenactment. I think we did a trip on a sailing ship from there as well. Halifax also has a fortress (built by the British this time, Louisburg was french).
We had some really great food, but it’s a long time ago so probably not worth making recommendations, but if the lobster shack place in Beddeck is still there it is fantastic; full of locals having a good value lobster dinner.

thanks so much, did anyone do any whale watching?

I don’t think we did whale watching there, I’ve done it in other places - San Francisco (horribly rough, didn’t see much) and Boston (amazing).

has anyone else done this route and have any recommendations :)

Hi,
We did Ottawa to Nova Scotia last summer, with a focus on whale watching.
Whale-wise, we went to the Bay of Fundy - we stayed on Briar Island, which is remote, but right at the edge of the Bay of Fundy so supposed to be best for whale watching. And it's beautiful! We got great views of humpbacks there.
Our other big whale stop was Tadoussac in Quebec. Amazing variety of whales - belugas (visible from shore), fin whales, minke whales and even a blue whale (we were lucky with that one!). And again, a lovely place to stop.
We had two weeks and we covered a lot of ground in that time - including an epic day's driving from Montreal to St John's, NB on the first day. We also really loved Cape Breton Island. My favourite of the east-side cities is Montreal, but they all have good stuff to do.

@carefullythere thank you so much for this, it sounds very much what we want to be doing too!
Do you have any accommodation or tour companies you'd recommend?
Thank you so much for your reply :)

We did Montreal- Quebec- Saint Andrews by the Sea (Bay of Fundy)- PEI- Cape Breton- Lunenberg- back to Montreal via Maine , in 2023. Essentially a loop of the Maritimes.

It was a LOT of driving, we completely loved it but could have done with another 7-10 days on top of the 18 we had! SO much to see. We could have spent the entire time just exploring the Montreal-Quebec, St Lawrence River area or just Nova Scotia/Bay of Fundy. It’s absolutely vast, probably the one holiday I thought the itinerary was a bit tooo much!

Hi,

We went whale watching off Briar Island with these people: https://www.novascotiawhalewatching.ca/. Also stayed at their accommodation, the Bay of Fundy Inn. Would recommend both.

We based ourselves in Tadoussac, but went whale watching out of Les Escoumins, which is slightly further up the St Lawrence, so a slightly higher chance of seeing Fin/Blue whales. (We have some very enthusiastic whale watchers in our family, and went out with both the companies in Escoumins - both were good.)

We also did tidal bore rafting https://shubieriverwranglers.ca/, as seen on Race Across the World if you've watched that, which was great fun.

The ferry across the St Lawrence is a bit of a pain in the summer - you can't book it so you have to just turn up early. We crossed at Riviere du Loup and I think it was extra busy because the crossing further down the river (Rimouski, I think) wasn't running.