Kelsey Parsons

Warning: If you don’t live in Canada, you probably won’t care about this post. 

Okay!

I live pretty close to both the Toronto airport and the Buffalo (N.Y) airport.

Keeping this in mind, I bring you ridiculous facts time!

Did you know it’s cheaper to fly from Buffalo to London, England than it is to fly from Toronto to Edmonton, Alberta?

Did you realize that you could fly from Buffalo to Phoenix, Arizona or New Orleans, Louisiana for less money than it would be to get from Toronto to Halifax, Nova Scotia?

I like Canada, I do. The thing is, when one wants to visit the entire world like I do, Canada is almost always at the bottom of the list. Sure, I’d love to see areas of my country I’ve never been to, but when I have the option of visiting another country for way less money, then, well, Canada is out and England/the U.S./wherever is in.

I get it, airlines. There are less people here than in the U.S.! The thing is, a huge percentage of us Canucks live very close to the Canada/U.S. border, and you bet your peanuts that we’re going to hightail it over that border if it means our travel bug will cost us less money in the end.

I was planning a trip to Atlantic Canada all of this week. I’ll be out there for work, and I’d love for my family to meet me there. While the Maritimes are driveable from Ontario, that’s not a great option for people with time constraints due to work and whatnot, so I began my flight research thang. What did I find? Flights to the Eastern provinces are stupidly expensive. Never mind Newfoundland, which might as well be Iceland.

I’m starting to question the Atlantic Canada family trip, replacing Nova Scotia and P.E.I. with the Grand Canyon and other U.S. destinations, and I blame the airlines. Sure, it makes me feel bad when I see the tourism ads for Newfoundland and other areas of the Maritimes. They’re struggling economically, and their quaint towns and pretty landscape should be a huge tourism pull. They are, to an extent, but I know the crowds would grow even larger if flight prices were reasonable. It sure would make my decision of where to go a lot easier.

Get with it, airlines! I don’t particularly love having to drive across the border before catching a flight, but when that flight is half the price it would have been if I flew out of Toronto, that annoyance becomes a necessary burden.

Uggh!

Note: Rant completed.