Canada offers outdoor recreational activities all year round. With a variety of landscapes and climates, activities can range from skiing and snowboarding to hiking and kayaking. In a 2022 survey, where Canadians were asked what
they participated in, outdoor activities ranked highly. One such activity is camping. While camping is an activity that often requires less in-person contact than other types of outdoor recreation, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic still caused a decline in the
. Additionally, another activity badly impacted by the health crisis was skiing and snowboarding, with the
dropping to 0.95 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. Despite this decline, the industry was forecast to exceed its pre-pandemic size by 2022.
Recreational winter sports in Canada
Canada is home to three mountain ranges, the Rocky Mountains, the St. Elias Mountains, and the Laurentian Mountains. Located in the area of the Canadian Rockies, Lake Louise in Alberta is one of the largest ski resorts in North America, and during the 2021/2022 winter season it was the
most popular ski resort in Canada by number of Google searches. Meanwhile, Whistler ski resort in British Columbia was the
leading ski resort in Canada by index score as of September 2022. Each resort’s index score was calculated by assigning points to categories such as vertical drop, snow quantity, acreage, and more. Skiing isn’t the only winter activity that Canadians participate in –
ice hockey is also a common national pastime. As of 2021, the
total number of ice hockey rinks in Canada reached almost eight thousand, of which five thousand were outdoor rinks and approximately three thousand were indoor rinks.
How popular are national parks in Canada?
Some of the
top summer outdoor activities in Canada that adults participated in in the third quarter of 2021 were hiking, camping, and visiting national parks. That year, 3.64 million people visited Banff National Park in Alberta, making it the
most visited national park in Canada. Ranking second on the list was Jasper National Park, also in Alberta, which is the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies. In 2021, Jasper National Park welcomed around 2.1 million visitors. Meanwhile, between April 2020 and March 2021, the
total number of visitors to national parks and historic sites in Canada (managed by Parks Canada) reached almost 17 million, down from the previous year’s figure of approximately 25 million, likely due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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