Discover dramatic coastal landscapes, unique historic sites, and a vibrant seafaring culture derived from British and French roots on a journey to the captivating regions of the Canadian Maritimes: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.

Select a Departure Date

Number of Passengers

Starting at: $7,147 * Price includes special offer * Includes airfare, taxes & all fees Make a Reservation Ask Us A Question or Call 855-330-1542

Coastal Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

Peggy's Point Lighthouse, Halifax

Hopewell Rocks at low tide, New Brunswick

Victoria Row, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Credit: PEI Tourism / Emily O'Brien

Confederation for the Arts, Charlottetown. Credit: PEI Tourism / John Sylvester

Boats in the bay at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

Anne of Green Gables house, Prince Edward Island. Credit: PEI Tourism / John Sylvester

Traditional lobster meal. Credit: PEI Tourism / Paul Baglole

The gates to historic Louisburg, Cape Breton Island

The historic fort in Louisburg, Cape Breton Island

Historic site in Louisburg, Cape Breton Island

Fortress of Louisbourg, Cape Breton Island

Cape Breton Island seaside farm

The Cape Breton coastline

Lobster pots on Cape Breton Island

East Point, Prince Edward Island. Credit: PEI Tourism / Sander Meurs

Seascapes of the Canadian Maritimes

12 days from $7,147 | includes airfare, taxes and all fees

departure passengers

or Call 855-330-1542

Tour Details

JOURNEYS DISPATCHES

See All Journeys Dispatches ››

To view a section, please click on an option below.

Accommodations

* Click on hotel name to visit hotel web-site.

Halifax Marriott Harbourfront

Halifax, Canada

The Four Points by Sheraton Halifax enjoys an ideal location in the city’s waterfront district, which features an abundance of shopping and dining options. Halifax’s only hotel with direct waterfront access, the Halifax Marriott Harbourfront offers a restaurant and bar with outdoor patio seating, coffeehouse, indoor swimming pool, spa, fitness center, and complimentary Wi-Fi access. Air-conditioned guest rooms have private marbled bath with hair dryer, in-room safe, tea- and coffee-making facilities, TV, and phone.

Delta Hotels St. John

Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

Set in the historic Uptown neighborhood of Saint John, Delta Hotels Saint John provides easy access to several of the city’s attractions, including Saint John City Market, New Brunswick Museum, and King’s Square. This comfortable hotel offers a restaurant and bar overlooking the Bay of Fundy, indoor swimming pool and hot tub, fitness center, laundry and dry cleaning services (for a fee), and complimentary Wi-Fi internet access. Air-conditioned guest rooms offer plenty of space to spread out, and have private bath with hair dryer, tea- and coffee-making facilities, TV, and phone.

Hotel Shediac

Shediac, New Brunswick, Canada

The Hotel Shediac offers a comfortable and elegant stay in the center of the port town of Shediac. The 60-room hotel boasts a restaurant and bar, fitness center, indoor swimming pool and solarium, 24-hour convenience store, spa and salon, laundry service (for a fee), and complimentary Wi-Fi internet access. Guest rooms are air conditioned and have private bath with hair dryer, tea- and coffee-making facilities, TV, and phone.

Rodd Charlottetown

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada

Step into historic elegance as you enter the grand lobby with its marble floors and barrel-vaulted ceilings. Built in 1931, the Rodd Charlottetown features the luxurious characteristics and details synonymous with Canadian National Railway Hotels. The distinctive guestrooms and suites are tastefully decorated with impeccable replicas of period furnishings, linens, and draperies. Guests enjoy the perfect blend of “old world” charm combined with all the convenient amenities of an indoor pool, fitness room and sauna.

Cambridge Suites Hotel Sydney

Sydney, Nova Scotia , Canada

The Cambridge Suites Hotel Sydney owns an ideal location in the center of Sydney's downtown waterfront district, directly on the shores of the city's Sydney River. Amenities of the hotel include a restaurant and lounge, rooftop patio, fitness center overlooking the water, laundry and dry-cleaning services (for a fee), and complimentary Wi-Fi internet access. Each guest room has a private bath with hair dryer, coffeemaking facilities, TV, and phone.

Activity Level

Expectations: This Classic Land Journey includes well-paced but long touring days, with many full-day motor coach excursions, and stays in six different hotels. Most excursions last from four to six hours and there is leisure time on many afternoons. Expect standing and walking for long periods of time during city tours, museum visits, and outdoor activities; daily walks of up to three miles over sometimes difficult terrain that includes cobblestones, hills, and uneven pavement, and unpaved trails; embarking and disembarking boats; stairs without handrails and absence of elevators (including hotels); and longer walks to get to area where coaches are prohibited.

Appropriate for: Travelers who are physically fit and comfortable with longer days of touring (both walking tours and coach time).

Tour Extension

Halifax, Nova Scotia Post-Program Option – 3 Days, 2 Nights
Experience more of this regional and cultural capital, with a diverse mix of historic and contemporary sights.

Your tour price includes:

2 nights accommodations at Halifax Marriott Harbourfront (Superior First Class)
2 meals: 2 breakfasts
Transfer to Halifax airport

Halifax Marriott Harbourfront
The Four Points by Sheraton Halifax enjoys an ideal location in the city’s waterfront district, which features an abundance of shopping and dining options. Halifax’s only hotel with direct waterfront access, the Halifax Marriott Harbourfront offers a restaurant and bar with outdoor patio seating, coffeehouse, indoor swimming pool, spa, fitness center, and complimentary Wi-Fi access. Air-conditioned guest rooms have private marbled bath with hair dryer, in-room safe, tea- and coffee-making facilities, TV, and phone.

Reading List

Highly Recommended

A Short History of Canada: Seventh Edition

By: Desmond Morton

A fully updated edition of the Canadian classic.Most of us know bits and pieces of our history but would like to be more sure of how it all fits together. The trick is to find a history that is so absorbing you will want to read it from beginning to end. With this expanded, seventh edition of A Short History of Canada, readers need look no further. Desmond Morton, one of Canada's most highly respected historians, is keenly aware of the ways in which our past informs the present, and in one compact and engrossing volume, he pulls off the remarkable feat of bringing it all together -- from the First Nations before the arrival of the Europeans, to Confederation, to Stephen Harper's prime ministership, to Justin Trudeau's victory in the 2015 election. His acute observations on the Diefenbaker era, the effects of the post-war influx of immigrants, the Trudeau years and the constitutional crisis, the Quebec referendum, the rise of the Canadian Alliance, and Canada under Harper's governance, all provide an invaluable background to understanding the way Canada works today and its direction in years to come.

Buy Now

Island: The Complete Stories

By: Alistair MacLeod

Winner of the PEN/Malamud Award: “The genius of his stories is to render his fictional world as timeless.”―Colm Tóibín The sixteen exquisitely crafted stories in Island prove Alistair MacLeod to be a master. Quietly, precisely, he has created a body of work that is among the greatest to appear in English in the last fifty years. A book-besotted patriarch releases his only son from the obligations of the sea. A father provokes his young son to violence when he reluctantly sells the family horse. A passionate girl who grows up on a nearly deserted island turns into an ever-wistful woman when her one true love is felled by a logging accident. A dying young man listens to his grandmother play the old Gaelic songs on her ancient violin as they both fend off the inevitable. The events that propel MacLeod's stories convince us of the importance of tradition, the beauty of the landscape, and the necessity of memory.

Buy Now

Fodor's Nova Scotia & Atlantic Canada: With New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island & Newfoundland (Full-color Travel Guide)

By: Fodor's Travel Guides

Buy Now

Maine to Greenland: Exploring the Maritime Far Northeast

By: Wilfred E. Richard, William Fitzhugh

Maine to Greenland is a testament to one of the world's great geographic regions: the Maritime Far Northeast. For more than three decades, William W. Fitzhugh and Wilfred E. Richard have explored the Northeast’s Atlantic corridor and its fascinating history, habitat, and culture. The authors’ powerful personal essays and Richard’s stunning photography transport readers to this vibrant region, joining Smithsonian archaeological expeditions and trekking in vast and amazing terrain. Following Fitzhugh and Richard’s travels north—from Maine to the Canadian Maritimes, Newfoundland and northern Quebec, then to Labrador, Baffin and Ellesmere islands, and Greenland—we view incredible landscapes, uncover human history, and meet luminous personalities along the way. Fully illustrated with 350 full-color photographs, Maine to Greenland is the first in-depth treatment of the Northeast Atlantic corridor and essential for armchair travelers, locals, tourists, or anyone who has journeyed there. Today green technology, climate change, and the opening of the Arctic Ocean have transformed the Maritime Far Northeast from an icy frontier into a global resource zone and an increasingly integrated international crossroads. In our rapidly converging world, we have much to learn from the Maritime Far Northeast and how its variety of cultures have adapted to rather than changed their environments during the past ten thousand years. Maine to Greenland is not only a complete account of the region’s unique culture and environment, but also a timely reminder that amidst the very real consequences of climate change, the inhabitants of the Maritime Far Northeast can show us grounded and sustainable ways of living.

Buy Now

Also Recommended

Nova Scotia Shaped by the Sea : A Living History

By: choyce-lesley

The history of Nova Scotia is an amazing story of a land & people shaped by the waves, tides, winds, & wonder of the North Atlantic. The first people arrived after the retreat of the glaciers, & over thousands of years the highly civilized Mi'kmaq culture evolved. The arrival of European settlers disrupted their life. Then came the power struggle between France; as England emerged the Victor, the Acadians were driven from the land they loved. The sailors & shipbuilders led the province into a flourishing trade. During WW1, it was again thrust into military activity. At the end of the 20th century, it is unclear whether the way of life along this coast will survive.

Buy Now

A Traveller's History of Canada

By: Robert Bothwell

To outsiders, Canada is synonymous with a vision of wilderness, glaciers, mountains and forests. Distance and space define Canada, but so do large modern cities, an extraordinarily diverse population (30 million plus) and advanced social systems that won it recognition from the United Nations as the most desirable country on earth in which to live. Canada's story begins with the arrival of the first immigrants over 15,000 years ago who travelled across a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. Starting around 1000AD with the Vikings, European settlers arrived, bringing with them their cultures, languages and societies. By 1700 Canada was divided between the French and British. The next century was spent in wars to determine who should rule in North America. The French lost, but left behind a vigorous colony that evolved into modern Quebec, and 6-million French-speakers scattered across modern Canada. Unlike the rest of the Americas, Canada long maintained a close connection with Europe, actively participating in two world wars and in the Cold War that followed. The impact of these events and its relationship with its neighbor, the USA, are discussed. The book is brought fully up to date with a profile of modern Canada, its successes, present difficulties and a prognosis for the future.

Buy Now

Scotland Farewell: The People of the Hector

By: Donald MacKay

This is the story of the Highland Scots who sailed to Pictou, Nova Scotia, in 1773 aboard the brig Hector. These intrepid emigrants came for many reasons: the famine of the previous spring, pressures of population growth, intolerable rent increases, trouble with the law, the hunger of landless men to own land of their own. Upon arrival at Pictou, after an appalling storm-tossed crossing, they found they had been deceived. The promised prime farming land turned out to be virgin forest. Only the kindness of the Mi’kmaq and the few New Englanders already settled there enabled them to survive until they learned how to exploit the forests and clear land. But survive they did, and their prosperity encouraged shiploads of emigrants, many fellow clansmen, to join them, making northeastern Nova Scotia a true New Scotland.

Buy Now

Mark Carwardine's Guide to Whale Watching in North America

By: Carwardine, Mark

Buy Now

Nova Scotia Cookery, Then and Now: Modern Interpretations of Heritage Recipes

By: Nova Scotia Archives, Select Nova Scotia

Take one batch of historic recipes, add a handful of local, inspired chefs, mix well, and serve up a modern version of Nova Scotia culinary history. To create this book, food writer and editor Valerie Mansour reviewed the Nova Scotia Archives's What's Cooking? digital collection and, along with their staff, pulled out a cross-section of recipes dating back as far as The Halifax Gazette of 1765, and featuring material from wartime newspaper supplement recipes, community cookbooks, and more. Taste of Nova Scotia then matched recipes with Nova Scotia chefs and food-industry specialists, who put a modern twist on the recipes. Using their expertise, today's food styles, and local ingredients, top chefs from across the province have recreated everything from classic seafood dishes like planked salmon and fish chowder to time-honoured favourites like brown bread and baked beans, with items like Irish potato pudding, rabbit stew with bannock, Gaelic fruitcake, and rappie pie showcasing the province's multicultural and ever-evolving foodways.Features over 80 recipes, full-colour photos of the dishes in historic Nova Scotia settings from photographer Len Wagg and stylist Jessica Emin, as well as fascinating archival materials.

Buy Now

The Long Way Home

By: John Demont

The province's premier journalist tells the story he was born to write.No journalist has travelled the back roads, hidden vales and fog-soaked coves of Nova Scotia as widely as John DeMont. No writer has spent as much time considering its peculiar warp and weft of humanity, geography and history. The Long Way Home is the summation of DeMont's years of travel, research and thought. It tells the story of what is, from the European view of things, the oldest part of Canada. Before Confederation it was also the richest, but now Nova Scotia is among the poorest. Its defining myths and stories are mostly about loss and sheer determination. Equal parts narrative, memoir and meditation, The Long Way Home chronicles with enthralling clarity a complex and multi-dimensional story: the overwhelming of the first peoples and the arrival of a mélange of pioneers who carved out pockets of the wilderness; the random acts and unexplained mysteries; the shameful achievements and noble failures; the rapture and misery; the twists of destiny and the cold-heartedness of fate. This is the biography of a place that has been hardened by history. A place full of reminders of how great a province it has been and how great—with the right circumstances and a little luck—it could be again.

Buy Now

Anne of Green Gables (Norton Critical Editions)

By: L. M. Montgomery

Since its publication in 1908, Anne of Green Gables has been an enduring bestseller and arguably Canada’s most famous novel. This Norton Critical Edition offers an unrivaled selection of contextual and critical material, edited by two leading Montgomery scholars. “Backgrounds” brings together fourteen relevant excerpts from Montgomery’s journals, letters, and juvenilia along with literary selections from, among others, Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Caroline Oliphant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Louisa May Alcott. The cultural context of Anne of Green Gables is explored through the writings of Carole Gerson, Kate Wood, and Mary Henley Rubio. “Criticism” is divided into “Early Reviews and Responses” and “Modern Critical Views.” Eight reviews from 1908 to 1942 include Canadian, American, and British assessments. Critical essays are provided by, among others, Northrop Frye, Elizabeth Epperly, T. D. MacLulich, Juliet McMaster, Carol Shields, Margaret Atwood, and Elizabeth Waterston. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Buy Now

The Landscapes of Anne of Green Gables: The Enchanting Island that Inspired L. M. Montgomery

By: Catherine Reid

Smithsonian Magazine 2018’s Best Travel BooksThe Landscapes of Anne of Green Gables explores L. M. Montgomery’s deep connection to the landscapes of Prince Edward Island that inspired her to write the beloved Anne of Green Gables series. From the Lake of Shining Waters and the Haunted Wood to Lover’s Lane, you’ll be immersed in the real places immortalized in the novels. Using Montgomery’s journals, archives, and scrapbooks, Catherine Reid explores the many similarities between Montgomery and her unforgettable heroine, Anne Shirley. The lush package includes Montgomery’s hand-colorized photographs, the illustrations originally used in Anne of Green Gables, and contemporary and historical photography.

Buy Now

History of the World Map by Map (DK History Map by Map)

By: DK

Buy Now

*As an Amazon Associate, Smithsonian Journeys earns from qualifying purchases.

Travel Insurance

For the convenience of our travelers, Smithsonian Journeys includes a basic medical expense and evacuation plan through Trip Mate, a Generali Global Assistance & Insurance Services brand, at no additional charge. This plan provides post-departure Medical and Dental coverage of $250,000 per person and Emergency Assistance and Transportation coverage of $1,000,000 per person (U.S. Residents Only). Note: For full details regarding these coverages please review the following Plan Documents here.

In addition, we recommend that travelers purchase a travel protection plan to help protect their travel investment from unforeseen events such as cancellation due to illness, flight delays due to adverse weather, baggage loss, and more. For your convenience, Smithsonian Journeys offers an optional Travel Protection Plan administered by Trip Mate, a Generali Global Assistance & Insurance Services brand. For those interested, optional "Cancel for Any Reason" coverage is available for an additional charge. Note: Certain eligibility requirements apply and Cancel for Any Reason coverage is not available to New York residents. For full details regarding this coverage please review the following Plan Documents here.

To learn more about the Travel Protection Plan, you may visit https://www.generalipartner.com/smithsonianjourneys or call the administrator, Trip Mate, a Generali Global Assistance & Insurance Services brand at (866) 501-3252.