Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Newfoundland is the strangest and most genuinely distinct province in the country — an island in the North Atlantic where the accent is closer to seventeenth-century English and Irish than to anything spoken in Canada, the music is its own genre, and the cod fishery that built the whole culture was closed in 1992 and never came back. St. John's is the oldest city in North America with the colourful painted row houses and a nightlife on George Street that has more bars per square metre than anywhere on the continent. Icebergs drift past in spring, humpbacks feed offshore in summer, Gros Morne is a UNESCO landscape that looks like a fjord, and Labrador is the enormous mainland half that almost nobody visits.

The province's character is front-porch storytelling, genuinely self-mocking humour, and a hospitality that is famous throughout the country — as is the weather, which is foggy, windy and unpredictable and about which locals are entirely realistic.

Expect the best storytellers in Canada, real iceberg talk, and an accent the rest of the country genuinely enjoys listening to.

Nearby: Halifax Nova Scotia Quebec Montreal