Domestic ‘City Breaks’ Are Taking Off in Canada—Thanks to Porter Airlines

It’s time we got to know our country better.

And as any nosy neighbour from an 80s sitcom will tell you, there’s no better way to get to know someone than by dropping in on them.

It’s not something we have traditionally done in Canada. We might pop down to New York or Boston if we’re in Montreal or Toronto, or maybe Seattle if we’re in Vancouver or Victoria. But we don’t tend to hop a time zone or two to spend a weekend in a Canadian city we’re not too familiar with.

There’s a word for this kind of travel in Europe. They call them citybreaks. The opposite of the grand tour, Europeans started doing them around the time the Iron Curtain came down, and now they’re a part of life. Popping over from Paris to Prague, Frankfurt to Zagreb, Toulouse to Timisoara. Though they don’t have a cute name for it, as far as I’m aware, they do it in Southeast Asia too, thanks to airlines like VietJet, the friendliest airline in the region, which specializes in good local food and drinks, as well as some great branding.

Because that’s a big part of the citybreak experience: the experience.

RELATED: Porter Bets Big on Montreal: 12 New Routes from MET

Porter gets this.

More than any other airline in Canada, Porter seems to understand that they’re selling an experience, not just of their airline, but of Canada itself. It’s why they serve St Henri coffee from Jean Talon Market. There’s apparently a special in-flight roast they do, and it actually tastes good in-flight, which is more than you can say for pretty much any other airplane coffee other than Austrian’s. They also serve Sloane tea from Toronto (I’m not a tea drinker, but I applaud the gesture), Moosehead from St. John, Jackson-Triggs from Niagara (not a stretch, but still good), and premixed cocktails in cute little medicine bottles from Tumbler & Rocks in Ft Saskatchewan, Alberta.

Everything except the cocktails is free.

I don’t want to veer into ad territory here. I’m a genuine fan of Porter and have been since they launched. The pillbox hats on the female flight attendants, the little raccoon mascot, all thanks to Tyler Brulé, the Canadian graphic designer of Wallpaper fame, who also designed the in-flight magazine, which they miraculously still publish and which even more miraculously remains fun and useful.

The routes are not always as short as they are in Europe or Southeast Asia, I grant you. But looking at flight times, even the flight between Montreal and Vancouver is just about 5 hours, which, you know, for a long weekend, or even a not-so-long weekend, is not that bad an idea.

The point of air travel is that it’s meant to abbreviate distances. And for the most part, it has, but we Canadians, and especially we Quebecois, can get down about transfer and travel times when we’re talking domestic.

The answer to which, for years, has been Porter’s Billy Bishop Airport, to which this June they’re adding Montreal MET, which, if you’re on the island like me, or better still in Longueuil, is going to be a game changer. Not only does it eliminate the transfer time to Dorval, but they’re also increasing the number of direct flights by adding Winnipeg, Moncton, Charlottetown, and St. John’s, alongside the current roster of Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, and, of course, Toronto.

RELATED: Inside Porter’s MET Strategy: Putting Down 'Routes' in Montreal

To test out my citybreak theory, Porter gave me a flight to Halifax recently, which I’ll be writing about next. But en gros/tl;dr: citybreaks are amazing. I’ve been to Halifax at least half a dozen times, but there was something about the nature of this trip - maybe it was the idea that I could take another one like it in a month or two if I liked - that made it more congenial, more… neighbourly.

I hope to be taking more of these Porterbreaks, and starting to see Canada through this simple lens. 

Stay tuned.

Topics From This Article to Explore