Looks Like Tourism To Quebec Has Had A Huge Spike But More People Keep Going To Ontario

Was it something we did?

Staff Writer

Despite what looks like a huge spike in tourism to Quebec this August, way more people entered Canada via Ontario during the summer months. Do tourists just not like us as much? We're clearly the better province... right?

According to recent data on travel into Canada by Statistics Canada, 239,776 more tourists visited Ontario than Quebec from May to August 2021.

A total of 141,207 non-resident international tourists entered Canada via Quebec from May to August. The highest number of tourists came in August, with 79,037 non-resident tourists entering through Quebec.

The spike in August tourism was also significant in Ontario, with 237,599 non-resident tourists entering via the province. It's wild to think that more tourists entered via Ontario in the month of August than they did via Quebec all summer, but this is where we're at.

In terms of travellers crossing the land border from the U.S. specifically, Quebec started out the summer with only 14,578 U.S. vehicles entering in May and gradually increased over the next couple of months.

U.S. tourism to Quebec had a huge spike in August — when Canada reopened its border to fully vaccinated Americans — with 34,905 vehicles making their way up north via Quebec's border.

Ontario saw increasing numbers of U.S. vehicles throughout the summer, peaking at 178,601 in August. A total of 464,402 American vehicles crossed into Ontario from May to August.

  • Teddy Elliot
  • Teddy Elliot was a Staff Writer for MTL Blog. He was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec and has a B.A. in Literature. Teddy has been a journalist for three years and was once an English teacher. His creative work has appeared in The Blasted Tree and Parenthetical Magazine. When he's not chasing scoops, Teddy can be found cheering on Aston Villa and listening to 80s power ballads. He was shortlisted for a Digital Publishing Award in 2021.

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