Calgary or Tofino?

Neither place is a beach destination in the warm-water sense, but Tofino at least has a real coastline. Calgary is a prairie city, and summer swimming means Sikome Lake, Chestermere Lake or floating down the Bow on an inner tube.

Tofino has some 16km of Long Beach, the tide flats at Chesterman and the surf at Cox Bay, and walks on the sand and beach fires shape the whole stay. The catch is the water. It stays cold enough that you go in with a thick wetsuit to surf, not to swim.

The two eat about equally well, but in very different ways. Calgary's strengths are Alberta beef and ginger beef in Chinatown, plus wide Vietnamese, Filipino and Lebanese cooking in the suburbs and a brewery district around Manchester and Ramsay.

Tofino's food comes from Clayoquot Sound: spot prawns, Dungeness crab and oysters, served from food trucks, in relaxed seafood rooms and in a few serious West Coast tasting kitchens. It is a smaller town with far fewer places to choose from, and in the wet winter months many of them keep shorter hours.

Calgary is a young city, but it still gives you two full days of sights. There is western Canadian art and history at the Glenbow, instruments and music archives at Studio Bell, a pioneer village at Heritage Park and the 1880s sandstone buildings of Stephen Avenue. In Tofino, culture means Nuu-chah-nulth carving and prints in the galleries and the story of the coast at the Kwisitis Visitor Centre, which together take an afternoon.

Calgary has a proper night out, if mostly at weekends. There are pubs and patios along 17th Avenue SW, bars in the East Village, and the city's own speciality, the country bar with line dancing and a mechanical bull. During the Stampede in July the whole city stays out late for ten days.

Tofino has a pub or two and a brewery taproom, nothing open late and no clubs. Here the evening usually ends at a fire on the sand, and people go to bed early for the morning tide.

Both places come down to the landscape, but it is a different landscape. Calgary looks west to the Rockies. Kananaskis is about an hour away and Banff about ninety minutes, with ridge hikes, glacial lakes, elk and bighorn sheep, and skiing at Lake Louise in winter. You need a car to reach almost all of it.

In Tofino the wild is on the doorstep. There are boardwalks through giant cedars in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, kayaking among the islands of Clayoquot Sound, grey whales and black bears on the shore at low tide, and huge winter swells for storm watching. Calgary offers mountains and snow, Tofino offers ocean and rainforest, and in Tofino you will need to bring waterproofs.

Calgary makes a far better base for outings. Banff and Canmore are mountain towns with real character, the Royal Tyrrell Museum in the Drumheller badlands holds one of the great dinosaur collections, and Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is about two hours south.

Tofino sits at the end of a long road, and Ucluelet, with its lighthouse loop, is about the only other town within easy reach. Boat trips into the sound fill the remaining days, but they take you out into the landscape, not to other towns.

Children are well looked after in Calgary. There is the zoo on St George's Island with its life-size dinosaurs, the hands-on science at TELUS Spark, the steam train and paddlewheeler at Heritage Park, and summer zip lines at Canada Olympic Park. Most of these are outdoors, but TELUS Spark gives you a dry day when the weather turns.

A family stay in Tofino is a classic Canadian summer of tide pools, driftwood forts, child-sized wetsuits and whale-watching boats. There is no zoo or science centre to fall back on, though, and a rainy day with small children can drag.

Calgary is somewhat easier to get around without a car. Its gridded downtown is linked by the Plus 15 skywalks, two CTrain lines run to the zoo and Stampede Park, and riverside paths connect Kensington and Inglewood. Even so, most visitors hire a car for the mountains.

Tofino's village is only a few walkable blocks, and a paved path leads toward the national park for cycling. The beaches and resorts are spread along the highway, though, and the best outings, to Meares Island or Hot Springs Cove, are by water taxi or floatplane.

Calgary has much more shopping, though most of it is in malls such as CORE and Chinook Centre. What makes it worth a look is the western wear: hand-made boots, felt hats and saddlery from long-established outfitters, plus independent shops in Kensington and Inglewood. In Tofino, shopping amounts to a stroll past galleries selling Nuu-chah-nulth carving and silver, a few surf shops and some beach-town boutiques.

Calgary is the cheaper of the two. Outside Stampede week its hotels cost less than those on the coast, and food courts and family restaurants keep meals within reach. The costs climb once you add a hire car, park entry and nights in Banff.

In Tofino you pay extra for how remote it is, from the motel rooms to the groceries trucked over the mountains. Campgrounds and the stormy months from November to March soften the bill, and the beaches and trails cost very little to enjoy.

If you want an evening at a concert or the theatre, only Calgary is worth considering. The Philharmonic and Theatre Calgary perform at the Werklund Centre, Calgary Opera stages a short season at the Jubilee Auditorium, and July brings the Folk Music Festival on Prince's Island and the Stampede grandstand show.

Tofino has no theatre or concert hall, just the odd local band at a pub or brewery. Plan your evenings there around dinner and the beach, not around a performance.

Tofino is the better place to rest, because slowing down is simply how life works there. A cabin hot tub ends most days, resort spas use local seaweed and cedar, and a day out to the geothermal pools at Hot Springs Cove ends with water tumbling into the sea.

Calgary has hotel spas and yoga studios but no real reason to rest in town. For proper relaxation you drive to the outdoor pools of the Nordic spa in Kananaskis or to the Upper Hot Springs above Banff.