Hi everyone. I'm a student at McGill, originally from Chicago.

I've been planning to spend some time with a friend of mine living here this coming summer; the major impediment to our plans is the cost of transportation to and from Chicago. Does anyone have any experience with traveling to and from the States on a shoestring budget? Any recommendations for places to look?

I don't know if thiswill help but I'd check out www.expedia.ca The only problem is that I think expedia is for Air travel, i don't know if you can find bus tickets.

ANother option would be the train, i know it's pretty cheap!


You never know what you'll find.

the train is expensive. on the greyhound bus i paid 125 plus tax = 133$ from london ontario to vancouver. thats cheap

Via rail is a farce in Canada.
In the West it is NOT an option.
They have been trying to close the Victoria/Nanaimo route forever. The passenger trains to the East only depart from Vancouver 3 times a week { yes, a week, not per day}. To add insult to injury you Via doesn't even serve Calgary! You can't get to Calgary by train, not even from Edmonton. This of course means Regina is also not served.
The service in the West is strickly for tourism, not for the residents.

greyhound should be most economical way to travel. Maybe also check out coachCanada.

http://www.coachcanada.com/coachcanada/

Via rail is a farce in Canada.

What about old HSR projects:
- Quebec-Montreal-Ottawa-Kingston-Toronto-Hamilton-Windsor (Detroit) ?
- Montreal-Boston-New York-Washington DC ?
- Toronto-Hamilton-Bufffalo-New York ?

They had a Toronto-London-Chicago train with Amtrak, but it was cancelled a year ago. So if you want to travel from Chicago to Montréal by train, the only way to go is by Amtrak from Chicago to Detroit, make it across the border yourself, then Viarail from Windsor to Montréal. I'm not sure about Amtrak, but if you are a student and travel often, you can buy 3 return tickets at a time, and get a discount with fares comparable to that of greyhound, which is around $90CAD, I think. The trip from Windsor to Montréal would take 10 hours. I myself travel between Montréal and London (2 hours closer) quite a lot, and I would tell you I much prefer the train than the bus because they have a lot more legroom and you can walk around the train to stretch out. But it's just personal preference.

Eomer: The Chrétien government did have a very pro-train transport minister, and they were about to invest in HSR (or at least upgrade the existing tracks between Windsor and Québec). Then Martin took over and cut much of the funding to Viarail, citing that Viarail was involved in the current political scandal.