Canmore, Alberta

Long considered a gateway to the parks, youthful and outdoorsy CANMORE has begun to compete with Banff, 28km away, for visitors, and it's a decent alternative if you'd rather stay in a less touristy place and can live without Banff's huge selection of restaurants and shops. Canmore began life in 1883 as a supply point for the CPR railroad, before booming as a mining centre after the company was delighted to discover coal in surrounding hills. It quickly became a boom town and lived off mining for almost a century until the last mine closed in 1979. Things looked bleak, but not for long as it was soon decided that the town would host all the Nordic skiing events for the 1988 Calgary Olympics, which gave the town its impressive Canmore Nordic Centre. On the back of this and thanks to the town's splendid location between rows of towering mountains and outside the tight restrictions of the national parks, the town grew. Over the last twenty years its population has tripled to 11,000 and it's expected to double again in the next twenty. Occasional references to it as the "Aspen of Alberta" overstate the case, but certainly many young adventurous types and artists are relocating here to escape cities. It's a good place to visit as well as live, with good hiking, climbing, biking, skiing and fishing on the fringes of town – and opportunities for many more activities, including caving and rafting, not much further away.