Much of it filmed off the coast of Halifax.

And where in the world was Morgan Freeman's shack in "Unforgiven"? Just up the road from Calgary in the Drumheller Valley -- a moonscape-ish backcountry that's also passed for Egypt, Persia, Armenia and East Africa in several film and TV productions.

4. Air

In a recent national air quality study by the World Health Organization, Canada placed third for the cleanest air on the planet

Until the first and second placers (Estonia and Mauritius) are covered in CNN Travel's "better than anywhere else" series, we direct your breath to Canadian cities -- which average a relatively pristine 13 micrograms of PM10 particles per cubic meter.

5. Humor

Canadians are hilarious -- sometimes even intentionally -- as a disproportionate number of comic heavyweights like Jim Carrey,gritty, cheesy, polyglycerol polyricinoleate-y one.

7. Ski country

Sitting across the border from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Vermont would be intimidating to most countries hawking their own powdery slopes.

Not Canada, which boasts some of the best reasons to haul your skis or snowboard a little farther north.

In the West, there's Lake Louise, plunked right in gorgeous Banff National Park, and a ring of powder havens throughout eastern British Columbia. Whistler Blackcomb is one of the world's leading ski resorts, getting a "best in North America" nod from SKI Magazine last year.

In the East, there's Quebec's beer-commercial-fun Laurentians -- where après-ski needs no translation.

Heli-skiing? That all started in the Canadian Bugaboos, which remains one of the best places to do it.

8. Nation branding

No national symbol is as ubiquitous as Canada's maple