The Most Beautiful Waterfalls in Canada
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful waterfalls in Canada are Niagara Falls, Montmorency Falls and Takakkaw Falls. The list covers 5 waterfalls. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Canada's waterfalls are a legacy of the ice. Retreating glaciers left behind hanging valleys, escarpments and a land drained by huge rivers, from the Great Lakes to the mountain torrents of the Rockies. Volcanic plateaus in British Columbia and the remote canyons of the north add falls of very different character, many of them in national and provincial parks.
At Niagara Falls, the Horseshoe Falls, largely on the Canadian side, carry most of the river's water in a vast curving curtain. Montmorency Falls, at the edge of Quebec City, drops 83 metres, about thirty metres higher than Niagara. In Yoho National Park, Takakkaw Falls, fed by the Daly Glacier, takes its name from a Cree word meaning it is magnificent. Helmcken Falls in Wells Gray Park plunges 141 metres into a bowl carved from layers of volcanic rock. Far north in Nahanni National Park, Virginia Falls is split by a rock spire and drops about twice the height of Niagara.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Niagara Falls | Waterfall | |
| 2 | Montmorency Falls | Waterfall | |
| 3 | Takakkaw Falls | Waterfall | |
| 4 | Helmcken Falls | Waterfall | |
| 5 | Virginia Falls | Waterfall |
01 Niagara Falls
Canada · 3.2 km from Niagara Falls43.080° N 79.071° W
Image by NeilMorrell from Pixabay Goat Island splits the flow into two falls with very different personalities: Horseshoe Falls curves and carries the bulk of the water, American Falls drops straighter and shallower over a jumble of rockfall debris at its base. That debris pile is itself part of the falls' history — engineers dewatered the American side completely in 1969 to study whether the rock behind it was stable, and stunts have run the other direction too, most famously Annie Edson Taylor going over Horseshoe Falls in a barrel in 1901 and, remarkably, walking away.
Did you know? Under a 1950 treaty, at least 100,000 cubic feet of water per second must go over the falls during daylight in the tourist season, and only half that at night.
02 Montmorency Falls
Canada · 9.4 km from Quebec City46.891° N 71.147° W
Wladyslaw · CC BY-SA 3.0 Today the falls are the centrepiece of Montmorency Falls Park, run by the Quebec parks agency Sépaq, and the site is built for looking from every angle. A suspension bridge spans the crest, so you can stand directly above the point where the river pours over; a long panoramic staircase of 487 steps descends the cliff face beside the fall, and a cable car links the base with the top. In summer the basin fills with spray and the park hosts an international fireworks competition. Winter is the stranger season: the mist freezes onto everything around the falls and builds a great cone of ice at the foot, the pain de sucre or sugarloaf, while ice climbers work the frozen walls nearby.
Did you know? A suspension bridge built across the river beside the falls in 1855 collapsed in April 1856, just days after it opened, killing three people.
03 Takakkaw Falls
Canada51.500° N 116.473° W
Image by 20413274 from Pixabay The falls owe their fame to the railway. Yoho National Park began in 1886 as the small Mount Stephen Reserve around the railway town of Field. In 1896 the German explorer and mountaineer Jean Habel travelled up the valley of what is now the Yoho River and was overwhelmed by Takakkaw and the scenery around it. Within a few years the Canadian Pacific was advertising the Yoho Valley as "greater than Yosemite" and sending visitors up from its hotel at Field with Swiss mountain guides. In 1902 the reserve was enlarged to take in the valley and renamed Yoho. Today the park is part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site.
Did you know? On average about 11 cubic metres of meltwater per second pour over the falls.
04 Helmcken Falls
Canada51.954° N 120.177° W
Image by ArtTower from Pixabay Railway surveyors passed to the north in the 1870s without noticing the falls. On 24 July 1913 a provincial land surveyor, Robert Henry Lee, walked west along the Murtle from his camp and came out at the brink. He wrote to the Premier, Sir Richard McBride, proposing the name McBride Falls. Three weeks later the reply came that the falls would instead honour John Sebastian Helmcken, a Hudson's Bay Company doctor who had arrived in Victoria in 1850 and helped bring British Columbia into Confederation in 1871. Helmcken died in 1920 at 95, never having seen the falls himself. In recent decades the frozen walls of the amphitheatre have become a centre of extreme ice climbing.
Did you know? As early as 1918 the falls were studied as a power source for Kamloops, and in the late 1940s Alcan weighed them before choosing Kitimat instead.
05 Virginia Falls
Canada61.607° N 125.737° W
Josh Steinitz · CC BY 2.0 The falls received their English name in 1928 from Fenley Hunter, a businessman and explorer from Long Island who travelled the river for the Geological Survey of Canada and named the falls after his daughter. The valleys downstream have darker stories. A series of unsolved deaths in the past gave the park area its nickname, "Headless Valley". Nahanni National Park Reserve, which protects the river, was among the first four natural sites inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1978. In 1987 the South Nahanni was designated a Canadian Heritage River.
Did you know? Downstream place names such as Deadmen Valley, Headless Range and Funeral Range still record the prospectors' grim stories.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful waterfalls in Canada?
- On our list, Niagara Falls ranks first, followed by Montmorency Falls and Takakkaw Falls.
- Is Montmorency Falls higher than Niagara Falls?
- Yes. Montmorency Falls near Quebec City drops 83 metres, about 30 metres more than Niagara, though Niagara carries far more water.
- Which part of Niagara Falls is in Canada?
- Most of the Horseshoe Falls lies in Ontario, Canada. The American Falls and the small Bridal Veil Falls are on the United States side.
- What does Takakkaw mean?
- Takakkaw comes from a Cree word that is usually translated as it is magnificent.
- How many waterfalls are on this list in Canada?
- The list covers 5 waterfalls.