Hi Alz,
I don't know about a house swap but you can have a really inexpensive holiday over here, if your not sure whereabouts you may like then surely touring a few different areas would be the way to go, we did this several times, just book your flights and a hire car, plan where you'd like to visit and just go! We stayed overnight in various motels, there's lots of them, you don't have to book just turn up and it's really cheap, in 2004 we had 3 weeks touring Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, we did about 6000 kms and saw some absolutely beautiful locations, cost all in was less than 1500 quid! If you definitely want to look at just one area you can rent condo's or cottages by the week/month, just trawl the net. On another reccie trip we had a 2 bed condo for a month for $1200 near Blue Mountain Resort in Collingwood ON.
Canada is such a vast country with a varied landscape and you may find as we did, your holidays for several years turn into reccie trips. We haven't been anywhere we didn't like although some places do feel very isolated, so choose your route carefully as it would be a shame for your first experience to give you a false impression!
