xtal_01 - (speaking as a tinkerer, not as a technician)
I don't think you will get the Canadian stations unless there are some tropospheric effects happening in your favor. I live on the north shore of Lake Ontario and only see US stations when tropospheric effects are on.
My TVFool We only get real channels 6, 11, 26, 27, 30 (attic installation, if outside we would get ch12 but it is another CTV station).
As a tinkerer, I have built a dozen antennas, wire bowties, tube bowtie, Hovermans,
Super Stealth Hawk, yagi, a few clones of Clearstream C2 & Winegard Freevision, loops and more. The best antennas I've found are the bowties, Hovermans and SSH. Initially I was using two SSH with ZZ4 reflectors. I'm currently using a mashup of a Freeform 4bay bowtie and a
Kosmic SuperQuad pointing west. I started with the FF4 but changed the bowties to the KSQ lengths to add a channel (real ch27).
An amplifier might stabilize the channels you have. I'm using the RCA TVPRAMP for our setup.
If you build an antenna, the SSH is quick to build and test. The KSQ takes more time to build but is a solid performer.
David