Fellow Canadian applying to mostly US programs in the Match this year. I haven't visited anywhere, and to be honest I never intended to (the paperwork was too much of a PITA and it would be super expensive compared to just doing externals in Canada). My school requires that you schedule externships in fall of 3rd year, and I had no idea what internship programs I would be wanting in 4th year at that time. I think with Covid a lot of places are being more flexible about the not visiting thing, and a lot of academic places don't really "require" it anyway.
What I've been doing is just emailing every single program I'm considering and chatting to the program director, and getting information to contact the current interns. I've made a pretty thorough list of questions and I would send a portion of those questions to each intern (usually the same questions to several so that I always had more than one opinion for each one). It's been really time-consuming, but I feel that it has given me a pretty good idea of what I would be getting myself into.
For networking, just seeing who around my institution has ties to places I want was useful. I found out that a locum here was from my #1, so I made a point of cornering them in the hallway one day to introduce myself and chat (which then led to them telling me to email them so they could pass my name along to the internship committee). And being fairly open with the faculty about where I was thinking I wanted to go resulted in a lot of suggestions from them on people I should reach out to. Also just chatting with faculty/residents/interns to see where they've been and which places they would or wouldn't recommend. If you are friendly and social in the clinic, the networking just automatically comes with it.
