The Simpsons are heading to Canada -- not that they know where that is exactly.

In an upcoming episode to air next February, Bart, Homer, Marge, Lisa and Maggie leave their cartoon community of Springfield and take a bus across the border to Toronto.

When they step off the bus, they are greeted by a Mountie, a hockey player and a sasquatch.

"It's so clean and bland!" exclaims Marge. "I'm home!"

In the episode, Bart gets a crush on a young girl named Greta, who tells him that her father is shooting a movie in Toronto.

"You're going to Spain?" Bart asks.

His dad, Homer, is just as clued out.

"Why should we leave America to visit America Junior?" he asks.

It's not surprising that the long-running animated series is finally taking a trip to its northern neighbours, given that there a number of Canadian writers on the Simpsons.

Tim Long of Exeter, Ont., and Joel Cohen of Calgary were among several writers who worked on the Toronto episode.

"Basically there are 20 writers in a room sharing ideas, so who knows who came up with a lot of that stuff," says Simpsons executive consultant Antonia Coffman.

Simpsons creator Matt Groening also has links to Toronto. His pre-Simpsons comic strip, Life in Hell, got picked up in the Toronto alternative weekly Now.