I've been following up on this with my own bank here in Canada. It's taken 5 emails and even then, it's seemed pretty secretive. To quote the TD Canada Trust on-line rep: "There is a fee charged to your TD Canada Trust account when a PLUS system withdrawal is made. The fee is $3.00 per withdrawal, which is debitted from the account immediately. In addition, foreign bank machines may take a fee of their own for providing this service; my understanding is that many bank machines will inform you of the fee and give you the option of cancelling the transaction before it is completed. However, I cannot confirm if or when this additional fee may be applied or how much it might be." She further states: "Using a bank machine directly attached to a branch may have a lower fee than a free standing machine in a hotel lobby." The final concern I had was what they mysteriously call a "conversion fee". Here's what I found: "there is a conversion fee of 2% (2.5% as of June 1, 2005) on foreign currency transactions. That is, 2% is added to the exchange rate."

The best suggestion she had was opening a highly-serviced chequing account which most banks offer. I suspect all banks, including those in the U.S., offer this type of account. In this particular case, the account carries a fairly hefty monthly fee ($24.95 CAD) but all ATM withdrawals are free (though it was never confirmed if there would be the foreign charges nor the infamous conversion fee). Among tons of other free services included in the monthly fee, Traveler's Cheques are also free with this account.