I used to live in Edmonton from 2009-2014, and my impression is that government surplus occasionally has some good stuff, but it's usually not "old" enough.
I used to do an internship at Alberta Computers for Schools, and I would occasionally see old machines like 486 laptops, but unless an employee went to take them out of the recycling bin, they were just recycled.
There's a "calgarycomputerwholesale" on ebay that seems to have some good stuff occasionally.
Vancouver is a bit better, FreeGeek used to be the cheapest place but they closed now, Hackery has a lot of stuff but it's a bit more expensive, and the Computie on Marine Drive is expensive on ebay but you can bargain with them just like any other Chinese operated shop.
========The Pacific Ocean========
China is a very different story, as shipping is extremely cheap so most deals are done online, prices are greatly distorted by antique speculators/collectors, and old imported computers are significantly overpriced, Apple >= Western/Japanese 8/16bit (C64/Atari/Spectrum/MSX/NEC PC-98/Fujitsu FM) >= RISC servers/workstations(except Loongson) >= Western/Japanese PC compatible > domestic Chinese brands.
In the 2000s, China used to be a gathering place for overseas e-waste, with electronics recyclers from developed countries shipping their computer scraps as material for recycling. This created an extremely cheap market for electronic parts in China, and UV erasable EPROMs are still common and cheap, as the Book8088 designer showed me, with so many vintage chips that you could build a house. In a sense, those computers sent for recycling become Book8088/Hand386/Pocket 386 etc and trained the electronic engineers behind.
But the most unfortunate thing is that due to the general lack of knowledge about western 8/16bit computers among Chinese enthusiasts, most of the C64/Atari/Amiga/Spectrum and other computers that came into China in the 2000s were disassembled, and it wasn't improve until I started to write a column on Zhihu to introduce more information about western 8bit computers to the Chinese readers.
======Tidbits of information=======
I heard from the owner of Computie that China is no longer accepting e-waste, and Malaysia is taking over from China. I'm not sure if this is true, but I guess I should plan a trip to Malaysia.