Can you find places serving it on cask? I know it's more popular up here, We have two restaurants in my city that always have one cask tap going, it's obviously not always a bitter but they rotate through. Toronto has a number of places with permanent casks as well (hell I was just at their cask festival) but Ontario brewers still follow German and English traditions to a much greater extent than American brewers do in my experience (which is why on the flip side, most of our IPA's don't stack up to the best American ones).
My brother in law lives in Sheffield and he and his friends are "real ale" snobs, I've done pub crawls with them and it is amazing; I get where you're coming from, but there are places around that can replicate it pretty well.