Frustration is growing among some voters, who were met with lineups when they tried to cast their ballots in the 42nd general election on Monday morning.

Polling stations in Newfoundland opened at 8:30 a.m. local time (7 a.m. ET), and stations in the rest of Atlantic Canada opened half an hour later.

Polls opened at 9:30 a.m. ET in Eastern Canada, at 8:30 a.m. local time in Central Canada, at 7:30 a.m. MT in the Rockies, and at 7 a.m. PT on the West Coast.

Each station will be open for 12 hours on Monday.

In some parts of the country, early-risers were met with long lines at their local polling stations.

The waits were so long that at least one Halifax couple decided not to cast their ballots.

"I've never, ever seen it this bad," Donald Lawson told CTV Atlantic. "You get fed up."

"We've been standing there waiting for 10 minutes," Lawson's wife, Shirley Lawson, said. "We're in our 80s. It's ridiculous."

While lines outside some polling stations extended down the sidewalk, Elections Canada also experienced a surge in visitors to its website.

The high volume of traffic temporarily overwhelmed the agency's server on Monday morning, but the site has since returned to normal.

According to Elections Canada, approximately 26.4 million Canadians are eligible to vote in Monday's election, including the major federal party leaders.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau cast his vote in his riding in Papineau, Que. On Monday morning, alongside his wife and children.

Ten days earlier, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair cast his ballot in his riding of Outremont, Que., taking advantage of the first day of advance polling on Oct. 9.

Of the pool of eligible voters, approximately 3.6 million have already cast their ballots in early polls over four days on Thanksgiving weekend.

That's a 71 per cent higher turnout than in advance polls in the last election, in 2011. That year, 2,077,000 voters showed up during three days of advance voting.

In total, 61.1 per cent of eligible Canadians voted in 2011, up 2.3 percentage points from 2008, when an all-time low of 58.8 per cent of voters showed up to the polls.

Canadians hoping to cast a vote on Monday must bring qualifying ID that includes proof of address to one of Election Canada's 20,000 polls across the country.

For those who don't have proof of address, Elections Canada also accepts two pieces of ID and an oath from a second person who can confirm the voters' address.

Under the Canadian system, electors are tasked with selecting which local candidate they think will best represent their riding on Parliament Hill.

Election day comes after 78 days of intense campaigning, during which 1,792 candidates ran for 338 seats in the House of Commons.

On Sunday, the major party leaders gave their final pitches to Canadian voters.

Trudeau appealed to voters in Western Canada, aiming first to convince Albertans to vote Liberal after years of his party failing to capture any seats in the province.

In his final campaign stop in North Vancouver, B.C., on Sunday night, Trudeau told supporters, "This government is out of ideas, this government is out of touch and, in just a few hours, if we work hard, this government will be out of time."

Meanwhile, at NDP rallies in Toronto and Montreal, Mulcair told supporters that his party is the best option to defeat Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.

He also invoked memories of popular former party leader Jack Layton, who led the NDP to an "orange crush" in Quebec in 2011.

"We're going to get it done," Mulcair told supporters in Toronto.

In his own stops in the Greater Toronto Area and Abbotsford, B.C., on Sunday, Harper warned voters against change, and urged them to give his government a fourth mandate.

"The other guys want to take us back to the days where they could get their hands on as much money as possible and spend it on bureaucracy and special interests. We have been building a Canada over the past few years that they do not like," he said.

For more information on how to vote on Monday, visit the Elections Canada website.

With files from The Canadian Press