Winnipeg

A museum opened in 2014, its twisted glass shell rising like a cloud to the Tower of Hope. Glowing ramps clad in alabaster link the galleries, and climbing them from the bottom finishes at a lookout high in the tower.

Where the two rivers meet, a gathering place for Indigenous peoples over thousands of years, old railway sheds now house a market. Once the January ice is thick enough a long skating trail opens on the river, with skates for rent at the market.

A national historic site keeping over twenty blocks of terracotta and brick warehouses from the grain trade boom of the early 1900s. Film crews often use it as a stand-in for old Chicago or New York, so you may stumble onto a set with its signs swapped.

An Arctic exhibit at the Assiniboine Park Zoo, where a glass tunnel beneath the sea ice lets polar bears swim right over your head. By day the tunnel packs with people, so many head straight here the moment the zoo opens.

A glass pyramid on the southeast edge of the city where every circulation coin used in Canada is struck. The tour looks down through windows onto lines pouring out coins, and guides explain that coins for other countries are made here too.

A neoclassical building topped by the gilded Golden Boy statue on its dome. Speak from dead centre in the Pool of the Black Star room under the dome and your voice booms back, so the tour guides have each person stand there in turn.

The cathedral of the French speaking district of Saint Boniface, where only the stone front of the old church survived the 1968 fire and now stands before the new one. The cemetery in the forecourt holds the grave of the Metis leader Louis Riel.

A nature centre built around lakes made from old cement quarry pits, with a few bison grazing the prairie. At sunset in September and October, thousands of migrating geese drop onto the water all at once.

The Inuit art centre added to the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2021, its white stone skin making it look like an iceberg. A glass vault on the ground floor shows thousands of carvings on their shelves, stopping visitors before they even reach the galleries.

A winter festival of about ten days in Saint Boniface each February, honouring the French Canadian canoemen of the fur trade. Huge snow sculptures stand across the park, and inside the tents people stamp their feet to fiddle music.

Visitors can climb aboard the Nonsuch, a life-size replica of a 17th-century ketch, and walk its deck. A planetarium and a science gallery share the building, so a combined ticket covers all three in one visit.

A garden in Assiniboine Park gathering the bronzes of Ukrainian-born sculptor Leo Mol. The old schoolhouse he used as a studio was moved here too, and a pondside bench takes in sculptures and flower beds together.

A Hudson's Bay Company post on the Red River about 30km north, with stone buildings from the 1830s. In summer, costumed interpreters re-enact the fur trade and blacksmith work.

A broad wetland a 40-minute drive north, with boardwalk trails and an interpretive centre whose deck overlooks the water. During spring and autumn migration tens of thousands of waterbirds stop over, so binoculars are worth bringing.

A footbridge over the Red River linking The Forks and Saint Boniface. Cables fan out from a single leaning pylon, which is lit at night and visible from across the river.