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Skoki Lodge in Banff National Park, photographed in 2007.
CA-K341Culture & sport

Skoki Ski Lodge, Banff National Park

Skoki Ski Lodge in Banff National Park, opened in 1931 by a group of ski enthusiasts using timbers cut nearby, was one of the earliest backcountry lodges built for skiers in Canada’s Rocky Mountain parks. It is a fine example of the rustic log building tradition and a rare link with the early days of backcountry skiing.

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Photo: Jim Baerg · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Dominion Observatory in Ottawa, photographed in 2022.
CA-K340History

The Dominion Observatory, Ottawa

The Dominion Observatory Complex, built between 1902 and 1954 on the grounds of Ottawa’s Central Experimental Farm, is an outstanding collection of early-20th-century scientific buildings. It supported practical astronomy across Canada in surveying, time service and geophysics, and reflects the federal government’s vision of national scientific institutions in the capital.

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Photo: Harleyd613 · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Newfoundland National War Memorial in St. John’s, photographed in 2008.
CA-K339History

The Newfoundland National War Memorial

The Newfoundland National War Memorial in St. John’s, unveiled in 1924, commemorates the Dominion of Newfoundland’s contributions to the First World War. An allegorical female figure stands above bronze figures representing the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, Royal Naval Reserve, Mercantile Marine and Forestry Corps, beside the harbour where soldiers departed and returned.

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Photo: Nilfanion · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The S.S. Klondike in Whitehorse, Yukon, photographed in winter 2012.
CA-K338History

The S.S. Klondike sternwheeler

The S.S. Klondike, a shallow-draft sternwheeler launched in 1937, carried freight and passengers on the Yukon River until 1955, shortly before commercial navigation on the river ended in 1957. Restored by Parks Canada in Whitehorse, it commemorates inland water transportation in the Yukon.

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Photo: Anthony DeLorenzo · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Flower beds and a path at the Jardins de Métis (Reford Gardens), Quebec, photographed in 2015.
CA-K337Culture & sport

Jardins de Métis (Reford Gardens)

The Jardins de Métis (Reford Gardens) in Quebec were created by Elsie Reford from about 1926 to 1958. Their English-inspired design includes specialized gardens, winding paths and an allée royale. The site’s favourable microclimate supports a diverse collection of plants.

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Photo: Marc-Lautenbacher · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Bar U Ranch National Historic Site, Alberta, seen from the interpretive centre in 2011.
CA-K336Economy & trade

The Bar U Ranch and Alberta ranching

The Bar U Ranch in the Alberta foothills was established in 1882 under the federal grazing lease policy and played an important role in Canada’s ranching industry. Owned in turn by the North-West Cattle Company, cattleman George Lane and Patrick Burns, the historic ranch represents Alberta ranching from 1880 to 1950.

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Photo: David Mathew · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica in Ottawa, photographed in 2017.
CA-K335Culture & sport

Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica, Ottawa

Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica in Ottawa, first planned as a parish church in 1839, became cathedral of the new Catholic Diocese of Bytown in 1847 and a basilica in 1879. Its twin spires, Nincheri stained-glass windows and carved sanctuary reflect an exceptional design inspired by the French Gothic Revival, integrating classicism and French-Canadian church architecture.

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Photo: Avramescu Marius · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
A reconstructed building at the Fortress of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, photographed in 2016.
CA-K334History

The Fortress of Louisbourg

The Fortress of Louisbourg, on Cape Breton Island, was established by France as a critical fishing, trans-shipment and supply port and served as administrative capital of Île Royale, with a government, garrison and civilian population. Between 1713 and 1768 it was a place of profound significance in the struggle between France and Britain for empire.

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Photo: KenCLeBlanc · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Cabot Tower on Signal Hill, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, photographed in 2013.
CA-K333History

Signal Hill and Marconi’s 1901 transmission

Signal Hill, overlooking the Narrows into St. John’s Harbour, was important for defence and communications for three centuries, with fortifications built as France and Britain battled for the continent. In 1901, Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless transmission atop the hill, a landmark in global communications history.

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Photo: KristaKals · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
A commemorative plaque at the Nazrey African Methodist Episcopal Church in Amherstburg, Ontario, photographed in 2015.
CA-K330History

Nazrey AME Church, Amherstburg

In 1848, refugees from American slavery built the Nazrey African Methodist Episcopal Church by hand to serve Amherstburg’s growing Black community. The stone chapel is perhaps the building type most representative of Underground Railroad communities, and it is associated with Bishop Willis Nazrey, first leader of the British Methodist Episcopal Church, a wholly Canadian denomination founded by Underground Railroad refugees.

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Photo: Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
Griffin House in Ancaster, Ontario, photographed in 2010.
CA-K329History

Griffin House, Ancaster

Griffin House in Ancaster, Ontario, was the home of Enerals Griffin, a Black immigrant from Virginia who settled there in 1834, and remained in his family for 154 years. A rare surviving example of early Upper Canadian vernacular housing, it shows the complexity of the Black experience: it was more elaborate than most refugees’ homes and stood in a mainly Euro-Canadian community rather than a planned refugee settlement.

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Photo: Graeme MacKay from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
The site of Fort Amherst, Prince Edward Island, photographed in 2013.
CA-K325History

Skmaqn–Port-la-Joye–Fort Amherst

Skmaqn–Port-la-Joye–Fort Amherst, on Prince Edward Island, was the seat of colonial government from 1720 to 1768, first under the French and then the British. It was a port of entry and a place where Mi’kmaq and French leaders renewed their alliance. In 1758, British authorities used Fort Amherst to organize the forcible removal of more than 3,000 Acadians from the island.

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Photo: Larry from Charlottetown, PEI, Canada · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
The Sunken Garden at Butchart Gardens, British Columbia, photographed in 2006.
CA-K322Culture & sport

Butchart Gardens, a quarry turned garden

Butchart Gardens, on the Saanich Peninsula about 21 kilometres north of Victoria, is an internationally known attraction open to visitors since 1904. The gardens occupy a former quarry beside Tod Inlet and were developed under the guidance of Jennie Butchart between 1904 and 1939.

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Photo: Warfieldian · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Houses in the ghost town of Val-Jalbert, Quebec, photographed in 2008.
CA-K319Economy & trade

Val-Jalbert, a pulp and paper company town

Val-Jalbert, near Lac Saint-Jean in Quebec, was founded in 1901 around a pulp and paper mill. The mill’s closure in 1927 led to the village’s gradual abandonment. Its mill, institutional buildings and wooden workers’ houses were conserved and developed as an open-air museum in the early 1960s, reflecting growing interest in heritage preservation.

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Photo: Mathieu BROSSAIS · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
The Gulf of Georgia Cannery in Steveston, Richmond, British Columbia, photographed in 2019.
CA-K318Economy & trade

The Gulf of Georgia Cannery, Steveston

The Gulf of Georgia Cannery, a large complex of wooden fish-processing and canning buildings on a wharf at the mouth of the Fraser River in Steveston, British Columbia, recalls the West Coast fishing industry from the 1870s on. Its buildings, built and modified between 1894 and 1964, stand in what was historically the most important fishing village on the West Coast.

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Photo: Ymblanter · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Massey Hall in downtown Toronto, photographed in 2017.
CA-K317Culture & sport

Massey Hall, Toronto’s concert hall since 1894

Massey Hall, a red-brick concert hall in downtown Toronto that opened in 1894, was a gift to the city from industrialist Hart Massey. Toronto’s major concert hall for much of the 20th century, it is one of Canada’s most important cultural institutions and renowned for its outstanding acoustics.

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Photo: Arild Vågen · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Gur Sikh Temple (Abbotsford Sikh Temple), British Columbia, photographed in 2012.
CA-K314History

The Abbotsford Sikh Temple, 1911

The Abbotsford Sikh Temple in British Columbia, built in 1911 and used continuously since, is the oldest surviving example of the temples that played a crucial religious, social and political role in the pioneer phase of Sikh immigration to North America. Its simple false-front wooden building adapts Sikh traditions to a Canadian architectural form.

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Photo: Jacobsimmonds · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
The Vancouver Japanese Language School and Hall on Alexander Street, Vancouver, photographed in 2016.
CA-K313Language & names

The Vancouver Japanese Language School

The Vancouver Japanese Language School, in the city’s Japantown, was the first and largest Japanese language school in Canada, and its 1928 Art Deco building is a rare surviving interwar language school. Of the thousands of properties the federal government confiscated from Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, it is one of very few known buildings returned to its owners after internment.

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Photo: Cordovanorth · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Africville Monument at Seaview Memorial Park, Halifax, listing the community’s founding families, photographed in 2017.
CA-K311History

Africville, a site of remembrance

Africville, on Bedford Basin in Halifax, was a Black community settled in the 1830s and 1840s, with its own school and church. Its houses were demolished in the 1960s in the name of urban renewal and the land became Seaview Park; the clearance became an enduring symbol to Black Canadians of the need to defend their institutions, and the site is now a place of remembrance and pilgrimage.

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Photo: Coastal Elite from Halifax, Canada · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
The burial mound at L’Anse Amour, Labrador, photographed in 2012.
CA-K309Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

L’Anse Amour, a 7,700-year-old burial mound

L’Anse Amour in southern Labrador, one of the largest and longest-used Indigenous habitation sites in Labrador, has the oldest known First Nations funerary monument in North America, built about 7,700 years ago over a young person’s burial. The grave goods include the earliest known toggling harpoon in the world.

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Photo: Pierre Gingras · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
A stone tablet dated 1717 from the French mission chapel at Meductic, as recorded around 1897.
CA-K307Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Mehtawtik (Meductic), a Wolastoqey village

Mehtawtik (Meductic), on the west bank of the Wəlastəkw (Saint John River) in New Brunswick, was the principal settlement of the Wəlastəkwiyik (Maliseet) from before the 17th century, valued for hunting, fishing and fertile soil where families planted corn. The village site has been under the waters of the Mactaquac hydroelectric dam since 1968.

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Photo: W.O. Raymond. · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The front of the Tse’K’wa (Charlie Lake) cave, British Columbia, photographed in 2017.
CA-K305Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Tse’K’wa, 12,500 years of human presence

Tse’K’wa, a cave near Fort St. John, British Columbia, in Dane-zaa traditional territory, holds a rare sequence of soil layers recording human settlement and environmental change from the end of the last glacial period, 12,500 years ago, to 1,000 years ago. Its lowest layers contained Palaeo-Indian stone tools, bones of late glacial animals, evidence of bison hunting and two nearly complete raven skeletons.

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Photo: Breckenheimer · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Dredge No. 4 in the Klondike, Yukon, which carries his commemorative plaque, photographed in 2012.
CA-K290Economy & trade

“Klondike Joe” Boyle and large-scale gold mining

Joseph Whiteside “Klondike Joe” Boyle (1867–1923) arrived in Dawson in 1897 and soon saw the potential of large-scale mining, returning in 1909 to head one of the Klondike’s largest mining operations. Known as “The King of the Klondike,” he left in 1916 to aid the Allied war effort and was decorated by several European nations for his work in Russia and Romania.

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Photo: Anthony DeLorenzo from Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
Mabel Hubbard Bell, about 1917 (Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress).
CA-K289History

Mabel Hubbard Bell, organizer and philanthropist

Mabel Hubbard Bell (1857–1923), deaf since childhood, married Alexander Graham Bell in 1877 and gave crucial support to his research, including at their Beinn Bhreagh estate in Cape Breton. In Baddeck she helped establish the Young Ladies’ Club in 1891, the first Montessori classes and the earliest home and school association in Canada.

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Photo: Harris & Ewing · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context