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Assiniboine Park and Zoo was established in Winnipeg in 1904. The park, designed by Frederick Todd, was the centrepiece of the city’s expanding urban park system and remains an example of a combined public park and zoo.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Reid Campbell · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
From the 1540s to the early 1600s, up to 2,000 Basque men and boys sailed each year from southern France and northern Spain to the Strait of Belle Isle to hunt right whales and render their blubber into oil for European markets. Red Bay, Labrador, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2013, is the most extensive and best-preserved whaling station of its kind.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Cephas · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Landscape of Grand Pré in Nova Scotia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2012, bears exceptional testimony to a farming settlement the Acadians created in the 17th century beside some of the world’s highest tides. They reclaimed land from the sea with dykes, aboiteaux and drainage, under a community-based management system still in use today.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Mykola Swarnyk · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
About 300 million years ago, the eastern shore of Chignecto Bay, on the Bay of Fundy, was a tropical wetland forest near the equator. The Joggins Fossil Cliffs in Nova Scotia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2008, hold the best and most complete known fossil record of land life in the “Coal Age,” including the first reptiles in Earth’s history.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Gorob · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Miguasha National Park, on Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, preserves fossils from about 370 million years ago, when the coast was a tropical estuary. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999, it is described as the world’s most outstanding fossil site for illustrating the Devonian “Age of Fishes,” including lobe-finned fish linked to the evolution of four-limbed animals.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: James St. John · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
In 1931, the Rotary Clubs of Alberta and Montana proposed uniting Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta and Glacier National Park in Montana as the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, the first such park in the world. It was meant to promote peace and goodwill between nations and to underline the international nature of wilderness; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Royalbroil · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Old Town Lunenburg, on Nova Scotia’s south coast, is the best surviving example of the British colonial policy of founding settlements on a pre-designed “model town” plan, with straight streets and square corners. Of at least 21 North American settlements laid out this way, none survives in such pristine condition; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
The Historic District of Old Québec, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, covers 135 hectares, and close to half its buildings were built before 1850. Québec has retained almost all its fortifications, a defining feature of the historic district.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: DXR · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Dinosaur Provincial Park in eastern Alberta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, preserves fossils from about 75 million years ago, when the area was a coastal plain where about 35 species of dinosaur lived. Its badlands are outstanding for the number and variety of high-quality specimens representing every known group of Cretaceous dinosaurs.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Hirgax · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), off the Yukon coast, became the principal base for American whalers in the western Arctic in 1890. Parks Canada’s commemorative plaque records a community of about 2,000 whalers and Inuit during the peak winter of 1894–1895.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Carina Gsottbauer · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Meshikamau-shipu, Innu-aimun for “river to Meshikamau,” is a travel route of about 330 kilometres through rivers and lakes in Labrador, from Sheshatshiu to the Meshikamau area. Its camp sites, some dating back 3,500 years, portages and burial places reflect Innu land use and a way of life based on mobility until permanent settlement in the 1960s.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Photo by Fred C. Sears. Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada (PA-148593). · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
New Brunswick’s first Official Languages Act, enacted on 18 April 1969, made it Canada’s first and only officially bilingual province. The Act made English and French the province’s two official languages and recognized the right to receive provincial government services in either.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Doug Kerr · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context
Pimachiowin Aki, Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) for “the land that gives life,” is a boreal forest in Manitoba and Ontario under Indigenous stewardship. Inscribed in 2018, it is Canada’s first mixed (natural and cultural) World Heritage property and testifies to the Anishinaabe tradition of Ji-ganawendamang Gidakiiminaan (Keeping the Land).
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Timkal · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Writing-on-Stone / Áísínai’pi, in Alberta’s Milk River Valley, is a sacred site where the Blackfoot (Siksikáítsitapi) left engravings and paintings on the sandstone walls. The landscape remains sacred to the Blackfoot and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Nodin Cutfeet · Photo licence: CC BY 4.0 · Credit & context
SG̱ang Gwaay Llnagaay (Nan Sdins), on an island at the southern tip of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, bears unique testimony to Haida culture. The 19th-century village keeps the remains of 10 houses and 32 memorial or mortuary poles, and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Yvrsigmatech · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump (estipah-skikikini-kots in Blackfoot), in southwestern Alberta, is the biggest, oldest and best-preserved buffalo jump in North America. Plains peoples drove bison over its cliffs for perhaps 5,700 years, until the mid-19th century; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Thomas Fuhrmann · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The subarctic Torngat Mountains of northern Labrador are an Inuit homeland, rich in stories and traditions. Torngat Mountains National Park protects a landscape of glacier-carved fjords and some of Earth’s oldest rocks.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Paul Gierszewski · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Mistaken Point, on the southeastern tip of Newfoundland, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016. Its fossils, 580 to 560 million years old, include the world’s oldest-known examples of large, architecturally complex organisms.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Alicejmichel · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was shaped by colliding continents and glaciers. Its Tablelands are a rare outcrop of the Earth’s mantle pushed upward about half a billion years ago.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Dunmaghlas · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
In 1885, the government created a 26 km² Hot Springs Reserve around the Cave and Basin hot springs in Banff. On 23 June 1887, the reserve was expanded to 665 km² and became Rocky Mountains National Park, the first national park in Canada.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Sovernigo · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
York Factory, a Hudson’s Bay Company depot on Hudson Bay in Manitoba, was a vital fur trade hub for more than 250 years. It served as the gateway to the vast interior for British trade goods, settlers and soldiers, and lies on Treaty 5 territory.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Travel Manitoba · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
The Mackenzie River is Canada’s longest river. Statistics Canada reports that it stretches 4,241 km through the Northwest Territories, Alberta and British Columbia and drains an area of 1,805,200 km².
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Daniel Case · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Wood Buffalo National Park, spanning the Alberta–Northwest Territories border, is the largest national park in Canada. It protects the world’s largest herds of wood bison and vital whooping crane habitat, in the traditional territory of the Dene, Cree and Métis.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Naturedata · Photo licence: CC0 · Credit & context
Nahanni National Park Reserve in the Northwest Territories covers 30,000 square kilometres and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. At Náįlįcho (Virginia Falls), the South Nahanni River drops twice the height of Niagara Falls.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Dwayne Reilander · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context