Winter (December – February)
Embrace “Winterpeg” – Manitoba’s capital hosts a season of festivals to light up winter months. Expect fireworks, fiddling contests, sleigh rides and snow sculpture during the Festival du Voyageur, western Canada’s largest winter festival, held in Winnipeg’s Saint Boniface French quarter.
If you don’t have the follicles for the festival’s beard-growing competition (people register clean shaven two months before), there are plenty of novel ways to keep warm. Beat the average -16C chill by ice skating Winnipeg’s Red River Mutual Trail. Devised by competing international architects with a penchant for the peculiar, warming huts flank the world’s longest frozen river trail. Previous winning designs include a giant golden Cubist bison.
Winter highlights, clockwise from top: dog racing at the Trappers’ festival; RAW:almond; a warming hut on the Red River Mutual Trail
Don’t miss the chance to fuel-up at RAW:almond, a pop-up riverside tasting room where starry chefs cook up warming treats for winter months. Or, in January, celebrate the snow at Falcon Trails Resort’s Snowdance festival, which combines live music with skiing, horse skijoring (where a skier is pulled by a horse), curling on a frozen lake and more.
In Manitoba’s prairie country, wilder fun is to be found, with bison, moose and black bears resident at Riding Mountain national park. Stay in a winterised oTENTik – these A-frame cabins sleep up to six at Wasagaming campground and are easily accessible by car. They have wood burners to keep things cosy, and fire pits to warm star-watching evenings, as wolves howl across the icy surface of Clear Lake. During the day, enjoy the winter wonderland on cross-country skis or snowshoes. There are trails for all abilities, and look out for moose, elk and coyotes.
And remember to look out for those lights, when solar particles collide with the Earth’s atmosphere creating the smoky green-whites of the aurora borealis. February is prime time for seeing them but in Churchill – in the north of the province – the technicolour displays are visible some 300 nights of the year. So it’s usually simply a case of how to see the spectacle – from a mobile Tundra Buggy or toasty viewing lounge are two options. Or try watching the lights from an aurora dome, a plexiglass “bubble” that gives you the impression of being outside immersed in the dancing skies, but with the comforts of shelter and heating.
Spring (March – May)
At the beginning of March, you have another way of viewing the northern lights – in Dan’s Diner, a pop-up restaurant across the frozen Churchill River, offering possibly the remotest culinary experience there is. Also in March, you will also be able to see the Hudson Bay Quest, a daredevil 220-mile dog-sledding race from Gillam across frozen expanses to Churchill.
Head out in a Tundra Buggy to view the northern lights; or watch the epic Hudson Bay Quest
To view that classic Manitoba prairie vista and get within metres of North America’s largest mammal, visit FortWhyte Alive. Home to a herd of the province’s emblematic bison, this urban nature preserve also sits conveniently under the migratory path of Canada geese. Watch thousands of these two iconic Canadian species gathered in one space, and learn how the bigger beasts have shaped Manitoba’s history.
With over 100,000 lakes and waterways, finding a “middle of nowhere” fishing spot in Manitoba is not a chore, but Shining Falls, a floatplane-accessed lodge on an island in the Atikaki provincial wilderness park, is a bona fide bucket-list experience. Stay in authentic log cabins and take guided fishing tours to catch a monster, 1-metre northern pike – known locally as the “king of the north”.
Fly-in fishing trips are the toast of spring in Manitoba, with lodges opening up for the season across the province. Aikens Lake Wilderness Lodge, set on a sandy beach on the north-east shore of the lake, offers fishing for pike and lake trout, while family-run Kississing Lake Lodge gives you access to weed beds teeming with pike, secret walleye spots, and a special “trout hole” 25 metres (80 feet) below the surface. Set in some of Canada’s most pristine wilderness areas, these luxe lodges – with fine dining and plush private cabins – are unique retreats, even if you don’t have a passion for pike.
Summer (June – August)
Northern Manitoba offers opportunities for kayaking, hiking, biking and flying
Summer is the time to go on a sub-Arctic summer safari. Explore the tundra terrain of North Seal River, a sprawling watershed that stretches from north-west Manitoba to Hudson Bay. Gangler’s North Seal Wilderness lodge has over 100 boats touring 12 river systems in its private 2m-hectare (5m-acre) allocation of virgin North Seal wilderness. You can kayak and canoe, hike, bike and fly in search of bears, caribou and wolves. Or hike Manitoba’s Spirit Sands “desert” at Spruce Woods provincial park, where you can explore the remnant of a sandy delta of the Assiniboine River.
Point-to-point canoe-camping is the classic Canadian pursuit, and in Nopiming provincial park you can spend days on the waterways in this “entrance to the wilderness” – the Indigenous Anishinabe name for the region. Twin River Travel offers canoe breaks for all abilities, from a weekend camping trip, to a five-night white-water adventure on the Manigotagan River, which travels through pristine boreal forest and offers more advanced paddlers the chance to ride class I, II, and III rapids.
Take a safari on foot to see polar bears in fields of fireweed
Up in Churchill, you can see bears and belugas on the Hudson Bay coast before it freezes over for winter. Churchill Wild’s legendary on-foot polar bear tours put you at eye level with the world’s largest land carnivore. Summer season safaris offer the unparalleled spectacle of seeing these noble-looking creatures frolicking in fields of bright pink-purple fireweed.
Plus there’s the chance to be among the thousands of beluga whales that congregate each season in Hudson Bay and in the mouth of the Churchill River. To get up close and personal with these beautiful mammals and their sea environment, take a kayak or stand-up paddleboard tour. Alternatively, take a trip on a Zodiac inflatable boat – you will be at sea-level in amongst the action.
On its five-day summer adventure boat tour, Lazy Bear Expeditions offers you the opportunity to see both polar bears and whales, as well as arctic hare, arctic fox and over 200 species of nesting and migrating birds. The tour goes up the coast of Hudson Bay to northern river estuaries, where thousands of beluga whales mate and give birth, and feed on schools of caplin, arctic char and brook trout. While on the shore, you will see polar bears in their summer environment, swimming and walking around the rocks and wildflowers.
Autumn (September – November)
In October and November, polar bears gather in record numbers around Hudson Bay, waiting for sea-ice hunting grounds to form. Bear tours aplenty go out of Churchill with VIP views from Tundra Buggy Lodge, a series of tundra trucks coupled together, where you can bear spot from your bunk bed; or better still, take the lodge’s annual November expedition into Cape Churchill in Wapusk national park – you will see lots of bears there as they wait for the ice to freeze.
This is the season to enjoy all nature’s bounty. Tuck into a fall supper, a classic harvest tradition bringing in the best of the season’s crops, from cruciferous veggies to corn, and wild rice traditionally harvested by Indigenous communities. The bar at the cool contemporary Lakehouse boutique hotel in Clear Lake Country, Riding Mountain national park, serves smoothies bursting with boreal herbs and berries, while the Lakehouse Lounge serves house-made “cowboy” beef burgers. Work it off fat-biking around the lake.
Manyfest is a three-day party in Winnipeg
Winnipeg’s Manyfest in September celebrates summer’s end with a three-day street party. Expect movies in the park, a farmers’ market stocked with golden fall goodies, a lounge serving up stellar local craft beers, and Food Truck Wars, where the best of Manitoba’s streets eats come together for a culinary showdown.
Winnipeg is a pioneering prairie outpost for cutting-edge Canadian culture. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has won awards for its iceberg-shaped building, virtual reality and multimedia exhibits, and its magical 360-degree film of the stories of four generations of Indigenous people.
Complete a memorable tour of the capital with an evening at the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, showcasing everything from crowd-pleasers to classics, year-round. Or head to the city’s lively Exchange District and take your pick from this historic ‘hood’s range of theatres and cinemas, with restaurants and bars aplenty for pre- or post-show fare.
Explore Manitoba in all seasons with Canadian Affair
