Confederation Center

The confederation of Canada happened in Charlottetown. In 1864, 23 representatives from the five eastern provinces excluding Newfoundland and Labrador met here to discuss forming a federal union. A competition began in the 1950s to build the Confederation Centre of the Arts and over 40 submissions were entered. In 1964, Read more

Acadian Museum

The Acadian Museum in Moncton is run by the University of Moncton. It has to be visited with forts Beauséjour and Lawrence to understand the context of the conflict between Acadian, the French, the British, and indigenous Mi’kmaq people in the mid-18th century. The experience is largely dependent on reading Read more

Charlottetown, PE

Charlottetown is the provincial capital of the smallest province in the confederation, Prince Edward Island, which is several times smaller than Vancouver Island. Though small, it played the biggest part in confederation by hosting the meeting that led to the confederation of Canada. In 1964, the city built a replica Read more

Agriculture & Food Museum

What’s a farm doing in the middle of Ottawa? It’s the  Central Experimental Farm attached to the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum. It’s about a third petting zoo, a third agricultural science, and a third agricultural innovation. After looking at honey and bees inside the museum, visitors are treated to Read more

2022 IPRA Canada Finals

The International Professional Rodeo Association based in Alberta held its 2022 Canada finals in St. Tite, a small town of 3,000 in Quebec. I’ve been to the annual Festival Western de Saint Tite in 2021 when it first reopened after the pandemic. The biggest difference between the western festival and Read more

Château Dufresne

Not actually a castle in the classical European sense, but still a grand 20th-century home. Casa Loma in Toronto is the only true castle remaining in North America. The museum in the ornate Beaux-Arts home in Montreal records the life of the wealthy Dufresne family and how the rich lived Read more

Écomusée du fier monde

A very, very local museum all in French in the heart of Montreal‘s Centre-Sud community is a must-see to learn about how the industrial revolution impacted work conditions and leisure in the city. I can think of no better-suited province than labor-friendly Quebec to interpret the issues of child labor, Read more

Boréalis

Effectively the Trois-Rivières museum of industry, Boréalis is housed inside the former water treatment plant of Canadian International Paper. There used to be four paper plants in the city with the CIP being the last to close. A long long time ago, it was powered by the water that ran Read more

Barbie Expo

The Montreal Barbie Expo is the largest collection of Barbie dolls in the world. With over a thousand dolls and free admission, this unassuming exposition in a small shopping centre is not to be missed. Apart from the newer Fashionista dolls featuring figurines in wheelchairs and with prosthetic legs, there Read more