Assiniboine Park

Assiniboine Park covers about four hundred and fifty hectares along the river and holds the city's zoo, an English garden, a conservatory and a sculpture garden dedicated to Leo Mol, a Ukrainian-born Winnipeg sculptor. The Journey to Churchill exhibit is the zoo's centrepiece: polar bears in a large enclosure with an underwater viewing tunnel, populated by orphaned cubs from Manitoba's north that cannot be released, under an arrangement with the province. The Leaf, opened in 2022, is a horticultural building with a tropical biome, a Mediterranean biome and an indoor waterfall of about twelve metres.

History

After the Winnipeg Public Parks Board was created in 1893, the city bought the land for the park in 1904, and the landscape architect Frederick Gage Todd, a former associate of Frederick Law Olmsted, planned it that year in the English landscape style, with open lawns, curving drives and groups of trees. From 1907 George Champion, the city's first superintendent of parks, carried on the work, and the park officially opened in 1909 as a rural retreat at the western edge of the city (Wikipedia, Assiniboine Park).

The main sights

• Journey to Churchill - polar bears with an underwater viewing tunnel.
• The Leaf - tropical and Mediterranean biomes with an indoor waterfall.
• The Leo Mol sculpture garden - bronzes in a formal garden setting.
• The English garden - formal planting along the Assiniboine River.

When to go

May to September for the gardens and outdoor zoo; the Leaf and indoor zoo areas work year-round, and polar bears are more active in cold weather. Winter is bitter but the bears enjoy it.

Before you go

The zoo and the Leaf are separate tickets on top of free park entry. Polar bears may be indoors or out of view. Summer weekends are crowded.

Nearby

The Forks lies east; downtown Winnipeg is beyond it.

Key facts