- Manitoba enjoys more than 2,300 hours of bright sunshine each year.
- Winnipeg has held the “Slurpee Capital of the World” title for sixteen years in a row, gulping 400,000 of the semi-frozen soft drinks per month.
- The name Manitoba is believed to come from the words “manitowapow” (Cree) or “manito bau” (Ojibway), which mean “straight of the spirit” and refer to an island in Lake Manitoba Narrows where a “manitou” or “great spirit” beat his drums.
- Churchill, Manitoba, is known as the “Polar Bear Capital of the World” for being the most accessible place to view polar bears in the wild.
- There are more than 120 public and private golf courses in Manitoba, with some of the most scenic found in Hecla, the Whiteshell and Riding Mountain National Park.
- Souris, Manitoba, is famous for its 184 m (604 ft) free-suspension footbridge over the Souris River.
- The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is Canada’s oldest and North America’s second oldest dance company.
- The Winnipeg Art Gallery has the world’s largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art, including over 9,000 works from sculpture, prints and textiles to paintings.
- The first million-dollar hockey player was Bobby Hull, the “Golden Jet”. He played for the Winnipeg Jets of the World Hockey Association in 1972 and received his cheque at a public celebration at the famous Winnipeg intersection of Portage and Main.
- In addition to producing coins for Canada, Winnipeg’s Royal Canadian Mint has minted currency for 60 countries around the globe.
- Spruce Woods Provincial Park is home to an ecological rarity in Manitoba – a desert-like area known as Spirit Sands featuring 30 m sand dunes.
- People have been meeting at The Forks in Winnipeg for thousands of years. The famous junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, once a gathering place for Manitoba’s first peoples and later a bustling fur trading post, is now a popular 21st century attraction.
