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Toronto Star
05-06-2025
- Toronto Star
This national park in Canada is a stargazer's dream, with pristine dark skies and a chance to see northern lights
Canadian Travel Only in Canada is a new travel series that acts as a love letter to the bucket-list destinations and experiences in our beautiful country. Look for the Only in Canada series every week. The sun casts a pink glow, melting into the prairie panorama of rolling green hills and endless plains. It's quiet here — oh so quiet, except for the rustling sagebrush bending to the wind's whim, and the coyotes yipping in the distance. Soon, a few twinkling stars emerge in the darkness, then thousands of them and eventually millions. They're so bright, they illuminate the seemingly infinite night sky. Peering up in awe, you can't help but feel both trivial yet inextricably, peacefully connected to the universe. This is Grasslands National Park, in southwest Saskatchewan near the Montana border. A remote, wide-open landscape spanning 730 square kilometres, this was designated a Dark-Sky Preserve by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada in 2009. And it's considered 'the darkest Dark-Sky Preserve in Canada,' according to the Canadian Space Agency. There's nearly zero light pollution. In technical terms, it measures 1 (the lowest possible score) on the Bortle scale of night brightness. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Visitors to Grasslands National Park may see constellations, meteor showers, the aurora borealis and more. Nicholas Ypelaar Grasslands keeps its skies so dark by restricting light use, and ensuring any necessary lights cast reddish hues in a downward direction — all efforts to avoid disrupting the nocturnal wildlife here, including owls, bats and swift foxes. 'The feeling of vastness and connection to the sky — it's comforting, like being wrapped in a blanket of sky, with the wind at your ankles,' describes stargazing enthusiast Nicholas Ypelaar, an interpretation co-ordinator at the national park. He's a recent Ontario transplant drawn by Grasslands' night skies and birds. 'You never know what you might see, but you always see something exciting.' Within Canada, Grasslands is the largest intact swath of endangered mixed-grass ecosystem — the country's most threatened and least protected ecosystem. The park's rich biodiversity includes more than 30 at-risk species of flora and fauna, all of which depend on this rare environment. Grasslands National Park's diverse wildlife includes approximately 400 to 500 bison, a keystone species here. Jenn Smith Nelson Bison graze the blue grama grasses. Prairie rattlesnakes and northern scorpions, greater short-horned lizards and swift foxes call this place home. More likely, though, you'll spot bounding pronghorn antelopes or scurrying badgers, or be entertained by the greater sage grouse's elaborate courting rituals. This is also the only place in Canada where black-tailed prairie dogs, that charismatic, chatty species, exist. Beyond the pristine skies and rare wildlife, history also sets this park apart: 'The darkness is important,' says Ypelaar, 'but only here do you have a full, unobstructed, 360-degree view where you can follow in the footsteps of humans who have been here for millennia, once guided by the night sky.' Grasslands has remained largely unchanged since its first inhabitants, the A'aninin, followed migrating bison to the park more than 10,000 years ago. Later, other Indigenous communities, including the Nakoda, Nehiyawak, Niisitapi, Lakota and Dakota, would follow, making this their seasonal ancestral home. The park's rich Indigenous history is still evident today, through thousands of undisturbed pre-contact sites, artifacts and over 20,000 tipi rings. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW By day, travellers can explore the park's dramatically different landscapes, including the prairie grasslands of the West Block, and the rugged hoodoos and badlands of the East Block. By evening, elevated areas like 70-Mile Butte or the Eastend trail offer especially beautiful views as sunset turns to nightfall. A view from the Valley of 1000 Devils Trail. Grasslands National Park is vast and varied in its landscapes. Tourism Saskatchewan 'On a clear night, the Milky Way stretches from one horizon to the other, becoming part of the landscape,' says Ypelaar. Gaze longer and you may see constellations, meteor showers, the aurora borealis. You might even glimpse colourful airglow — static bands of streaking light — which is rare to observe with the naked eye. Spring and fall are peak times for swirling aurora at the Two Trees and Belza day use areas, with summertime ideal to spot the Milky Way's central arch. Bring binoculars or a modest telescope to look for further celestial marvels, such as star clusters, nebulae and galaxies, including Andromeda. What really excites amateur and professional astronomers is the chance to observe deep-sky objects listed in the Messier Catalogue, a sort of bible for stargazers. 'Stargazing is a beginner-friendly hobby. You don't have to be an astronomer to enjoy these sights,' declares Ypelaar, who suggests picking up a star map at the park's visitor centre as a starting point. 'It's an iconic experience in the province.' Jenn Smith Nelson is a Saskatchewan-based travel writer who considers Grasslands National Park her favourite place in the province.
Toronto Star
24-04-2025
- Toronto Star
Want to sleep over at one of Canada's national historic sites? You can at these castle-like landmarks across the country
Canadian Travel Only in Canada is a new travel series that acts as a love letter to the bucket-list destinations and experiences in our beautiful country. Look for the Only in Canada series every week. Victoria's Fairmont Empress, famously surrounded by gardens full of tulips and roses, sits on what might be the most enviable piece of real estate in all of Canada. Perched above the Inner Harbour in full view of British Columbia's Parliament buildings, the neo-Gothic hotel was able to snag the best spot in one of the country's most picturesque cities through sheer longevity: It opened in 1908. The Empress, currently privately owned but managed by Fairmont, wears its history proudly. The extra-wide, sweeping stairways were built for porters to haul steamer trunks from the Inner Harbour to the guest rooms, and archival photos of visiting British royals are sprinkled around the hallways. Wildly popular traditional tea services are still held in a hall fit with original woodwork and ornately carved ceilings. Even more extraordinary, the Empress is not unique within Canada. Within a day's drive to the east, you'll find the Fairmont Banff Springs, a resort inspired by a Scottish baronial castle, boldly rising out of the Rocky Mountains. In southern Alberta, there's also the lesser-known Prince of Wales, which appears seemingly out of nowhere on a hill in Waterton Lakes National Park. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW The Fairmont Empress first opened in Victoria, B.C., in 1908. Fairmont Empress In Winnipeg, you've got the Fort Garry Hotel near the Forks, and in Quebec City the fortress-like Fairmont Le Château Frontenac commands attention from its clifftop location, adding to the vintage character of its Old Quebec quarter. These hotels don't just look historic — they've all been designated national historic sites of Canada, in recognition of their architectural significance and contributions to the emergence of Canadian tourism. Of course, one cannot ignore that this history includes Canada's colonial past. The Banff Springs will always be a luxurious, European-style hotel built in a wilderness sacred to Indigenous Peoples, for instance, and Le Château Frontenac is named after a colonialist who helped defend New France's settlements. Generally, though, these hotels don't gloss over this past; storytelling elements scattered throughout the properties include plaques, history halls and galleries to create a fuller picture of their place within Canada's complicated history. The majority of Canadian hotels designated as national historic sites are part of the tradition of 'grand railway hotels,' primarily built in the 1880s up to the mid-1900s; many, though not all, now fall under the Fairmont banner. Opened in 1893, Le Château Frontenac in Quebec City was the first of Canada's grand railway hotels. Fairmont Le Château Frontenac The Empress, Le Château Frontenac and Banff Springs were all built by Canadian Pacific Railway, while the Fort Garry and Ottawa's Fairmont Château Laurier were created by the Grand Trunk Railway. The Fairmont Royal York in Toronto and Alberta's Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge are also considered grand railway hotels, though they aren't recognized as national historic sites. While it's fairly common knowledge that these hotels had a connection to rail travel, it's less clear why they ended up being so opulent and relatively concentrated in Western Canada. Kate Riordon, a reference archivist at Banff's Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, says that in the late 1800s and early 1900s many wealthy European travellers would land in Eastern Canada with visions of traversing the rugged west, and were further enticed by the soft landing and creature comforts of posh European-style hotels. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'Making something that seemed familiar architecturally out west made it easier for European visitors,' Riordon says. 'They were coming to the wilderness — but it wasn't totally wild.' The Prince of Wales was established in 1927 to help bring tourists into southern Alberta's Waterton Lakes National Park. Steve Allen/Envato For modern-day guests, these meticulously maintained hotels aren't just places to stay. They are destinations unto themselves, for both the history and the hotel operators' tendencies to offer high-end service. Although the room rates may be a splurge, you don't need to sleep over to stroll around the lobby or spring for a fancy cocktail at the bar. While the national historic site designation does not guarantee protection of the properties or the public's right to visit them, for the most part the hoteliers understand that these are tourist attractions, welcoming looky-loos to come in and purchase a refreshment or browse artifacts. Time seems to slow down in these historic venues, and it doesn't hurt that most of them have been modernized just enough to ensure the expected degree of luxury and comfort. Yes, the room layouts tend to be quirky, the doors a bit creaky, and the ghost stories more plentiful than some may prefer, but all of this is just part of the unique old-school ambience, a rarity in a country as (relatively) young as ours. Elizabeth Chorney-Booth is a travel writer and historic hotels enthusiast based in Calgary. She has stayed at some properties described as a guest of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, which did not review or approve this article.
