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Manitoba

Beautiful Manitoba - a paradise within Paradise itself and also the 4th largest province in Canada. It is called the "Keystone Province" due to its location between East- and West Canada and has a population of 1,139,000 - most of whom are evidence of the earlier attraction of this area to settlers, farmers and explorers.

Provincial Flower

Its national flower is the Prairie Crocus (Anemone Patens), also known as the Pasque Flower, which blooms in Easter when the snow melts and is therefore a beautiful herald of the coming spring. Its petals are mauve, its centre bright yellow – it is a flower that astounds with its own capability of solar heating. As the sun shines on the petals, the light is reflected toward the bright yellow stamens and pistils which warms up, aiding the development of pollen as well as seeds.

And as beautiful as the Prairie Crocus and as bountiful as the province’s geography, Manitoba’s capital city, Winnipeg, is the 4th largest city in Canada and a historic boomtown, reminiscent of the early splendor of this province. It still boasts with an elegant abundance of old estates as well as a number of fine mansions.

History

As the last of the ice age glaciers retreated, the first ancestors of the modern First Nations peoples settled onto the furtive land of what we know today as the province of Manitoba. Evidence of their presence can be seen in pottery shards, arrow heads and other artefacts that were left behind. They consisted of a number of tribes that today include the Ojibwa, Sioux, Cree, Dene and Assiniboine peoples.

Yet they were not the only tribes to inhabit the Manitoba region as others followed with the commencement of trade in 1611 when Henry Hudson became the first European to sail into Hudson Bay. Still, the first European to reach central Manitoba only arrived a year later in the shape of Sir Thomas Button. Other explorers soon followed including Pierre Gaultier de Varennes and Sieur de la Vérendrye who explored the area to further French trading-interests which resulted in a large Franco-Manitobains population still present today.

Originally Manitoba was only an 18th of its current size and grew in size by acquiring land from the bordering Northwest Territories. In 1870 Manitoba was declared a province.

Geography

Located in Western Canada, Manitoba borders North Dakota (U.S.) and Minnesota (U.S.) to the south, Saskatchewan to the west, Ontario to the east and Nunavut to the north. Of Manitoba's total land area, forests take up almost 50% while the rest of the land is dedicated to towns, cities and farming. In fact, Manitoba's agricultural development is only found in the southern parts of the province with sunflower seeds, potatoes and dry beans making up the most prominent agricultural produce. In addition, cattle-farming takes up almost 35% of rural areas.

Yet perhaps more related to the extreme beauty of Manitoba is its vast expanse of lakes. Of the more than 110,000 lakes within the Manitoba province, Lake Winnipeg is its largest, and also the tenth largest freshwater lake in the world. Most of Manitoba's lakes and rivers that feed into the lakes constitute some of the few remaining unspoilt sources of water, adding further weight to the beauty of this province.