Parks Canada and the 2010 Olympic Winter Games

Wonders of the World in Canada
Parks Canada and UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Since 1972 the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has recognized natural and cultural wonders around the globe, promoting their protection and preservation. New sites are nominated and added to this eminent list every year.

UNESCO’s World Heritage List of extraordinary wonders currently includes 15 sites in Canada, 10 of which fall under the management of Parks Canada. The first Canadian site to be listed was Nahanni National Park Reserve (Northwest Territories) a magnificent landscape of towering mountains, luxuriant forests, caves, hot springs, canyons, and crashing cataracts. This is pure wilderness, where running water remains the sole agent of change – there are no roads or human communities.

Not far from Nahanni National Park Reserve is the cluster of sites in Yukon and British Columbia known as the Kluane / Wrangell-St. Elias / Glacier Bay / Tatshenshini-Alsek World Heritage site. Part of a vast area protected internationally, most of North America’s tallest peaks are here, including Canada’s highest, Mount Logan. One of the largest ice fields outside the polar icecaps is also found here and three dozen major rivers drain the region.

Canada’s largest national park occupies an area larger than Switzerland on the Alberta/ Northwest Territories border, with the mighty Peace, Slave and Athabasca rivers flowing through it. Wood Buffalo National Park embodies everything that symbolizes Canada’s north. The park was established to protect the last remaining populations of bison. Some of the largest undisturbed grass and sedge meadows left in North America are here and today it is also home to the last remaining wild flock of endangered whooping cranes.

Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks is an ensemble of four national parks located in British Columbia and Alberta: Banff, Jasper, Yoho and Kootenay, adjoined by three B.C. provincial parks. Here is the iconic Canadian mountain scenery renowned around the globe, a visual smorgasbord of jagged peaks, ice fields, moraine lakes, conifer clad slopes, and glacial streams. The natural beauty is equally breathtaking in eastern Canada at Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland and Labrador. With dramatic fjords and coastal scenery creating stunning views, Gros Morne offers textbook illustration of plate tectonics and a veritable catalogue of geological evolution – the primary reason for the Park’s designation as a UNESCO site.

Waterton Glacier International Peace Park, bridging the Alberta-Montana border, represents and promotes the international cooperation required for the protection of wilderness – the first such park in the world. Its lakes and rivers feed three oceans and few areas can claim a diversity of ecosystems in such concentration. Mountains, grasslands, canyons and forests, with an extraordinary range of wildlife to match are what make this park worthy of protection. A 10,000 year Aboriginal history deepens its significance.

At L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site in Newfoundland and Labrador, the remains of a Viking colony, more than 1,000 years old, mark the site of the first known European settlement in North America. Archaeological excavations here have unearthed the remnants of eight buildings and hundreds of Viking artefacts. Although the colony was populated for less than a decade, it was here that the first iron works in the New World were established. Cultural heritage of equal importance is found on the opposite coast, at SGang Gwaay, in British Columbia. A UNESCO site since 1981, a vigorous Haida community once occupied what are now remarkable and haunting remnants of house frames and 32 mortuary and memorial poles. Unique in the world, much of the 19th century Haida village has been reclaimed by the forest, but what remains embodies their epic story of settlement and artistry.


The City of Québec was founded more than 400 years ago and The Historic District of Old Québec is recognized today as one of the most outstanding examples of urban heritage conservation on the continent. Most of the fortifications built between 1608 and 1871 have been retained, due in great measure to the persuasive power of Lord Dufferin, Governor General of Canada in the later part of the 19th century. The many towers, citadels and other defensive structures that have been preserved are now the foundation of the unique historic character of the city.

Canada’s newest cultural addition to the UNESCO list is the Rideau Canal in our nation’s capital. Military defence concerns following the War of 1812 prompted construction of the canal and a connection between Upper and Lower Canada was needed as an alternate to the St. Lawrence River. It was a daunting task: constructing a canal climbing 83 metres through 200 kilometres of swamp, rock and forest, and then dropping more than 50 metres to the city of Kingston. In harsh wilderness conditions over five summers forty-seven locks and fifty-two dams were built, most by pick and shovel. Ultimately, the canal’s military value was never tested but it remains the oldest continuously operated canal in North America and is today a national recreational treasure.

For more information about UNESCO sites in Canada, visit http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/progs/spm-whs/index.aspx.