It will be free to enter Gros Morne National Park this weekend to mark the Newfoundland park and UNESCO World Heritage Site’s 50th anniversary.

Métis leader Louis Riel, the Father of Manitoba, never actually lived in the white wooden house with forest green trim in Winnipeg that’s a national historic site bearing his name. But his mother did and, in a rather sombre twist, his body lay in state here for two days after he was hanged in 1885 for treason.

As people meander through Lower Fort Garry National Historic Site, engaging with costumed interpreters acting like they’re living in a booming fur trade complex in the 1850s, I only have eyes for the inanimate stone walls.

Bellevue House National Historic Site has a new management plan that promises an evolving understanding of the controversial legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada' first prime minister and the politician who helped to create residential schools that forcibly separated Indigenous children from their families and sent them to boarding schools where they were often abused and humiliated.