Even a global pandemic couldn’t knock Banff National Park off the top of the list of Canada’s most visited national parks. Rouge National Urban Park saw more visitors than ever before as urbanites looked for quick and close outdoor escapes. And a Quebec island that once served as a quarantine station for new immigrants, and is now a national historic site, enjoyed a summer surge in popularity.

Clattering down the plank-lined chute, the 14 bison were leaving the big city for the high plains. Penned into individual crates that were then loaded into two steel express railroad cars, they rolled west late in 1913 on a 2,000-mile journey that would prove more astonishing than it might have seemed.