Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal … Winnipeg? Manitoba’s capital may not be a city that springs to mind when planning a trip to Canada, but it punches above its weight on the cultural and culinary fronts and is definitely worth taking a couple of days to explore.

Sitting at the geographical centre of North America, Winnipeg was once known as the gateway to Canada’s west. Thanks to its importance as a central transport hub, by 1912 it had become the country’s richest city – but the completion soon after of the Panama Canal, and the later advent of cheap trans-continental flights, put paid to those glory years.