While vacationing in Edmonton, Alberta's provincial capital I spent a day exploring nearby attractions like the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village.

This living-history museum, with 30 authentic buildings, is unlike any we've ever visited. The interpreters portray real people of the era, vividly depicting Ukrainian immigrant life in eastern rural Alberta from about 1892 to 1930.

While you're there, try the traditional Ukrainian pirogies (pan-fried dough stuffed with meat, cheese or vegetables). They're delicious!

The Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village is located about 30 miles east of Edmonton on Trans-Canada Highway 16, less than 2 miles east of the entrance to Elk Island National Park; watch for signs. It's open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily from the weekend of Victoria Day (celebrated on the Monday before May 25, which is May 24 in 2004) through Labor Day, and weekends only from then until mid-October.

Admission is about $6 for adults, $3 for youths ages 7 to 17 and $15 per family in U.S. dollars.

For details, call 1-780/ 662-3640 or browse at tprc.alberta.ca/museums/historicsiteslisting/ukrainianvillage/default.aspx.

Until I saw chocolate potato cake on a hotel menu while visiting Prince Edward Island, I'd never heard of such a dessert, much less tasted it.

But after savoring the moist and somewhat nubby cake topped with a hard chocolate glaze, I had to know what in the world inspired such a delicious dessert. And locals soon pointed me in the direction of O'Leary and the PEI Potato Museum, home of the world's largest collection of potato artifacts. [...]

I'd always heard that Quebec's Eastern Townships region is very beautiful. Even so, its charming village of North Hatley, sort of a French version of New England, exceeded my expectations on a recent trip.

"Picturesque" hardly begins to describe North Hatley, a dollhouse of a village nestled on the [...]

HECLA ISLAND on Lake Winnipeg, in the province of Manitoba, is a paradise set amid the unspoiled splendor of Hecla/Grindstone Provincial Park.

Icelandic farmers, who immigrated here after the Mt. Hekla volcano eruption destroyed their homes in Iceland, settled the island in the mid-1870s. The restored century-old fishing village of Hecla looks just as it did in the 1870s. [...]

The Mennonite Heritage Village Museum in Steinbach, Manitoba offers an intriguing look at the life of early Mennonite settlers.

The 40-acre site includes a windmill… a semlin, or sod house… an 1881 church that my father's family attended… and an 1892 house-barn. As you stroll the grounds, you might see [...]