The first time I saw the Northern Lights – Aurora Borealis– I was lying on a beach in Ontario’s Killbear Provincial Park.

Beams of light swirled gracefully across the sky, curlicuing and filigreeing the night. Lime and pink, green and hints of indigo. A watercolour masterpiece that moved.

A lazy beach stint is fun, but sometimes you want more. Here are a couple of unique educational vacations when you want to move from looking to learning:

1.    Stay at a Subarctic Research Station

Canada’s got great air – and now we can prove it. The World Health Organization (WHO) gathered stats on outdoor air quality from more than 1,000 cities in 91 countries around the world. Canada ranked third, just behind Estonia and Mauritius.

It’s a walk on the wild side like no other. And now the EdgeWalk at the CN Tower in Toronto has been awarded the Guinness World Record for the “Highest External Walk on a Building”. 

Here are five more activities to put the wonder back in winter. Click here for the first five:

1. Poles fit for a prince

Less than 30 minutes from downtown Québec City, Parc national de la Jacques-Cartier is a dramatic landscape of mountains and steep-sided glacial valleys. The most spectacular is 550 metres (1,800 feet) deep with the Jacques-Cartier River winding along its base through forests of birch and sugar maples.

 Every ski resort tries to offer something novel, but Big White, near Kelowna, British Columbia, gets bragging rights for the coolest, strangest and altogether gnarliest new sport this ski season: snowbiking.

 Trust an adventurous Quebecker to come up with yet another way to play with adrenalin in mid-winter. Just 30 minutes from Québec City, at the foot of Mont-Sainte-Anne, caving enthusiast Marc Tremblay created the brand new sport of ice-canyoning – abseiling down the vertical face of a frozen waterfall.

Canada’s wild landscapes have inspired generations of artists, none more so than Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. They became synonymous with our lonely lakes, fall foliage and snow-covered fields and tundra.