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

Born and raised a down-to-earth Winnipegger, Hollywood movie star/writer Nia Vardalos (star and author of My Big Fat Greek Wedding andco-writer ofLarry Crowne with Tom Hanks) arrived home this past summer to make a movie, spend time with family and show her six-year-old daughter some family fun, Winnipeg-style. “It was like re-visiting my youth,” she says.

When Canadians think of Winnipeg’s famous downtown corner of Portage and Main it is usually to remark on the infamous winter weather.

It’s rare to be able to watch mother polar bears together with their cubs in the wild. One place you can experience that is Nanuk Polar Bear Lodge, a small Hudson’s Bay outpost south of Churchill, Manitoba.

Hot summer afternoon, sipping a Blanche de Chambly beer outside a bistro housed in a rough-hewn three-centuries-old building.

The glittering surface of the St. Lawrence River is visible from here – through a bunch of other historical and architectural gems – while up the narrow sloping street more tourists slip into boutiques and sip their own frosty beers.

Kids of all ages are looking forward to the grand reopening of the Manitoba Children’s Museum at The Forks National Historic Site on June 4, 2011.

Dubbed “The World’s Largest Kitchen Party” the Festival du Voyageur is highlighted with giant snow sculptures, outdoor fun, fantastic food and rousing concerts; great ways to celebrate the voyageur spirit and the joie de vivre the French settlers and fur traders brought to the area so many years ago.

Incongruously squatting on wild, road-less tundra on Hudson Bay’s shores in northern Manitoba is a massive white wooden building.

Come winter at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers—known as The Forks—the sound of laughter, stones on stones and blades on ice carries up in the cold air as teams in thick, colourful sweaters square off in a curling bonspiel and others begin their gliding journey down the

Slip into a baggy, rubber dry suit, slide over the side of a Zodiac into the icy waters of Canada’s Hudson Bay, and suck air through your snorkel as you try to still your racing pulse. Oh, yeah—and remember to hum.