Ways to wind down Finish summer strong with these fun, relaxing options Take 5
By: Conrad Sweatman Posted: 5:00 AM CDT Friday, Aug. 21, 2026

Late summer can feel neither here nor there.

As on a Sunday night, a certain back-to-school or -work melancholy sets in. The big Manitoba festivals have come and gone. You’re starting to take a reckoning of all the craft beer and food-truck calories you’ve sopped up for two months, without having done as much hiking, canoeing or yard work as you promised yourself.

The wind begins breathing threats of fall, but the golden colours, jack-o’- lanterns and corn mazes aren’t here yet to reassure you of fall’s dusky pleasures. Instead, on a perfect 22 C day, you find yourself having flashbacks of Winnipeg winter nights colder than Mars.

Are we being overly depressing? Absolutely.

Late summer can be a pathological mindset, but it’s arguably the best season. The grass is always greener in July, though this year’s summer brought punishing heat and an historically destructive storm. The big summer fests were stellar, if a little busy, while late season offers more discreet charms that shouldn’t be taken for granted.

From the city’s best ice cream spots to a Manitoba road trip bingo, our Summer Series has covered almost every Manitoba activity iconically and vibrantly summer. Let’s look at a few quieter, sometimes underappreciated, things to do this time of year that make Manitoba a great place to be in late August and September.

Sky-watching

With Manitoba’s minimal light pollution, flat landscape unbroken by skyscrapers or mountains and a favourable latitude for seeing aurora borealis, Prairie skies deserve their reputation as among the world’s most spectacular.

And as the Manitoba Museum tells us, in its fun recent Manitoba Skies online article: “August brings darker skies to Canadians after the long twilights of July. This makes it a perfect time to see our Milky Way galaxy arcing across the sky from overhead to the southern horizon.”

Early autumn is also famous for its “harvest moon” — so named because farmers once relied on their brightness to work into the night while gathering crops. As Manitoba Skies also informs us, Aug. 27 promises a full moon and lunar eclipse, which should mean something close to a “blood moon,” glowing richly with copper colours.

 

Taking the water bus

Owing to debris and strong currents on the Assiniboine River, Winnipeg Waterways had to delay launching its water-bus service until August this year.

It was worth the wait, because the 10-metre vessel has to be the most charming bus service Winnipeg has to offer — welcoming pets, bikes, strollers and up to 30 passengers for scenic trips along the Assiniboine and Red rivers, with stops at The Forks, Hugo, Norwood and Stephen Juba Park.

The water bus runs Wednesday through Monday from 1 p.m. to 8:15 p.m., and riders can buy single fares, unlimited day passes, unlimited three-day passes and unlimited monthly passes.

“The amount (of time) that we get to spend on the water is just so luxurious and we just want to share that with folks,” Will Belford, co-owner of Winnipeg Waterways, recently told the Free Press.

“It’s cooler than when you’re walking around on the pavement, it’s quieter than walking down the street and you get to see critters — deer and beavers and muskrats and all sorts of birds and stuff like that. It’s just so nice.”

 

A day trip to Lake Winnipeg

Cottagers sometimes get competitive about Lake of the Woods versus Lake Winnipeg. The former, a 2 1/2-hour drive from Winnipeg into Ontario, has its vast expanse of islands to explore, majestic Canadian Shield and rarefied aura with its “royal” yacht club and pockets of million-plus-dollar cottages populated by dynastic Prairie families, Torontonian elite, NHL hockey players and a few Hollywood stars.

But Lake Winnipeg, deservedly the most famous of Manitoba’s 100,000 lakes, offers other wonders, such as dunes that stretch over 10 metres high, an abundance of soft sand beaches and a breathtaking oceanic quality, with its tens of thousands of square kilometres of relative open water.

There are a few more-or-less enclosed cottage communities, but Lake Winnipeg continues to evolve along fairly accessible and multicultural lines — with beach towns easy to visit from Winnipeg, enmeshed in the region’s histories of Icelandic, Ukrainian and Mennonite settlement and Indigenous fishing and trade.

Fewer mosquitoes, less chance of sunburn and probably less traffic — late August is the perfect time of year to hit places like Gimli, Grand Beach, Lake Winnipeg, Patricia Beach or Hecla looking for afternoon swimming, public beaches, vinarterta, pickerel, and, if you’re into it, nude sunbathing at Beaconia Beach.

 

Nuit Blanche

Starting just after the fall equinox on Sept. 26, Nuit Blanche is one last fling with a summer-ish downtown festival.

The all-night celebration-of-art party may be a little more party than art, with DJs, flowing liquor and dozens of installations of a quasi amusement party variety. But few Winnipeg events inject such an energetic jolt into the city’s art spaces, drawing tens of thousands to dozens of venues.

While hipsters gravitate toward the more underground and art-centric events on the downtown’s periphery, party central is the Exchange District, with Old Market being probably shining brightest with flashing LEDs, video projections and interactive digital art.

 

After-work drinks at the Beer Can

On a Friday or Saturday night in July, the queue for the Beer Can, the annual outdoor pop-up bar at 1 Granite Way, practically snakes around the block with early 20-somethings.

But it’s not always youthful revelry at TBC, which is open to children during daytime and early evening hours. After work is an especially busy time, as downtown professionals descend upon the city’s most atmospheric patio to drink under a lush canopy of trees.

You may notice prominent local politicians, civil servants and businesspeople among the after-work crowd, which can make conversation spicy. But TBC has a pretty laid-back energy overall. Ties come off and craft beers are guzzled to the strains of DJ JPQ’s yacht-rock vinyl collection.

With a decent weather forecast for the next couple of weeks, now’s the time to take in TBC before it closes for fall in late September or early October.

 

conrad.sweatman@winnipegfreepress.com