Manitoba Guide and Deals

Deep in The Oakwood Café, a talented chef prepares contemporary Canadian dishes with tender cuts of beef, fresh vegetables, and complex sauces. The plentiful menu opens to breakfast options such as the Brizza, a flatbread pizza topped with eggs, cheese, and a complimentary alarm clock. As the day progresses, burgers, seafood, and pastas fill plates with chili peppers and rich mushroom sauces as sunlight cascades in through the windows.

For owners Clint and Angie Masse, A Maze in Corn isn't just a destination for outdoor adventure—it's an extended family. Since 1998, the Masses have gathered their own families and up to 100 staff members to create a safe, personable environment where visitors can navigate a winding corn maze, meander along on a hayride, or dole out Swedish massages to the pigs, kittens, and sheep in the petting zoo. Mr. Masse's mother embellishes the pumpkin barn with her decorative touches, and the duo's two sons spruce up the surroundings by mowing the grass and cultivating sweet corn.

Since 1948, Coronation Bowling Centre has been a hotspot for ball-rolling competition, housing eight wooden lanes with string pinsetters and computerized scoring. Couples, families, and friends revel in head-to-head contest at the lanes, where the lights stay on and bowlers battle one another and their viola teachers for the title of bowling champion. During the twilight hours, the facility succumbs to the colourful chaos of cosmic bowling, complete with fluorescent lights and moon dust. Between slings of the hand-size hole-less balls, guests can munch on popcorn or alternate snacking with sojourns to the full bar.

Inside a vintage studio, Cake-ology's playful bakers craft custom cakes entirely from scratch. They sandwich more than 11 butter cream icing flavours such as mocha, raspberry, cinnamon, and orange between two layers of cake flavours such as marble, red velvet, lemon, and spice. After baking, they decorate their creations with repeating butter cream swirls and stripes, or layer on colorful fondant to create cakes that look like dogs, cars, or a slightly bigger cake. In addition to full-sized desserts, they also mold batter into cupcakes and cakettes - morsels of cake mixed with butter cream and dipped in chocolate. To complement the gallery of colourful cakes, they also make daily-changing baked goods such as imperial cookies, caramel pecan bars, and date slices.

Sandi Knox, the co-founder of Body Balance, has devised her own set of workout DVDs and appeared on Breakfast Television to showcase her exercises. Along with co-owner Sheldon Gephter, she oversees a fitness studio that hosts group classes in latin-dance-inspired Zumba, kick-boxing workouts, and yoga. Their eclectic boot-camp workouts consist of cardio, circuit training, resistance training and more, rather than imitating traditional workouts in which everyone holds a squat until they fall asleep. Elsewhere in the facility, Eric Payment, the studio’s on-site massage therapist, kneads away aches from neck ailments and sports injuries on his memory-foam massage table.