The Best Fun Things to See, Eat and Do on a Weekend in Lethbridge, Alberta

CSL’s ultimate guide for the 10 Best Fun Things to See, Eat and Do on a Weekend in Lethbridge, Alberta

A group of farmers, small business owners, attractions and producers reveal an appreciation for the southern Alberta land that provides so much, and has for centuries.

WHERE TO EAT & DRINK IN LETHBRIDGE

Lethbridge has a rewarding food landscape with many local shops that utilize and promote local goods. “Since opening the shop we have seen how strong and close knit the small business community is,” say Milkman Milk Bar’s founders.

Best Things to Do in Lethbridge – Eat some Cheese: Crystal Springs Cheese

A range of European-style dairy products (cheese, milk, sour cream) made by the Beyer family since 2005, are on full display at their shop including the tangy-creamy feta that has won numerous awards, the stellar gouda, refined and creamy, available in a variety of flavours, and, sister company, Bles Wold’s, yogurt and cultured butter.

All the artisan cheese is made from A2 milk which lacks the sometimes tummy-troubling A1 beta-casein, but does not affect the taste. “The taste of the cheese comes mainly from the [cow’s] feed,” explains Harvey Beyer, distribution manager, whose brother, Theo, runs the family’s dairy farm, while another brother, Jacco operates the cheese factory. Snack on fries while taking a peek at production, or opt for a factory tour. This is cheese you’ll crave and you will be treated like family.

Best Things to Do in Lethbridge – Sip some unique Haskap wine: Little Gem Winery

An industrial-chic tasting room offering light fare and haskap wine in a convivial atmosphere is the brainchild of brothers Joel and Rick Mans and their friend Jordan Sinke, who produce a range of unique sippers from haskap cider (blended with apples from BC), to oak aged reserve red haskap wine (similar to Pinot).

The purplish-blue fruit is grown on the Mans’ Phoenix Farm along with potatoes, canola, triticale, and peas. Sinke credits the region’s irrigation system as key, “without that we would be just a dry Windy City.” Established in 2020, it is the only winery of its kind south of Calgary. “The majority of people had never heard of [haskaps]. We decided to make wine to sell our berries. Our goal was to make a distinct wine simply. We didn’t want to make a sweet fruit wine, as is often the assumption, we wanted a wine, similar to grape wine, but made using only the lowest intervention wine making methods,” explains Sinke.

Little Gem Winery Pairing Guide

Pick up Produce and have a bite: Broxburn Vegetables & Café

Paul de Jonge started farming in Lethbridge in the 90s. Today the farm, and greenhouses have expanded exponentially producing everything from Romanesco cauliflower, fresh tomatoes in every shade imaginable, sweet (or spicy) peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, strawberries, onions and much more.

You could spend hours picking fresh berries in the fields, watching kids play on the slides or just relaxing at the café which serves delicious home-made fare, using produce from the farm. Supplying to local customers, restaurants and groceries, the farm is spread across 80 acres. “We don’t use chemicals, so it’s manual labour,” says Daniella de Jonge, marketing manager, referring to the way crops are grown in the greenhouses. “Paul always says he’s never seen an aphid outrun a ladybug.”

Ice Cream Please: Milkman Milk Bar

Pick up a few pints of small batch, old-fashioned style ice cream or opt for house-made waffle cones from the adorable, local, brother-sister duo behind Milkman, Ashley and Braden Ohno.

After an eventful roadtrip where ice cream was the snack of choice (‘weird, I know’ quips Ashley), the pair thought, ‘oh, we could make that’ and, after extensive experimentation, launched a bricks and mortar shop in 2021. “Our family had also always gathered and shared love around food…Our goal was to open a place where people could feel welcome to gather with friends and family, just as we did with our family in our own kitchens.”

Milkman offers unbelievably delicious flavours, many locally sourced. “Tried and true” flavours like chocolate, strawberry and vanilla are available year-round, while seasonal, “just because” flavours rotate monthly inspired by the season, celebrations, events or the duo’s heritage.

What sets their ice cream apart is the clever combination of nostalgia and innovation. Take their malted strawberry – a deeply comforting background note of malt mellows the tart sweetness of strawberry. You’ll revisit childhood at each lick.

Grab a Coffee and Bagel: Café Noir

Pick up a few chewy and delicious Montreal style bagels or bagel sandwiches (we love the everything, and jalapeno cheddar) and a chilled Turtles Macchiato ice coffee at Cafe Noir, located inside the Herbal Apothecary. The combination, is anything but run of the mill – the bagels are house-made and the coffee is a custom blend, made in Alberta in an antique roaster.

Established in 2020, as a small 60-square foot space inside a multi-business building before moving to its current location, the ethos has remained the same. “We wanted to create a cool, trendy coffee spot that all the coffeeholics in town would look forward to going to and sharing with their friends and to create that sense of community that exists only in the atmosphere of local coffee shops that we all love,” recounts owner, Amber Morrow.

Part of Café Noir’s success is due to its Lethbridge location. “Lethbridge really is the definition of community over competition…Everyone from customers to other local businesses want to see each other thrive because, as every other business owner in Lethbridge says, ‘all ships rise with the tide.’”

Pick up some healthy Haskap products: Prairie Hill Farms

“Prairie Hill Farms was established in 2020 to share the goodness and nutrition of haskap berries,” says Faith Perez, media specialist. Resembling elongated blueberries, with a skin like a concord grape, haskaps have a pleasantly tart flavour and are full of anti-oxidants (making them good for you). They grow especially well in southern Alberta, long considered the breadbasket of the province.

Out in the fields, owner Rex Vandenberg, who has been farming since 1991, shows off rows upon rows of haskap shrubs growing toward the sun. “A lot is done by hand and we have one harvest in June,” says Vandenberg who does not like to use chemicals on his 40 acres of haskaps, planted a decade ago.

Inside the farm shop you’ll be tempted to give this superfood a try in everything from haskap juice, to healthy ‘powershots’, frozen haskaps, spreads and even barbecue sauce. Many of the products are made at the onsite food plant and manufacturing facility (which processes, freeze dries, grinds, packages). Haskaps may be new to some, but here they are celebrated, as, what the Ainu of Japan call, the elixir of life.

WHERE TO STAY IN LETHBRIDGE

Holiday Inn Express Lethbridge Southeast

This quick service hotel is upping its game: airy lobby, friendly staff who seem genuinely interested in helping you, and great amenities (including an in-room a microwave and refrigerator setup that is practically a wet bar).

An onsite pool, fitness centre, and meeting space means that breakfast brings out large families preparing for a celebration, couples with dogs (permitted in only certain rooms) and business people. It’s lively and the chattering continues between bites of waffles, oatmeal or eggs.

Whether you want to visit nearby farms, stroll downtown or see Lethbridge’s attractions, they’re all easily accessible via the highway nearby. The 120-room, 24-suite hotel opened in 2019 and leverages the best aspects of small city living. Like the best starred properties across the world, it boasts a welcoming staff, the one thing that makes a hotel.

WHAT TO DO IN LETHBRIDGE

Visit a Flower Farm: The Lilac Row

Try the most ‘Magnolia-esque’ romantic, floral U-pick experience at this charming third-generation, Coaldale farm. Clip stems directly from neat garden rows and proceed to create your own floral arrangement. Choose from dozens of varieties, including pert, neon zinnias, lacey statice, fragrant dots of sweet Annie and, of course, dahlias (their specialty) which come in every shape and size from dainty single petals to gigantic dinnerplates. Or, pluck fresh blossoms from the stocked mobile flower truck.

Dreamed up by sisters, and cordial hosts, Charlyn Collins and Jessica Oddan, the cut-flower farm focuses on unique, sustainably grown “florals” and immersive agritourism experiences. “Like many next generation farmers, we were looking for a way to continue our farming legacy in a way that was reflective of the current and future agricultural climate.” Begun in 2020, they supply to local events and weddings, offer flower subscriptions, seasonal bouquets, and welcome guests for bespoke experiences (workshops, classes and u-pick).

“The Lethbridge area is the sunniest in all of Canada, which makes it an ideal place for growing.” Arranging blooms with music playing, string lights flickering and sun going down – the idyllic setting is the ultimate escape. “Our farm, in both name and history, is a continuation of a multi-generational love of all things that bloom and grow.”

Visit a UNESCO World Heritage Site: Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

Learn about the significance of this UNESCO site to First Nations Peoples and all Albertans. Set atop sandstone cliffs, surrounded by prairie in every direction, this is where cascades of buffalo plummeted to their death in a ritual hunt.

Blackfoot peoples honed their skills over thousands of years by learning from other animals, responding to their environment, and observing the weather. They became keenly aware of buffalo behaviour – the animals’ vision mistook stones and branches for great walls, and their herd mentality meant that they protected the feeble – the resulting, fatal stampede, fed tribes during the winter.

You’ll imagine the Great Plains as they once were with millions of roaming buffalo, and you’ll realize their bond to humans and this land – willingly accepting their slaughter, only to return again, year upon year.

Visit the Gardens: Nikka Yuko Japanese Gardens

Take a leisurely stroll through the beautiful-any-time of year gardens established in 1967 to ‘recognize contributions made by citizens of Japanese ancestry to Lethbridge.’ The city has the third highest proportion of Japanese Canadians or “Nikkei” in Canada, after Vancouver and Toronto. Japanese workers settled in Southern Alberta beginning in the early 1900s to work in the coal mines and on the railways. “During World War II, the population increased further due to the forced relocation of Japanese Canadians from the West Coast by the Government of Canada,” says Eric Granson, marketing manager.

Today, the gardens incorporate native, endemic and non-native plants and all the major structures came directly from Japan. “During the construction of the Garden, pieces of the Pavilion and the Bell Tower were constructed and then deconstructed in Japan and shipped to Lethbridge to be re-assembled by the same craftsmen.”

Each vista is carefully crafted so that the visitor has, not just the most pleasing view, but the most resonant with meaning. At times, neighbouring Henderson Lake frames the internal water features, in spring, bright pink crab apples blossom, before being swept away by the wind and, in winter, 170 000 lights twinkle beside ice sculptures, and wagon rides. Don’t forget to ring the bronze Friendship Bell for luck and wishes of peace.

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SEE THE CITY
CSL and local businesses share their Lethbridge faves.

CSL: Watch the sun set with the backdrop of the railway trestle bridge (Lethbridge Viaduct/High Level Bridge) over the Oldman River – iconic!

The Lilac Row: We love visiting the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation in Coaldale every summer, where you can get nose to beak with a variety of birds and support an amazing rehabilitation and educational facility!

Milkman Milk Bar: We are 1 hour away from an amazing national park with breathtaking mountain views: Waterton Lakes National Park!

The Lilac Row: We love Lethbridge’s proximity to both the prairies and the mountains, which makes it a unique starting place for so many outdoor adventures.

Café Noir: Go floating down the river in the summer time!

Milkman Milk Bar: Lethbridge has an up-and-coming food scene, whether it’s a cup or coffee from Cuppers Coffee, a slice of pizza from Two Guys and a Pizza Place, sushi from Lighthouse, or a delicious tasting menu and wine from Steel and Vines.

Café Noir: Visit the Oldman dam and see the modern marvel of the irrigation system that feeds Lethbridge. 

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This original travel article first appeared in the Winter 2023/24 issue of City Style and Living Magazine.

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