Brooks

The closest mid-sized town to Dinosaur Provincial Park [1] is Brooks (pop. 14,000), 160 kilometers (100 mi) east of Calgary [2] along the TransCanada Highway. Brooks is home to Canada’s largest meatpacking plant. The facility employs around 2,500 people, most of them immigrants from places like Sudan and Kenya. This gives Brooks an interesting small-town ethnic diversity unlike anywhere else in Canada.

The 3.2-kilometer-long (two-mile) Brooks Aqueduct, seven kilometers (4.3 miles) southeast of town, was completed in 1914 to carry water across a shallow valley to dry prairie on the other side, opening up a massive chunk of otherwise unproductive land to farming. Although now replaced by an earth-filled canal, the impressive structure has been preserved as a National Historic Site and now serves as a monument to those who developed the region.

Also south of town is Kinbrook Island Provincial Park, linked to the mainland by a causeway but best known for recreational activities on adjacent Lake Newell, Canada’s largest man-made body of water. For visitors, it’s swimming, fishing, and boating that draws the summertime crowds. The campground (403/362-2962, unserviced sites $20, powered sites $26) has showers, laundry, firewood sales, and picnic shelters.