UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Canada: All 22, by Province

Canada has 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites: 10 cultural, 11 natural and 1 mixed. Alberta has the most, with six. Four of the 13 provinces and territories have none: Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Nunavut.

All 22 can be ticked on the Canada map, where they count toward the percentage for their province.

All 22, in the order they were listed

Which was Canada’s first World Heritage Site?

Two share the title. L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nahanni National Park in the Northwest Territories were both inscribed in 1978, the first year sites were added to the list. UNESCO’s own timeline records twelve sites that year, beginning with the Galápagos Islands, so Canada’s two were among the first twelve anywhere.

The newest are Anticosti, in Quebec, and Tr’ondëk-Klondike, in Yukon, both inscribed in 2023.

The sites in each province and territory

Four sites lie in two provinces or territories and appear under both, so the numbers below add up to more than 22.

Alberta (6)

• Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump (1981). A cliff where peoples of the plains hunted bison for nearly 6,000 years.
• Writing-on-Stone / Áísínai’pi (2019). Engravings and paintings on the sandstone walls of the Milk River valley, a landscape sacred to the Blackfoot people.
• Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks (1984). Banff, Jasper, Kootenay and Yoho national parks with three provincial parks, and the Burgess Shale fossil site. Shared with British Columbia.
• Dinosaur Provincial Park (1979). About 35 species of dinosaur, some 75 million years old, have been found here.
• Waterton Glacier International Peace Park (1995). Waterton Lakes in Alberta and Glacier in Montana, joined in 1932 as the world’s first International Peace Park. Shared with the United States.
• Wood Buffalo National Park (1983). Home to North America’s largest population of wild bison, and the only breeding habitat of the whooping crane. Shared with the Northwest Territories.

Newfoundland and Labrador (4)

• L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site (1978). The remains of an 11th-century Viking settlement at the northern tip of Newfoundland, evidence of the first European presence in North America.
• Red Bay Basque Whaling Station (2013). A station used by Basque whalers for some 70 years in the 16th century, on the coast of Labrador.
• Gros Morne National Park (1987). A rare example of the process of continental drift, where deep ocean crust and rocks of the earth’s mantle lie exposed.
• Mistaken Point (2016). The oldest known assemblages of large fossils anywhere.

Nova Scotia (3)

• Landscape of Grand Pré (2012). Farmland made with dykes and wooden sluices by the Acadians from the 17th century, and a memorial to their deportation.
• Old Town Lunenburg (1995). The best surviving example of a planned British colonial settlement in North America, founded in 1753.
• Joggins Fossil Cliffs (2008). Sea cliffs of fossils from the Carboniferous period, 354 to 290 million years ago.

Quebec (3)

• Historic District of Old Québec (1985). The only North American city to have preserved its ramparts.
• Anticosti (2023). Fossils that record the first mass extinction of animal life, 447 to 437 million years ago.
• Miguasha National Park (1999). Fossils of the Devonian period, known as the Age of Fishes.

British Columbia (3)

• SGang Gwaay (1981). A Haida village with the remains of houses and carved mortuary and memorial poles.
• Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks (1984). Banff, Jasper, Kootenay and Yoho national parks with three provincial parks, and the Burgess Shale fossil site. Shared with Alberta.
• Kluane / Wrangell-St. Elias / Glacier Bay / Tatshenshini-Alsek (1979). Parks in Yukon, British Columbia and Alaska around the largest non-polar icefield in the world. Shared with Yukon and the United States.

Ontario (2)

• Rideau Canal (2007). A canal of 202 km along the Rideau and Cataraqui rivers, the best-preserved slackwater canal in North America.
• Pimachiowin Aki (2018). Forest in the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg, on both sides of the Manitoba–Ontario border. Shared with Manitoba.

Yukon (2)

• Tr’ondëk-Klondike (2023). Sites along the Yukon River, in the homeland of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, that record the changes the Klondike Gold Rush brought.
• Kluane / Wrangell-St. Elias / Glacier Bay / Tatshenshini-Alsek (1979). Parks in Yukon, British Columbia and Alaska around the largest non-polar icefield in the world. Shared with British Columbia and the United States.

Northwest Territories (2)

• Nahanni National Park (1978). Deep canyons and huge waterfalls along the South Nahanni River.
• Wood Buffalo National Park (1983). Home to North America’s largest population of wild bison, and the only breeding habitat of the whooping crane. Shared with Alberta.

Manitoba (1)

• Pimachiowin Aki (2018). Forest in the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg, on both sides of the Manitoba–Ontario border. Shared with Ontario.

The two shared with the United States

• Kluane / Wrangell-St. Elias / Glacier Bay / Tatshenshini-Alsek joins Kluane National Park and Reserve in Yukon and Tatshenshini-Alsek Park in British Columbia with Wrangell-St. Elias and Glacier Bay in Alaska. It covers 9,839,121 hectares and, in UNESCO’s words, “contains the largest non-polar icefield in the world”.
• Waterton Glacier International Peace Park joins Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta with Glacier National Park in Montana. The two were combined in 1932 as the world’s first International Peace Park.

Which sites are national parks?

Six of the 22 are national parks, or groups that include them: the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks (Banff, Jasper, Kootenay and Yoho), Gros Morne, Kluane, Nahanni, Waterton and Wood Buffalo. That makes nine national parks with World Heritage status, all marked in our checklist of Canada’s national parks.

One name misleads. Miguasha National Park is not one of Parks Canada’s 48: Quebec calls its own provincial parks national parks.

How many more are waiting?

UNESCO lists 10 sites on Canada’s Tentative List, the places a country may put forward for inscription in future. Being on that list is not a guarantee of anything, so they are not on the map.

Finding them on the Canada map

Sixteen of the 22 have their own line under their province on the Canada map. The other six are made up of national parks that are already listed, so you tick the park, which carries a “World Heritage Site” note. A site in two provinces is counted in one of them, where most of it lies or where most visitors reach it, and its note names the other.

If you are planning by region, Canada’s 10 provinces and 3 territories sets out which province is where.