Canada Made Me Look Twice (9 Photos vol. 2)

October 28, 2026

By Vidar

More Things You’ll Only See in Canada

In downtown Toronto, an art school lifted its new building high above the street on a forest of steel legs. Out on the Alberta prairie, a village stuck a fork in a giant perogy, and the town of Vulcan parked the Starship Enterprise by the road. Nine Canadian sights in all, from Sudbury to Gimli.

More: Canada Made Me Look Twice (12 Photos)

🖖 Starship Enterprise Replica — Vulcan, Alberta, Canada 🇨🇦

Captain Kirk’s ship has landed on a pedestal in a prairie town that happens to be named Vulcan. The almost ten-meter replica was unveiled on June 10, 1995, built by a local welding shop with detailing by a local auto body shop.

💡 Name Fact: The name came first. Vulcan got it in 1910 from a CPR surveyor who loved Roman mythology, decades before Star Trek, and the town’s Trek Station visitor center followed in 1998.

📷 Photo: Canoe1967 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

🥚 Vegreville Pysanka — Vegreville, Alberta, Canada 🇨🇦

A Ukrainian Easter egg about 9.5 meters tall sits on a post in a Vegreville park, its gold, black and silver stars catching the sun. It was unveiled in 1975 to mark the 1973 centennial of the RCMP.

💡 Wind Fact: The aluminum egg is not fixed in one direction. It was designed to turn in the wind like a weathervane. Paul M. Sembaliuk did the conceptual and graphic design, and George Chernenko the architectural designs.

📷 Photo: Qwexcxewq / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

👥 “The Illuminated Crowd” — By Raymond Mason in Montreal, Quebec, Canada 🇨🇦

A pale crowd presses forward on McGill College Avenue, one man pointing ahead while the people behind him lean in to see. Mason made this group of 65 figures in 1986.

💡 Paris Fact: Before it was shipped to Canada, the work was shown at Mason’s retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou. The figures are made of polyurethane and polyester, and the group is about 8.6 meters long.

📷 Photo: Jeangagnon / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🥟 Giant Perogy — Glendon, Alberta, Canada 🇨🇦

A perogy as tall as a two-story house is speared on a giant fork beside Glendon’s main road. The fiberglass and steel sculpture stands 27 feet tall and was unveiled in 1993, a nod to the village’s Ukrainian roots.

💡 Fork Fact: The fork was a fix. It was added so people would know what the sculpture was supposed to be; without it, one passerby said, it looked like a cow pie.

📷 Photo and cover crop: Paul Swabey / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🪩 “Talus Dome” — By Ball Nogues Studio in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada 🇨🇦

A heap of mirror balls sits beside the freeway near the Quesnell Bridge, each one reflecting the sky and the river valley. It is made of nearly 1,000 hand-crafted stainless steel spheres.

💡 Escape Fact: Los Angeles artists Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues made the dome. In 2023 a man got stuck inside and rescuers cut the sculpture open, though the Edmonton Arts Council later said it has a maintenance hatch.

🔗 Follow Ball-Nogues Studio on Instagram

📷 Photo: Talusdome / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

⚔️ Gimli Viking — Gimli, Manitoba, Canada 🇨🇦

A 4.6-meter Viking stands guard over Viking Park in Gimli, home of the Icelandic Festival of Manitoba. Gissur Eliasson designed the fiberglass statue and sculptor George Barone built it as a 1967 centennial project, and Iceland’s president unveiled it.

💡 Makeover Fact: The statue got a restoration, and the designer’s son said it looks exactly as it did in 1967.

📷 Photo: Krazytea / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

⛪ “Device to Root Out Evil” — By Dennis Oppenheim in Calgary, Alberta, Canada 🇨🇦

A church balances on the tip of its steeple, and the sun shines through its red glass panels. Oppenheim’s 2004 second version came to Calgary after Vancouver’s Park Board voted to remove it from Coal Harbour.

💡 Moving Fact: The church is made of aluminum, galvanized steel, Venetian glass and Plexiglass. This photo is from its years in Ramsay; in 2019 the upside-down church was moved to East Village, at 5th Street Square.

More: 25 Extraordinary Sculptures

📷 Photo: JMacPherson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

🏫 Sharp Centre for Design — By Will Alsop in Toronto, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦

A black-and-white pixel-pattern box hangs over McCaul Street on a cluster of tilted, colored columns, with an old gray house tucked underneath. OCAD University’s Sharp Centre for Design sits about 26 meters above the ground on 12 steel columns.

💡 Design Fact: Will Alsop designed it with Robbie/Young + Wright Architects, and it was completed in 2004. The “tabletop” was not just a local curiosity: it received the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Worldwide Award in 2004.

📷 Photo: Arild Vågen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🪙 Big Nickel — Sudbury, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦

A five-cent coin the size of a billboard stands on edge at Dynamic Earth, maple leaves and all. It is an exact replica of the 1951 Canadian nickel, built in 1964.

💡 Coin Fact: The Big Nickel was built as a symbol of the nickel wealth Sudbury has poured into the Canadian economy. The real 1951 coin was a tribute too. It was minted for the 200th anniversary of the isolation and naming of the element nickel, which explains the 1751–1951 on its face.

📷 Photo and cover crop: Ryan Sharpe / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)