Grande Prairie - Recreation and Culture

Recreation and Culture

The city has a number of parks and golf courses including the large Muskoseepi Park in the Bear Creek Valley and the Dunes Golf Course south of the city. Muskoseepi Park has excellent bike trails extending nearly the entire length of Bear Creek within the city. Muskoseepi Park also has an outdoor swimming pool and a pavilion with a cafeteria and an outdoor pond which converts into a skating rink in the winter. Crystal Lake in the northeast part of the city also has parkland, preserved wetlands (great for birdwatching), and walking/bike paths around its entire circumference.

Live music can be found in several downtown bars and intermittently at all-ages locations such as Tito's Restaurant and the GP Curling Club. Summer-long music festivals have been organized by community-minded individuals and charitable organizations. Genre-wise the music scene is typically dominated by punk, rock, and metal bands. Well attended shows tend to be high-energy and mosh-pits are usually expected from engaged audiences. More established acts include This Conviction, Arrival Of Autumn, Calculating Collapse, Reject, The Damn Plastards, Stacy Lloyd Brown / The Goodbye Generation, and Emerson Drive.

Cultural venues include the Bowes Family Crystal Centre (a concert hall and hockey rink — the local AJHL team, the Grande Prairie Storm, plays there), the Grande Prairie Museum, the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, which has recently re-opened, The Rabbit Hole bookstore, Second Street Theatre, and Studio "Y?". Grande Prairie is also home to a professional musical theatre company, "Broadway Live Broadway", which engages equity actors and performs on the college campus.

The Reel Shorts Film Festival is a five-day international festival of short films in Grande Prairie that takes place at Grande Prairie Live Theatre's Second Street Theatre in early May.

Golfing is possible as late as after 11 o'clock in the evening in early summer due to the northern latitude. Grande Prairie has three 18-hole golf courses nearby (Dunes Golf and Winter Club, Bear Creek Golf Club, and Grande Prairie Golf & Country Club) as well as smaller nine-hole golf courses within an hour drive.

Cross-country skiing and snowmobiling are popular activities during the winter in the Grande Prairie area. There is a local ski hill called Nitehawk located south of the city on the south bank of the Wapiti River. Aside from skiing, Nitehawk also has the only North American natural luge track certified for international events and over the summer months freestyle ski jumpers can practice using the Northern Extreme water ramp facility. It is also active in luge as a naturally refrigerated venue, hosting the FIL World Luge Natural Track Championships in 2007.

The foothills south of Grande Prairie and around Grande Cache are popular year-round for hiking in the summer and for snowmobiling and other winter sports in the winter. Kakwa Wildland Park on the Alberta-BC border, about 180 km south of the city, is a beautiful and mountainous natural area and is known for a beautiful waterfall called Kakwa Falls.

The Eastlink Centre, briefly known as the Multiplex, is an indoor fitness facility that has an indoor pool, splash park, lazy river, and surf simulator. It also includes a weight room and fitness classes, a daycare service and a multi-use basketball court among other amenities and classes. The Eastlink Centre is located in southwest Grande Prairie the St. Joseph High School, Gymnastics Centre and Coca-Cola Centre.

The Leisure Centre, formerly the Rec-Plex, is located in northwest Grande Prairie near the Bear Creek Reservoir. It features a pool, an indoor soccer pitch, fitness equipment and aerobics facilities.

There is a lot for families to do in Grande Prairie for little to no cost. Many families enjoy the free entertainment offered at Muskoseepi Park, Studio Y?, The Public Library, and at other city-run organizations.

Some thirty churches of various denominations can be found in the city.