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The rows of pretty 1940s houses with their mosquito-proof porches and tiny front gardens always strike me as timeless and piercingly unpretentious.

In River Heights, another beautiful neighbourhood, houses are grander and more elegant but impressively cared for and evocative of an imagined golden age of charm and graciousness.

But the highlight of our weekend in Winnipeg was a visit to the Museum of Human Rights downtown.

We saw this a few years ago when it was still under construction and marvelled at the size and complexity and originality of the architecture by American Antoine Predock.

This time, we got to go inside. What an amazing place it is.

The entrance is through steep walls of rammed earth. Apparently, this was Predock’s idea, to make you enter from below ground, as if you were coming up into the building through the roots.

Inside, the first installation to catch my attention was a gallery of history’s most inspiring and courageous leaders of peace and understanding and tolerance, everyone from Zoroaster to Siddhartha Gautama to Jesus and on down through the ages to Mahatma Gandhi and outstanding pioneers of modern times, such as Harvey Milk and Aung San Suu Kyi.

We loved it. Such a marvellous celebration of exceptional, inspiring personalities.

But the whole museum, as it turns out, is full of such uplifting installations and stories of triumph over adversity and brave stands in dark and daunting times.

Physically, the building has stunning spaces inside, with sheering walls intersecting at daring angles to create sensational voids and mind-expanding open expanses.