Victoria Beach (Red Cross Dock)

This soft sandy beach in the heart of the Victoria Beach summer resort gives you access to a sheltered bay, which is a great alternative for safe swimming to the west-facing beaches nearby when wind and waves are high. Victoria Beach was named after Queen Victoria, and is home to over 200 permanent residents. In July and August, Victoria Beach becomes a walking and cycling only community. Visitors may park for a fee in the Victoria Beach Parking Lot beside Highway 59 North, and walk or bike along Arthur Road approximately 800 m to the beach. The beach is unsupervised, and serviced by portable washrooms. There are no official picnic areas or municipal facilities, but there is a baseball field and tennis courts. There is a sports field behind this beach and a playground for kids close by. There is a portage washroom across the road and a small village to get ice cream, a light lunch and a great bakery. There is a nearby golf course, and the beach has a marina and yacht club. The town hosts an annual Summer Winds Family Music Festival. From this beach, you can see a large pier which is a great place to drop a fishing line. On weekdays in July and August, you will share this beach with swimmers young and old in the Red Cross Learn-to-Swim program, and you may be lucky enough to see windsurfers or a sailor launch a Catamaran or Laser sailboat. While the water of Lake Winnipeg always lives up to its Aboriginal name ‘Muddy Waters’, its actually harmless silt, but when a green algal bloom appears after a hot spell, it’s best not to swim. The forest along this bay turns magnificent colours in the fall so it’s always worth a trip to see the boreal forest turn from green to gold after summer ends. Photo Credit: Shahnoor Habib Munmun / Wikimedia