Heritage Day is an opportunity to celebrate the architectural heritage and historic places of Canada. The Heritage Canada Foundation promotes the third Monday in February each year as Heritage Day and has long advocated adopting this date as a national holiday.

This year, HCF decided to identify and feature the lesser-known but important vernacular structures of Canada - meaning those structures built by craftspersons and not professionally trained architects. Heritage buildings of the ‘every day' can be as familiar as the corner store, small town bakery, or church on the Prairies. Across Canada there is a wealth of vernacular heritage - some recognized, some undiscovered. These buildings differ from coast to coast, region to region, in style, materials, and purpose - be they built by the Irish of outport Newfoundland, the Ukrainians on the Prairies or the Acadians in Atlantic Canada.

Despite the romance and charm of much of this architecture, these structures were fundamentally functional, constructed for a purpose and fit into categories that are broad and widely applicable: Where we settle, where we grow, what we need, where we live, where we work, where we do business, where we learn, and where we worship.