Manitoba is a province in the middle of Canada, between Ontario on the east and Saskatchewan on the west. Winnipeg is its main city. The land is known for huge skies, very cold winters, and a great many lakes — including Lake Manitoba. People who live there are Manitobans. The name comes from an Ojibwe or Cree phrase, manitowapow, meaning something like “spirit strait”: a narrow place in the lake where the water made a sound that people linked with a spirit. English also has the related word manitou, used for a spirit in some Algonquian languages. On a map it looks like “the prairie middle”; though actually, the north of the province is forest, rock, and lake country, not only flat farmland. You will meet the word in geography, weather reports, and Canadian news.