Think Canada’s capital is just about politics and paperwork? Think again. Ottawa is a city where gothic towers touch the sky, winter turns a UNESCO World Heritage canal into the world’s longest skating rink, and peace towers over the heart of a nation—literally.

On a quiet February morning in 1943, a Mexican farmer named Dionisio Pulido was tending to his cornfield in the village of San Juan Parangaricutiro. The sun was rising, the soil smelled of earth and ash, and the world seemed as ordinary as ever. Until, quite literally, it cracked open beneath his feet.