Did You Know This ... About Canada?

 Canada is a vast country of lakes, rivers...prairies and mountains...

extending from the Atlantic to Pacific and Arctic Oceans.

Trains can travel visitors from Halifax, Nova Scotia through

eight immense provinces to Vancouver, British Columbia.

The landscape is diverse...the scenery superb:

 rolling countryside, cities and towns, the Great Lakes

to the expansive Canadian Shield, the northern forests,

sprawling prairie lands and through the spectacular Rocky  Mountains!

The Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways

are Canada's largest railways...with other smaller ones,

connecting rail lines, operating regionally.

Of Interest:  a few observations penned from a traveller

 aboard a Via excursion...

Via Rail's signature Train ... “The Canadian”

There are no billboards, fast food joints or railway trash

to clutter the view!

Just a rolling panorama of wilderness

with two glossy rails  pointing forward!

“The Mountaineer” route carries travellers

from Banff, Alberta through the Rockies to Vancouver.

Riding  Mountain National Park

Did you know that during the Second World War, Riding National Park in

Manitoba was an important site in helping with the growing fuel shortage? 

While rural communities weregiven access  to the Park to cut wood,

Riding Mountain National Park was also host to German prisoners who cut wood

for urban cities like Winnipeg. With the absence of the  Canadian labour force

during the War, the prisoners filled that gap...and being in the middle of Canada

in a remote location, there was little worry they would escape...so...no enclosing

walls and fences were built.  Since it was a minimum security camp, prisoners

often slipped into nearby communities...rumour has it that some attended a dance. 

They also organized a choir for themselves, created some impressive wood

carvings and raised pigs.

                                                   The prisoners were released in 1945.

River Journeys

Did you know that a team of 6 paddlers, led by University hydrology student,

Ross Phillips, has received a $25,000 Expedition of the Year grant awarded by

 the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and financed by the RBC  Blue Water

Project?  The Cross Canada Canoe Odyssey crew left Vancouver in April on a

165-day, 7,000 k trek to Saint John, New Brunswick to raise public awareness

of the importance of Canada's fresh water resources.

The Society is also supporting 2 expeditions along remote rivers this summer. 

Biologist Benjamin Dy of Rimouski, Quebec and expedition partner Simon

Barbarit will photograph and film the Koroc River that flows from the Torngat

Mountains to Ungava Bay.  The head water of this riveris in Labrador (Newfoundland).

Adam Shoults of Fenwick, Ontario and Wesley Crowe of Ridgeville, Ontario

 will embark on  the  the first-known exploration of a 165 k nameless river in the

Hudson Bay Lowlands of Northern Ontario

(The deadline to apply for a Society Expedition Services Grant

 for next year is March 15,2012.

For more information, go to www.regs.org/programs/expeditions.

Canada's Highest Mountain Peak

Did you know that reigning over the expanse of rock and ice in Yukon's

southwestern corner is Mount  Logan...whose girth gives it the distinction of

 being the world's most massive mountain at 5,959 m...Canada's highest  Peak? 

Long the quarry of the world's mountaineering elite, Logan awes over the most

accomplished climbers.  It towers over Kluane National Park, eight/tenths of

 which is entombed in ice!  The remainder is a mountainous fringe penetrated

by glaciers and littered with moraines and braided milky rivers.

Mount Vancouver, a 4,800 m peak straddling the Yukon-Alaska border

 is one of 20 summits higher than 4,200 metres in the St. Elias Mountains...

one of the planet's most extreme environments.

Where the Wild Things Are

Did you know that just over two decades ago, Ian and Karen McAllister sailed

 into the little-known fiords of British Columbia's central coast and began

documenting what they found:  dolphins, sea otters, mist-shrouded forests,

salmon-choked rivers and grizzly bears feeding beneath thousand-foot waterfalls

and granite cliffs.  Before the couple's arrival, only a select group of loggers,

 fishermen, adventurers and  members of the First Nation knew much about

the region. The McAllisters changed that with their first book ...

”The Great Bear Rain Forest” published in 1997.  Full of stunning photographs

and compelling stories, it helped spark a conservation campaign of international proportions...an effect that culminated in in 2006 with the protection from logging

of two million hectares in the world's largest tract of intact temperate rain forest...

an area about the size of Belize.

Their home is situated on a small island in the middle of nowhere, yet a constant

flurry of media interviews, photo shots, fund-raising deadlines, film crews and

scientists rendered the  place anything but tranquil.  Since then, Ian McAllister

has published books focusing his talents on the region's elusive and genetically

 unique wolves.

The McAllisters have never stopped exploring and advocating for this unique

corner of our country...so much so, that Time magazine named the couple…

”Leaders of the 21^st Century”!

(the foregoing are excerpts from an article by  Karsten Heuer)

Note:  I’ve been fortunate to have seen a couple of their  outstanding documentaries.

One Story, One Song

Did you know that walking through Calgary’s foothills, Richard Wagamese

and his friend, Ojibwa elder, Jack Kakakaway, scout for sweetgrass? 

They walk in silence.  Kakakaway believes... this is the best way to hear the land

speaking to you. When an eagle soars overhead, Wagamese breaks the silence

by commenting with admiration on the bird's gracefulness.

“You only admire the display,” says Kakakaway. 

“The important thing is how the eagle learned to do that.”

Wagamese's second book...One Story, One Song...is a collection of personal

scenes and life lessons from the award-winning Ojibway writer. He discusses

how hard it was being raised outside his own culture...he was placed in a foster

home as a toddler.  He has now gained wisdom and peace by rediscovering his roots.

One Story, One Song...embodies his belief that only by sharing our stories and

 being strong enough to take risks, will we be able to understand one another. 

“We even have something in common with the eagle,” he admits in the Calgary foothills. 

“To become graceful, it needed faith

to make that first frightening jump from the nest.”

Merle Baird-Kerr . . . written November 17, 2011

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