Curious Facts about Canada

Curious Facts about Canada

Did You Know?

Sir Henry P.P. Crease. Emily Carr. Tugboat Annie. Panning gold in Halifax. The Saskatchewan Giant. The Cape Breton Giant. A Boy Hero. Sir John McDonald

Sir Henry P.P. Crease the first practising barrister in British Columbia, became in 1861 its first attorney-general – a post he held till 1870, when he became a B.C. supreme court judge.

Canadian greatest woman artist Emily Carr (1871-1945): born in Victoria, British Columbia, she studied painting in California and Europe. Then worked for years without recognition in Canada. Discouraged she quit painting for 15 years, but took up her brushes again after meeting members of the now famous Group of Seven. Today her paintings are represented in all major Canadian collections.

Tugboat Annie better known to movie fans as Marie Dressler, was born Leila Koerber at Cobourg, Ontario, in 1860. She won an Academy award and averaged a new picture every two months for four years – yet her movie career didn’t start until she was over 70 years of age.

Facts about Toronto. Queen Park in Toronto. Photograph by Elena

Panning gold in Halifax: A man named John Campbell was the first to pan gold along the shores of Halifax County. He and the hundreds of gold seekers who followed him never made fortunes. Yet Nova Scotia’s production per man and gold yield per ton was better than that of either California or Australia.

The Saskatchewan Giant Eduard Beaupre of Willow Bunch Saskatchewan wore size 25 shoes. At 2.48 metres he was too tall to ride horses – but he could pick one up with one hand.

The Cape Breton Giant: Angus MacAskill, the Cape Breton Giant, stood almost 2,4 metres tall and weighed 225 kg. He smoked a mallet-sized pipe that held sixth of a pound of tobacco and drank rum from a wooden bowl that held equivalent of three full glasses.

Sir John A. Macdonald, the man who did more than any other to bring about Canadian Confederation. Had he lived in any other country. His birthday, January 11the, would be appropriately celebrated, but few Canadians know this is his birthday.

A boy hero: While strong men doubted Joe Cracker of Herring Cove, Nova Scotia plunged into heavy seas to rescue survivors from H.M.S. La Tribune that foundered and was wrecked off Tribune Head, Nova Scotia 1n 1797. Joe Cracker was just 13-years old.

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Spherical slumber: Charles and Abigail Bowers were the first settlers of Ohio, Shelburne Country, Nova Scotia. Abigail was known as a resourceful woman who had seventeen children. She solved the problem of beds for them by putting her ten boys in a round bed with all the bed covers made circular in order to prevent unequal portions.

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The most English city in North America is Victora, British Colombia. To the delight of themselves and tourists the natives hang flower baskets on the downtown lampposts.

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A mysterious levitation in 1880: Two men working in a field in East Kent, Ontario, heard a peculiar, loud noise nearby. Turning they saw boulders an stones flying upwards from an area near them. After the stone fell back to the ground, they investigated the spot, but found no trace of an explosion or other disturbance which could have flung the stones high in the air.

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Profiteering. In 1889, seven cast iron stoves bought for $29.50 each in Vancouver were sold at McLeaon, N.W.T. for $250 each.

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John Buchan, Governor-general of Canada in 1935-1940 was a skilled novelist and a man of letters. He took a keen interest in literature, and it was he who initiated the governor-geenral’s literary awards that are now made annually.

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Canada’s mini desert: A small are of roughly 24 km by 48 km, lying to the south of Penticton, British Columbia is a genuine desert. Only flora and fauna that are typical of desert environment exist here, including prickly pear cactus and rattlesnakes. Its annual rainfall – little more than 19 cm is actually less that of the Sahara desert.

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Linus, a Clydesdale horse in Fredericton, New-Brunswick, had hair to spare. Mane, 4-2 m. long, foetop 3 m long, tail 3-7 m. 1920.

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In the beginning of the XXe century, Canadian newspapers carried stories about the high rent rates for houses in Toronto, making it difficult for clerks and mechanics to obtain decent housing. The average rate at the time was $150 a year.

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Shock was prescribed as a cure for the paralyzed spine of Mrs. Jean Fry Finigan. The great Halifax explosion in 1917 was the shock that completely cured the then 22 year old girl.

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A significant milestone was passed in 1953 – for the first time oil production ($198 million) exceeded the value of gold production ($140 million).

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Blue Moon. On September 26, 1950, a 200 000 km2 forest fire in British Columbia caused sulphur particles to form in the upper atmosphere. Because of this, the Moon looked blue to viewers in Great Britain.

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Going to great lengths: In the days of the big sailing ships Nova Scotia had a fleet that covered every ocean. Beginnning at Yarmouth in 1763 to the end of the 19th Century this province was a world leader in ship building and sailing.

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The rope riggings for sail control of a typical windjammer of this era totalled about 29 km of length.

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The era of the Hobos: During the 1930’s thousands of men travel across and to all parts of Canada on the tops of freight train car seeking jobs that just weren’t obtainable.

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The Great depression began with the crash of the New York stock market in 1929 and continued until World War II broke out 10 years later. At its height in 1933, more than 1,500,000 out of Canada’s total population of 10,500,000 were on welfare. It had been 10 years of youthful stagnation and starvation wages.

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World basketball champions without peer the Edmonton Grads. Let’s face it men. The best group in the entire history of sports in Canada was a team of girl basketball players, called the Edmonton Grads. From 1915 to 1940, under their coach Percy Page, they utterly destroyed all competition in Canada, the USA and Europe, winning 502 of 522 games, including 27 of the 27 the played in Olympic tournaments. In 1940, with no one left to defeat, the disbanded.

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Color choice: Purchasers of early For cars were told they could have any color they wanted – so long as it was black.

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The Turkey is known as the American bird in Turkey

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Rescue Record. In a period of 40 years, reg. Gaudaur, a boatman of often treacherous lake Simkoe (56 km North of Toronto), saved more than 60 persons from drowning.

Regards from Canada. Illustration by Elena.

Facts about Canada

A Few Facts About Canada

Earl Cameron. Sarah Edmonson. Customs in Pre-historic Canada. Tobacco Smoking Among the Indians. Boris Karloff. Daniel Harmon. Mareen Godson. Kerosene. Padded Baseball Glove. McYntire Mine. George Brown,. Wilfred Greenfell

C.B.C. announcer Earl Cameron, once, while reading the National radio news, found himself in darkness because a blown fuse had doused the lights. Unruffled as always, Cameron simply pulled out his cigarette lighter, flicked it on and continued to read.

The soldier who was a woman, Sarah Edmonson. Raised in York County, New Brunswick, Sarah enlisted in a regiment of the Union army using the alias Franklin Thompson. During the American civil war, she served for two years and closely escaped death many times. She was the first woman to receive a pension from the U.S. army and when she died she was buried in a military cemetery with full military honors.

Fort Stewart in Montreal. Photo by Elena

Customs in pre-historic Canada: In pre-historic Canada, about 1000 years AD, the innovation of horticulture profoundly affected the social structure of the indian societies, which become matrilineal. The changes can be seen even in cooking utensils. Indeed, the small and slender vessel encountered by archaeologists in the previous period, suited to the slow cooking of meat, are replaced by large spherical vessels adapted to cooking corn soup. Women are responsible for crop cultivation, and they supervise all stage, from seeding to harvesting. In addition, women prepare pottery, clothing, basketwork, rope, stone scrapers to prepare animal skins. They make as well harpoon points. Both women and men fish, but only men hunt. Women harvest corn, squash and different other beans. As a rule, the camps and the villages are protected by a palisade

Tobacco smoking and Indians: A very interesting characteristic of the Iroquoians is their habit of smoking tobacco. They cultivated a rustic variety for this purpose, different from our tobacco and smoked it in fired clay pipes. Pottery and pipes were decorated, sometimes with nice effigies modelled on the bowl. Fragments of Indian pipes have been found on different sites in Quebec.

William Pratt (Boris Karloff): A young English immigrant named William Pratt joined a touring stage company in 1910 at Kamloops, British Columbia. He invented the name Boris Karloff for himself and went on to become famous as the Frankenstein Monster.

Daniel Harmon in 1811 started the first farm west of the Rocky Mountains. Near Fort St. James. Good yields of potatoes, turnips and barley were obtained.

Maureen Godson of Edmonton started learning how to fly in 1953, when she was 9 years old. By the time she was 10 she was a proficient flyer, Canada’s youngest pilot.

Kerosene: In 1846 Dr. Abraham Gesner at Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, developed a process for distilling Kerosene, as he called it, from a coal-like mineral, Albertite. Later it was to be popularly called coal-oil.

Monument to Canadian Soldiers in Toronto, the Queen Park. Photograph by Elena

The padded baseball glove was invented by Arthur Irwin, a Toronto player, in 1884. He showed up one day with a makeshift pad in a glove. Despite the fact he was kidded as a sissy, it wasn’t long before everybody copied his idea. Irwin wasn’t really a sissy. He just couldn’t figure out another way to play nine innings with two broken fingers.

McIntyre Mine: During the Early days of Northern Ontario’s Gold Rush (1909), Sandy McIntyre found what is now the famous mine bearing his name. He sold out for $25 in order to buy some liquor. Years later, he still passed his time crying in beverage rooms while the mine he discovered produced gold worth 230 million dolalrs.

George Brown: The Honorable George Brown, the founder of the Globe (now Globe and Mail) newspaper was the political arch-enemy of the first Prime Minister Sir. John A. Macdonald, who sometimes over-indulged his habit of drinking. Whenever Macdonald had a bout with the bottle, Brown printed a “sick” notice in the Globe.

Sir Wilfred Grenfell: A plaque erected at St. Anthony, Newfoundland, by the great humanitarian Sir Wilfred Grenfell, after a harrowing experience on a drifting ice pan. Grenfell had to use their bloody fur for warmth until he was rescued: “To the memory of three noble dogs, Moody, Watch and Spy, whose lives were given for mine on the ice. April 21st 1903. Wilfred Grenfell, St. Anthony.

St. Lawrence River

St. Lawrence River

One of the most important rivers in North America, the Saint Lawrence River offers you great scenery and a wonderful sense of history. Called fleuve Saint-Laurent in French, it originates at the outflow of Lake Ontario between Kingston, Ontario, on the north bank; Wolfe Island in mid-stream; and Cape Vincent, New York. It flows from southwest to northeast connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Named The river that walks by the Aboriginal peoples, the Saint Lawrence River crosses Quebec and Ontario and serves as a natural frontier between Ontario, Canada, and the U.S. state of New York for approximately 200 km (124 mi).

In Canada, the navigation route runs along its entire length, forming the famous Saint Lawrence Seaway that allows the Great Lakes to have an opening on the Maritimes. Sailing on the Saint Lawrence River is a unique experience of being on a nautical super-highway. Home to two of North America’s most exciting boating destinations, Montreal and Quebec City, it varies between 1 and 2.5 miles wide for most of its distance between these two cities. Downstream from Quebec City, it expands rapidly in width and at Gaspe, as it enters the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, it is 87 miles from the shore to shore.

The largest estuary in the world, the Saint Lawrence River runs 3,058 kilometres (1,900 mi) from the farthest headwater, the North River in Minnesota. Its drainage area, including the Great Lakes—the world’s largest fresh water reservoir, is 1.03 million km² (390,000 sq mi) with the average discharge at the mouth of 10,400 m³/s (367,000 cu ft/s).

St.Lawrence River. Photo by Elena

The river includes Lake Saint-Louis south of Montreal, Lac Saint-François at Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, and Lac Saint-Pierre east of Montreal. It embraces three archipelagoes: the Thousand Islands chain near Kingston, Ontario; the Hochelaga Archipelago, including the Island of Montreal and Ile Jesus (Laval); and the smaller Mingan Archipelago. Other islands include Ile d’Orleans near Quebec City and Anticosti Island north of the Gaspe. Lake Champlain and the Ottawa, Richelieu, and Saguenay rivers all drain into the St. Lawrence.

The first known European explorer to sail the inland part of the Saint Lawrence River was Jacques Cartier, during his second trip to Canada in 1535. Because he arrived in the estuary on St. Lawrence’s feast day, Cartier decided to name it the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Until the early 1600s, the French used the name Riviere du Canada for the Saint Lawrence upstream to Montreal, and the river used to be called the Ottawa River after Montreal. The Saint Lawrence River served as the main route for European exploration of the North American interior, first pioneered by French explorer Samuel de Champlain.

Because of the impassable Lachine Rapids, the Saint Lawrence River used to be navigable only as far as Montreal. In 1825, the Lachine Canal was opened to allow ships to pass the rapids. The Saint Lawrence Seaway, a vast system of canals and locks, was officially opened on 26 June 1959 by Queen Elizabeth II (representing Canada) and President Dwight D. Eisenhower (representing the United States of America). From then on, ocean-going vessels can pass all the way to Lake Superior.

The St. Lawrence River is at the centre of artwork in Quebec: in the novels Kamouraska by Anne Hebert and L’avalee des avales by Rejean Ducharme; poems by Pierre Morency and Bernard Pozier; and songs Suzanne by Leonard Cohen’s and L’oubli by Michel Rivard. The river has also been portrayed in paintings by the famous Group of Seven.

Currently, many efforts are being made by the Federal Government of Canada to reduce the pollution within the Saint Lawrence River waters to save threatened species, such as the Beluga, white whale living in arctic waters, from extinction.

Toronto - The City where Dreams Come True

Toronto – The City Where Dreams Come True

Do you dream? I don’t mean in the sleeping way, I mean in having a dream and trying to see it come to fruition despite all the hurdles, hassles and obstacles the pretty lady called life throws at you? Dreams are important, whiteout dreams how would we ever get around to achieving our goals? Dreams can motivate is, and anyone who ever wanted to jog during the cold winter times knows that.

But I digress… Thus, Toronto is a beautiful city in Ontario, Canada. A cosmopolitan jewel, by far the biggest and most populated city in the country, it could be described as a mix between New York and Moscow, an one example among many, simply to compare the large metropolitan to other large cities. Thus, Restaurants, hotels in all price ranges and amazing shopping malls abound; aside from all the other exciting things to do… 

I went to Toronto many times and it never ceases to amaze me. Toronto reminds of New York, with a downtown largely reminiscent of New York city’s famous Time Square, the local counterpart called the Dundas Square. Every year, I religiously celebrate the countdown watching Anderson Cooper and the drop of the ball on the Times Square in New York City!

A ship in Toronto, perhaps sailing towards an even more dreamlike city. Image: Elena

Furthermore, Toronto is marvelous for a tourist, since it has many facilities for the adventurous soul. For instance, laundromats, dry cleaners and 24/7 Internet specialty coffee shops are present throughout the metropolitan. Also, many stores are open well past “curfew”, even clothing stores, not to mention specialty or love shops.

Love shops are counterparts of Montreal’s sex shops, that’s what adult entertainment stores are called in Toronto. Further, places to stay include hotels and motels, for all kinds of budgets, although all in all Toronto is a fairly expensive city, at least by the standards of the present avid traveler. However, attractions are countless, including the spectacular CN Tower, the adjacent Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada, museums, a gorgeous waterfront, called Queen’s Quay Harbourfront and at the time of writing undergoing profound refurbishing in terms of construction work, magnificent and numerous shopping malls, including designer boutiques in the high end district. 

Naturally, living in Toronto, as with most cities in the world, is quite different from merely vacationing. Rent is very pricy, as compared to other Canadian cities, such as Montreal, Quebec, and getting around may seem more difficult due to several factors, such as the TTC subway opening later on Saturday’s compared to some other major Canadian cities. Nonetheless, the city is a vibrant and lively one, and presents many challenges, but also opportunities, for those who can afford it.

Travel Reviews: Montreal

Travel Reviews: Montreal

Fortunately, last summer I had the chance to visit Montreal, the largest and most populated city in the French province of Canada, Quebec. Montreal is a beautiful, cosmopolitan and bilingual city with a lot to offer; from a gazillion art galleries and museums, to fine dining and a booming nightlife. Suburbs include Laval, Longueuil and Brossard.

While certainly not devoid of upscale shopping malls, the avid high fashion shopper might prefer New York to fill their designer brand needs, with only one retailer (Holt Renfrew) carrying the coveted red soles. However, the city certainly impresses by its panoply of festivals, from the famous Jazz Fest to Just for Laughs and international movie venues. Many shows are public and free, held outside, downtown, for example on Place-des-Arts.

Notre Dame de Montreal Cathedral (Our Lady of Montreal). Photo by Elena

Montreal seems to be a very liberal city, which adds to its blend of European and North American charm. Walking trough the somewhat crowded streets of the centre-ville, a blushing tourist notices many adverts for adult entertainment, such as sex shops, strip clubs and even erotic massage parlors. However, beautiful Montreal girls may be less willing to go topless than their Toronto counterparts, the Ontario city in which a woman famously went to court for the right to bare her breasts in public…

On a more practical, and completely unrelated note, public transportation is easily available and getting around is pretty simple, due to the city’s straightforward design. Perhaps the most impressive architecture is found in the Old Port, which reminds one of Europe, and maybe somewhat of Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Hôtel de ville de Montréal, façade latérale. Montreal City Hall. Image: Elena