Northern Flicker
Today is the first day of Vancouver Bird Week and to make it a little more interesting, the city is taking a vote on which of four birds should be Vancouver’s Official Bird.
Vancouver has had a City Bird for three years now. The Northwestern Crow was selected in 2014. In 2015, the honour went to the Black-capped Chickadee and in 2016 to the Peregrine Falcon. But this year is different: the honour of City Bird will become permanent.
Oh, the pressure!
None of the previous City Birds are considered eligible. Bummer, as my favourite Vancouver bird is the Black-capped Chickadee. Also not eligible are any birds that are a city, provincial/state, or national bird elsewhere. (That kinda narrows it down. Another choice of mine would have been the Bald Eagle, of which Vancouver has plenty.) Two final stipulations are that the potential City Bird cannot be viewed negatively by any cultural groups (?), and cannot be commonly found outside of the Pacific Northwest. Vancouver’s City Bird has to be uniquely West Coast.
So, which birds made the Final Four??
Those would be the Spotted Towhee (photo here), Anna’s Hummingbird (photo here), the Varied Thrush (sadly, no photo), and the Northern Flicker (below).
Which one did I vote for?
Now that would be telling.
But may the Best Bird win.
Canada 150: Edmonton
Canadians are known for playing hard in the summers. We like to spend as much time outdoors as we can, which is easy, because the days are long, and necessary, because the season is short.
Also, for the most part, the weather is awesome. Not too hot, not too humid.
One of the ways we play hard is by going to outdoor festivals. We’ve got a few, ranging from the traditional fairs and exhibitions and rodeos to theatre (from Shakespeare to fringe) to music of all sorts, including jazz, blues, and folk.
One of the best festival cities in the country, in my opinion, is Edmonton. And one of the best outdoor music festivals in the country, in my opinion, is the four-day Edmonton Folk Music Festival held every August at Gallagher Park. The park is a ski club in the winter, but in the summer, its hill serves as a natural amphitheatre with spectacular views of the city’s skyline.
The Edmonton Folk Fest is one of the largest and best-attended folk music festivals in North America, and attracts musicians from around the world who, once they’ve played the Folk Fest, are always eager to come back. Celtic, country, blues, gospel, soul, and world music — you name it, they’ve got it. It sells out every year, typically within minutes.
If you’ve never been, you don’t know what you’re missing. Seriously.
Canada 150: Banff National Park
My Canada 150 series would not be complete without a post about Canada’s oldest national park. But since every single one of my previous posts on Banff consists of a photo of a mountain, I’d thought I’d mix it up this time. (Otherwise you might get the idea that the only thing to see in Banff National Park are mountains.)
There’s wildlife, too!
Of course, say “wildlife” and “Banff” in the same sentence and most people will start listing off which of the Big Five — deer, elk, moose, bear, and wolf — they’ve seen. The big animals do deserve the attention they get, but it is often the little animals, which are far easier to get up close and personal with, that lead to the best photo ops.
Like this Columbian Ground Squirrel.
We Albertans call these gophers. They live in underground burrows and spend much of the year hibernating. As far as rodents go, they’re kinda big — typically about a foot in length.
I took this photo last summer.
Canada 150: Cavell Glacier
Cavell Glacier in Jasper National Park is one of the most easily accessed glaciers in all of Canada. It lies at the bottom of Mount Edith Cavell and can be reached by a short (less than 1 km) hike. Cavell Pond was formed from the glacier’s meltwater. It’s turquoise because of all the glacial silt suspended in the water.
I spent every summer of my childhood exploring the Rocky Mountains with my family. The mountains are a pretty spectacular playground for kids, but I don’t think I truly appreciated them until I returned on my own as an adult. Now, I don’t take them for granted. Ever.
If you’ve been to Banff or Jasper, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, put the parks on your bucket list. You won’t regret it.
Canada 150: Tr’ochëk
Here is one last photo from North of 60. This is fireweed, the official flower of Yukon. It takes its name from the fact that it is one of the first plants to grow after a forest fire.
I took this photo at Tr’ochëk, a former settlement of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation. It’s also known as Moosehide. Located about 5 km down the Yukon River from Dawson City, the settlement was abandoned in the 1960s after its only school was closed. Today, it is an important gathering place and a seasonal fishing camp for the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation.
Canada 150: Inuvik
Our road trip up the Dempster led us, eventually, to Inuvik. Located 200 km north of the Arctic Circle, Inuvik was built in the 1950s in its present location in the Mackenzie River delta to function as the region’s administrative centre.
Inuvik is the northernmost point of Canada that I’ve ever been to. Until this year, it was also the northernmost point in Canada that you could drive to in the summer. In the winter, the Dempster Highway continues north to Tuktoyaktuk for another 194 km along an ice road formed on the channels of the Mackenzie River delta and the Arctic Ocean. This ice road was only open during the winters, but is being replaced by a new all-season road scheduled to be finished by the end of next summer.
Our Lady of Victory Parish, or the Igloo Church as it is often called, is the community’s Catholic church. It was designed by Brother Maurice Larocque, a missionary from Quebec who spent his entire ministry working in the North. Before he became a priest, he was a carpenter, and he used his skills to design a church that reflected the people who would worship in it. The church was built in the shape of an igloo to be able to deal with the shifting permafrost it stands on.
The Igloo Church is the most photographed building in Inuvik. Naturally, I had to take a photo, too.
Canada 150: Tsiigehtchic
This photo is of Tsiigehtchic, which is where the Mackenzie River meets the Arctic Red River, and where the Dempster Highway crosses the Mackenzie River. Vehicles cross by ferry in the summer. In the winter, there is an ice crossing.
Tsiigehtchic is the Gwich’in word for “mouth of the iron river.” Iron river (Tsiigehnjik) is their name for the Arctic Red River.
Nagwichoonjik, or “river flowing through a big country,” is what the Gwich’in call the Mackenzie River. The Dene call it Deh Cho, which means “big river.” And its Inuvialuktun name is Kuukpak, which means “great river.”
In case there is any doubt, the Mackenzie is a big river. At 4241 km long, it’s the largest and longest river in Canada, and the second largest and longest in North America. (Only the Mississippi is longer.) The Mackenzie River’s watershed covers one-fifth of Canada’s land mass.
The river got its English name from Alexander Mackenzie, who followed its length to the Arctic Ocean in 1789. He hoped the river would empty into the Pacific Ocean. When he realized it did not, he is said to have named it Disappointment River.
That’s an awful lot of names for one river. Whatever you call it, it’s worth crossing.
Anna’s Hummingbird
I took this photo of an Anna’s Hummingbird a few weeks ago during our last snowstorm. I was housebound during that storm because I was hanging out in Solo. If you look closely, you can see that the water in the feeder is almost frozen solid. I’m sure that hummingbird was as confused as I was by the cold weather.
Why am I posting this photo today? Because this morning I spent nearly an hour watching big fat snowflakes fall from the sky.
C’mon. It’s almost March. More snow??
Vancouver has had twice as much snow this winter as Edmonton where it’s winter seven months of the year. (I can say that because I grew up in Edmonton. I know winter. Er … I used to know winter.)
Anna’s Hummingbirds do not migrate south from Vancouver for the winter, thanks to the proliferation of backyard feeders like this one. I still can’t get my head around the fact that hummingbirds are here year-round.
I just hope all that hovering they do kept those tiny birds warm this winter.
Canada 150: Dempster Highway
If you’ve already driven some 2500 kilometres to get from Edmonton to Dawson City, what’s another 800 klicks to go to Inuvik for lunch?
That’s what we thought.
The above photo is of the Dempster Highway, the only road from Dawson to Inuvik. It’s also the only all-weather road in Canada to cross the Arctic Circle. Because of the permafrost, it is surfaced with gravel. When we returned to Dawson City, we were surprised to learn it was rare not to pop a tire or two driving the Dempster Highway to Inuvik and back.
I guess we got lucky.
There’s one place to stop for service along the Dempster Highway and that’s at Eagle Plains, which is the halfway point between Dawson and Inuvik. We filled up with gas there, but camped overnight closer to Inuvik simply by pitching our tents on the shoulder of the highway.
It wasn’t like there was much traffic to keep us awake.
Canada 150: Dawson City
On leg three of my cross-Canada road trip, I drove from Edmonton to Dawson City with a friend. And it was on this trip that I learned a valuable lesson about travelling that has stuck with me ever since.
Always (always, always!!) do your research before you leave home.
My friend and I, both living in Toronto at the time, decided to drive to Dawson City from Edmonton instead of Whitehorse because we both had people we wanted to visit in Edmonton. We flew separately, a few days apart, and I booked us a rental car at the Edmonton International Airport where I would meet her.
I still remember the exact moment the sinking feeling formed in the pit of my stomach. Spread out on the floor of my brother’s living room was a road map that I had been using to calculate how long it would take us to drive to Dawson City. (This was back in the olden days, folks, long before Google Maps.) I started at it in disbelief. Turns out that, even after flying across four provinces, my friend and I were only halfway to the Yukon from Toronto. We had a 36-hour drive ahead of us.
Oops.
But you know what? It was a stunning road trip. We spent our first night with an aunt of mine who lived on a farm in northern Alberta, stopped for a minute the next day in Dawson Creek, BC, to take our obligatory photos at Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway, and camped that night near the BC–Yukon border where we soaked our weary bodies in Canada’s second-largest hot springs at Liard River.
On our third day, we pushed on until we finally arrived at Dawson City around 1 a.m. My sister, who was working in Dawson for the summer, was up and waiting for us.
I was running on adrenalin by that point and nowhere near ready for bed, so my sister took me to the top of Midnight Dome for my first view of the town. It was early July and at that hour it was dusky, but light enough to understand why they call it Land of the Midnight Sun. I took this photo of the view of Dawson City and the Yukon River from Midnight Dome the next day.
Dawson City was the epicentre of the Klondike Gold Rush. After gold was discovered in 1896, an estimated 100,000 people poured into the area, hoping to make their fortune. Almost overnight, Dawson became the largest city west of Winnipeg and north of Seattle.
It was over as quickly as it started. The miners moved on to Alaska after gold was discovered there in 1899. Gold mining still goes on in Dawson today, but most of the town’s economy is based on tourism, which celebrates its Klondike past.
The Klondike Gold Rush transformed all of Western Canada, however. The population of Vancouver doubled and Edmonton’s tripled in those few short years as both cities served as gateways to the Klondike.
Just as Edmonton did for my friend and I.
There and Back Again 