Bench of the Week (10)

This bench is located at Belcarra Bay on a side inlet of Burrard Inlet within Metro Vancouver, British Columbia. Click to enlarge photo. I chose this photo for its shade as Toronto has had hot and humid weather the past couple of days. Sitting on a bench underneath beautiful trees and looking out to the water would be quite refreshing.

RuneE of Visual Norway began this informal meme.
Gerald from Ackworth Born has participated today.
PERBS from For the Love of Benches .
Pacey from My Todays
Phoenix from Sylvan Muse

Photo Credit: Junnn CC=nc-sa-flickr. Click to enlarge the photo.

Hiking Trails - Sawback Trail - Day 6

[47-Badger Pass Junction campground]

The Sawback Trail follows the rugged Sawback Range from the town of Banff to Lake Louise over a distance of 74km (about 45 miles). There are side trails to be discovered which would increase the distance.

On Day 6 the hike will be going for a side trip to Badgers Pass (2,545m) covering a distance one way of 5.5 km after leaving the Badger Pass Junction Campground (Jo29) at the 43.5 km mark. Care should be taken when the days are windy.



[48-Badger Pass Junction and campground necessity]









[49-Trail to Badger Pass - click to enlarge]






[50-Trail]




[51-click to enlarge]




[52-Badger Pass Junction camprground - leaving]
















[53- Indian Paintbrush]


Badger Pass is reached after 5km on a trail that steadily climbs leading to remote wilderness and the headwaters of the Cascade River. It is one of the highest hiking passes in Banff National Park.


[54-Going up Badger Pass -click to enlarge]





The trail crosses over the creek that drains the western slope through forests and meadows.


[55-Up Badger Pass - click to enlarge]





[56 - Click to enlarge]






[57 - Up to Badger Pass - click to enlarge]





[58-Marmots]






[59- Click to enlarge]





[60-Badgers Pass - click to enlarge]





[61-Badgers Pass - click to enlarge]





[62- Badgers Pass looking west - click to enlarge]






[63-click to enlarge]







[64]






[65-click to enlarge]



Bonnet Peak (3234m) is to the north of the pass and next to it is the Bonnet Icefield.

[66-Bonnet Glacier - click to enlarge]


Sources:
ParksCanada – Banff [http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/ab/banff/activ/activ17a_E.asp]
Backcountry Overview [http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/ab/banff/activ/activ17_e.asp]
Trail Conditions [http://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/tcond/cond_e.asp?oPark=100092]
Backpacking Equipment Checklist [http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/ab/banff/activ/activ10_e.asp]
Canadian Rockies Trail Guide by Brian Patton, Bart Robinson, 2007, pp.49
http://waputik.tripod.com/gdt_sawback.htm
Gem Trek maps for Lake Louise and Skoki [http://www.gemtrek.com/lakelouise.html]
Gem Trek maps for Banff and Mount Assiniboine [http://www.gemtrek.com/banffassiniboine.html]
HI Hostels Intl Survival Guide http://www.hihostels.ca/docs/hipm/Fall2007.pdf

Photo Credits: [47][48][52][54][59][60][61][62][63]-lafalott CC=nc-sa-flickr, [49][51]-Kris Griffon CC=nc-sa-flickr, [50][55][56][57][64][65]-meganpru CC=nc-flickr, [53]-Withrow CC=nc-flickr, [58]-pat_pelletier (busy) CC=nc-nd-flickr, [66]-mikewarren CC=nc-sa-flickr.

Two Sentence Tuesday: 23 June 2009

My reading has continued with "A Toss of the Lemon" by Padma Viswanathan, for a future book review. The astrologer, Hanumarathan, has recently married and is opening up an unused house he inherited from his parents. Three recently read sentences are:

"Hanumarathnam opens the doors from the main hall to the pantry, from the pantry to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the back courtyard, where an extended family of monkeys screeches and leaps at his appearance. Hanumarathnam screeches and leaps back into the house. The monkeys have been eating from the fruit trees in the garden: the courtyard stinks of rotting fruit, including half­eaten mangoes and overripe bananas evidently used as missiles in monkey food fights."

From my current WIP, a dark fantasy, Keeper 2, two recently written draft sentences are:

“He felt compelled to ease her fears, if only for a moment, and reached to the image in the water where he barely touched the woman’s cheek. Salathiel drew his fingertips carefully on top of the water to avoid making ripples, yet caught a strand of her long red-golden hair, lifting it momentarily from the water.”


For other participants please visit Women of Mystery.

Tuesday Fishing - Lake Ontario

For the fishing enthusiast who dreams of catching that 'big one' there are charter trips which can be arranged for fishing in Lake Ontario. Or, for the person who likes to have their own boat they might choose one like this:

[1]









There is that intoxicating thrill when the line tightens...the fight between man and fish begins...





[2-King Salmon -click to enlarge]



...with the earned result...




[3-King Salmon catch]






Photo Credits; [1][2][3]-Oplotnik CC=nc-nd-flickr.

My Town Monday - Conditions in the West in 1872

In July 1874, Samuel Steele began his trip west in service with the North West Mounted Police with the rank of sergeant-major from Manitoba. The NWMP was formed due to the state of lawlessness that pervaded from the territories of the United States to the south into the North-West Territories of the Dominion of Canada (recently acquired from the Hudson’s Bay Company). Large numbers of reckless men made their way north and did what they pleased. No restraint had been made against them with the result the Indians were in possession of weapons and “fire water” in exchange for buffalo hides and furs. The interlopers from the south moved into Canada setting up stockades as protection from the Indians.

Although the Indians’ numbers had been reduced from the effects of smallpox, they were still powerful and capable of inciting wars.

The province of Manitoba in 1873 was small, not extending more than 100 miles west of Winnipeg. The land west into the North West Territories did not have any justice of the peace. Any travel across the prairies was fraught with danger.

[Fort Edmonton c. 1856 by Paul Kane]

Close to Edmonton and the east slope of the Rocky Mountains the Indians were friendly. The Rev. George McDougall, a Methodist minister, had established a mission in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Any person traveling from the Calgary area through the country now occupied by Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, Fort Macleod, and across southern Saskatchewan needed an escort of armed men.

Prior to the formation of the NWMP the Hudson’s Bay Company posts had difficulty maintaining their trading posts south of the Red Deer River. There was continuous warfare between the tribes, enhanced by the abundance of whisky brought in by traders south of the Red Deer and South Saskatchewan rivers. When the Indians burnt down the Old Bow Fort on the Bow River, the Hudson’s Bay Company built Mountain Fort (Rocky Mountain House) to pacify the Blackfeet who were determined to keep white and red intruders off their hunting grounds. Whenever the natives met at Fort Edmonton for trade, the Crees and Blackfeet would fight, causing the occupants of the fort to close the gates until the fight was over. There were many massacres at Forts Carlton, Pitt, Edmonton, and Mountain. Any Indian who boasted of his ability to take horses and scalps was considered virtuous by members of his tribe. Wherever there was plentiful hunting, the Indians would massacre any intruder found in those locations. The Metis hunters and others of the Red River settlement never ventured west of Moose Jaw, except in well-organized armed bands.

One of the stockade posts in the west (southern Alberta) was Fort Hamilton or more commonly known as “Fort Whoop-Up” at the fork of the Belly and St. Mary’s rivers. It was well fortified with braced heavy logs with log partitions, heavy log roofs, iron bars across chimneys to prevent Indians’ access, a thick gate of oak with a small opening to trade through. Inside, the trader stood at the wicket with a tubful of whiskey next to him, and when an Indian pushed in a buffalo robe to him, he would hand out a tin cupful of the ‘whiskey’. A quart bought a horse. When spring arrived, wagonloads of the hides and furs were escorted to Fort Benton, Montana, about 200 miles south.

'Whiskey' and 'firewater' are terms to be used loosely as it was made up of the following ingredients: alcohol spiked with ginger, molasses, red pepper, coloured with black chewing tobacco, watered down and boiled.

Photos of Fort Whoop-Up here.

TO BE CONTINUED

Part 1

Sources:
Forty Years In Canada by Col. Samuel B. Steele, 1915, Herbert Jenkins Limited

Photos: wikipedia

Travis Erwin from Amarillo, Texas is the founder of My Town Monday. For other locations to visit please go to Travis' site here.

Sea Sick: The Global Ocean In Crisis by Alanna Mitchell (Book Review)

“Sea Sick is the first book to examine the current state of the world’s oceans — the great unexamined ecological crisis of the planet — and the fact that we are altering everything about them; temperature, salinity, acidity, ice cover, volume, circulation, and, of course, the life within them.

Alanna Mitchell joins the crews of leading scientists in nine of the global ocean’s hotspots to see firsthand what is really happening around the world. Whether it’s the impact of coral reef bleaching, the puzzle of the oxygen-less dead zones such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico, or the shocking implications of the changing Ph balance of the sea, Mitchell explains the science behind the story to create an engaging, accessible yet authoritative account.”

This is a serious book about the effects humans have made upon the ocean. Early in the book Ms Mitchell described a conversation with Tim Flannery in Whyalla, South Australia, wherein he related the ocean contained the switch of life. The switch can be turned off, and life as we know it will die. Humans will then be forced to adapt to a new way of life.

In a middle chapter, Ms Mitchell related information obtained from marine biologists at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia about the collapse of arctic cod due to over fishing. Their study revealed that populations of the larger predator fish in the ocean have decreased by 90% in five decades since modern industrial fishing became popular. Those predator fish presently in the ocean are smaller than their earlier representatives.

As humans are a part of nature they need to take a serious and thoughtful look at the oceans, which provide most of the air humans breathe. Reading this book will help you become more aware of the path we have set ourselves upon: one of no return unless we do something to change the direction. The first step is for each human to make a concerted effort in their own life to change, and then to get others involved.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in science, life in the depths of the oceans and our part.


Format: Hardcover, 240 pages.
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
Published: March 3, 2009.

Alanna Mitchell was the science and environment reporter at the Globe and Mail for fourteen years, until she left daily journalism to devote herself to writing on science. In 2000, she was named the best environmental reporter in the world by the Reuters Foundation and was invited in 2002 to undertake a guest fellowship at Oxford University. Out of this came her first book, Dancing at the Dead Sea, published in 2004. Mitchell is an associate at the International Institute for Sustainable Development and is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer on environmental issues. She lives in Toronto with her husband and two children.

Bench of the Week (9)

This different sort of bench, but well suited to its purpose, is located at Grose Morne Provincial Park in Newfoundland.

RuneE of Visual Norway began an informal meme for posting benches on Friday. He has another spectacular bench this week.
Phoenix of Sylvan Muse has her bench up in a lovely garden.
Gerald from Ackworth Born, Gone West has a perfect bench to catch the action.
PERBS has a cute bench today.
Pacey from Today's Blah... has a unique bench with a perfect seat.

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Photo Credit: mooste CC=nc-nd-flickr.