Mount Logan

Mount Logan is the highest mountain in Canada and the second-highest peak in North America, after Denali. It is also believed to have the largest base circumference of any non-volcanic mountain on Earth.The mountain surprisingly enough is not named after Theodore Logan from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, it was named after Sir William Edmond Logan, a Canadian geologist and founder of the Geological Survey of Canada. Mount Logan is located within Kluane National Park Reserve in southwestern Yukon, less than 40 kilometres north of the Yukon/Alaska border and is the source of the Hubbard and Logan Glaciers. 

Knife Rige - Mount Logan
By Christian Stangl - https://www.flickr.com/photos/127405808@N06/15116832326/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38608961

Due to active tectonic uplifting, Mount Logan is still rising in height. In May 1992, a Geological Survey of Canada expedition climbed Mount Logan and fixed the current height of 5,959 metres (19,551 ft), including a massif with eleven peaks over 5,000 metres (16,400 ft).

South east view of Mount Logan

Temperatures are extremely low on and near Mount Logan. On the 5,000 m high plateau, air temperature hovers around −45 °C in the winter and reaches near freezing in summer with the median temperature for the year around −27 °C. Minimal snow melt leads to a significant ice cap, reaching almost 300 metres in certain spots.

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The Northwest Passage - Stan Rogers

Post By Michael Faulkner

Stan Rogers was a Canadian folk singer and songwriter, born in Hamilton, Ontario. There's a list of great songs Rogers was able to release before his tragic death back in 1983. One song stands out as his best, and that is "Northwest Passage". This song has been referred to as one of Canada's unofficial anthems, and upon hearing the first few seconds of the song you can see why. Rogers' voice creates an emotion inside that makes you want to join in with him so you can both chant the lyrics wholeheartedly; and who doesn't like a song that does that to you?!

Northwest Passage - Stan Rogers
Photo from the montrealgazzete.com

Stan Rogers left us at a young age, but he left us with some great music, so I encourage you to check him out.

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Prince Edward Island National Park

Prince Edward Island National Park stretches out over 65 kilometres of shoreline, made up of beaches, red sandstone cliffs and rolling sand dunes on the North Shore of Prince Edward Island, just 24 kilometres away from the Birthplace of our Confederation in Charlottetown.

Cavendish Beach
By Loganwhite6 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59629646

Sweeping, sandy beaches draw crowds of day-trippers and campers throughout the summer. If the scenery seems storybook-perfect, there’s good reason. The park is also home a 19th-century farmhouse that was immortalized in the novel Anne of Green Gables, now one of Canada’s most popular heritage places.

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The Raccoons

The Canadian animated television show The Raccoons was centered around Bert Raccoon and married roomates Ralph and Melissa Raccoon. The shows mostly involved the trio's efforts against the industrialist forces of greedy aardvark millionaire Cyril Sneer, who usually tried to destroy the forest for a quick buck. However, the Raccoons would always save the forest from Cyril's evil plots, with help from their forest friends including Schaeffer, a gentle sheepdog; Cedric, Cyril's college graduate son; and Sophia Tutu, Cedric's girlfriend.

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Banff National Park

Canada’s inaugural and flagship national park is impressive with more than 6,000 square kilometres of mountain wilderness and is part of the larger Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks UNESCO World Heritage Site. Banff National Park is home to magnificent 3000-metre peaks, meadows in the clouds rich with colourful wildflowers, brilliant turquoise glacier-fed lakes and the picture perfect town of Banff and village of Lake Louise.

Banff, Alberta, Canada

By Tony Webster from Portland, Oregon, United States - Banff, Alberta, Canada, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39882973

The park offers exceptional hiking, camping, skiing and scenic driving. Navigate the world-renowned Icefields Parkway, a drive that parallels the Continental Divide, where wildlife like bighorn sheep, mountain goats and bears roam.

Banff National Park
By Tony Webster from Portland, Oregon, United States - Banff, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39883728

Throughout the park, visitors can choose from thousands of campsites at 13 campgrounds surrounded by some of the worlds most breath taking mountain scenery, ski at three ski resorts and stay at a range of accommodations, from hotels to lodges.

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The Igloo Church

Possibly the Northwest Territories most iconic, most photographed structure, the Our Lady of Victory church in downtown Inuvik. Also known as the Igloo Church, it is a bleach-white cylinder capped by a silvery dome, imitating the Inuvialuit snow-houses of old and is truly unlike any other church on earth.

Our Lady of Victory Church
By Adam Jones, Ph.D. - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27739723

The round or igloo shape was chosen to mitigate possible structural damage that might be caused by frost heave. Its unique structural system, "a dome within a dome", further protects the church with a foundation consisting of a bowl-shaped concrete slab on a gravel bed atop the permafrost and, in the building itself, an intricate system of wooden arches to support the load.

Interior of Our Lady of Victory Church
By Adam Jones, Ph.D. - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27739723

Designed by Brother Maurice Larocque, a Catholic missionary to the Arctic who had previously been a carpenter, designed the church despite a lack of any formal architectural training, sketching it on two sheets of plywood that are prominently displayed in the building's upper storeys. Construction was started in the late 1950s  and completed by a group of volunteers in 1960. The church was then rebuilt in 2005. A trip north of the Artic Circle would no be complete without a photo in front of the Igloo Church.

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Cream Soda

James William Black of Berwick, Nova Scotia was granted a U.S. patent on December 8, 1885, and a Canadian patent on July 5, 1886, for "ice-cream soda". Black's ice-cream soda, contained whipped egg whites, sugar, lime juice, lemons, citric acid, flavouring, and bicarbonate of soda, was a concentrated syrup that could be reconstituted into a bubbly or fizzy beverage by adding ordinary ice water.

Modern day Canadian cream soda is not really vanilla-flavored in the same way that American cream soda is; instead, it’s an intensely sweet, almost cotton-candy-type flavour. The most popular cream soda in Canada is produced by Crush and is mostly pink, except in Quebec and Newfoundland and Nova Scotia where it is sold clear. 


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Alliston Potato Festival

Every year on the second weekend of August things start to change in my hometown, an amusement park pops up in my old grade school yard, the streets start to get busier, the store fronts begin to take on a festive appearance as they compete for the best potato display. The town of Alliston is a buzz for it's annual Potato Festival. 

If you are wondering why Alliston chose to host a festival of potatoes. It is because at the time of the Potato Festival's conception (1972-73), Alliston was the biggest and the best potato growing area of Ontario and most likely even Canada. 

Friday night Victoria street shuts down for the annual parade, not many know this but it is one of the biggest parades around and by far my personal favourite part of the weekend, but as a child I can remember the rides and games were always a top priority. Besides the midway and the parade there are many other things to keep one busy, such as sidewalk sales, live music and beer tent, a car show, street buskers and much more. 

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Jasper National Park

Jasper National Park, Alberta
By Talhamujahid at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11369898

The first time I had ever laid eyes on Jasper National Park, it was 2:30am and I was riding middle row of a Greyhound bus, we passed the Jasper sign and saw a small heard of elk, they were grazing and hanging out on the front lawn of a motel, like it was no big deal. 

By Shaun Syvertsen - Shaun Syvertsen, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1507632

On the way back through Jasper, the sun was up and I found myself in a much different Jasper than the time berfore. Jasper is a small alpine town in Nortern Alberta that is surrounded by snow-capped Canadian Rockies, forests, glacier fed lakes and rivers. I spent my entire time taking in the stunning beauty of the mountains and breathing that fresh mountain air. One day I hope to return to Jasper, the views alone are one of my most vivid memories and that makes it a shoe in for one of our 150 favourite Canadian things.

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Bret "The Hitman" Hart

My brother and I used to turn my parent's basement into a WWF wrestling ring. Often we would take turns pretending to be different wrestling characters, and for safety we used beanbag chairs to absorb the off-the-top-rope impact. When we would select which wrestler we'd want to be for the match, my go-to would almost always be Canadian born Bret "the Hitman" Hart.

photo from profightdb.com

Bret Sergeant Hart is a a member of the Hart wrestling family and a second-generation wrestler. A major international draw within professional wrestling, he has been credited with changing the perception of mainstream North-American professional wrestling in the early 1990s by bringing technical in-ring performance to the fore. Hart is widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. He retired in 2000 and was inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame in 2006 

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