Fresh Old Ideas
Arnold Malone
In July we celebrate Canada Day. While Canada Day is now over, we still have much to celebrate. We are a lucky population and we live in a special place.
Canada has more national parks than most other countries. In fact, we have so many big national parks that their collective size, about 400,00 square kilometres, is larger than the size of 167 countries. We also have some very old cities. Montreal was established in 1642 and is older than New York. The oldest city in North America is St. Johns, Newfoundland which was formed in 1497.
Given that water, not oil, is likely the geo-political resource in critical demand in the 21st century, it is comforting to know that more than half of the world’s lakes are in Canada.
Mount Logan, Yukon is the tallest mountain in Canada. It also has the largest base of any mountain in the world.
We have the world’s most diverse temperatures and the coldest ever recorded – minus 63 – is equal to the average cold temperatures on Mars. Perhaps because of the cold, we are a cool place because we produce 80 per cent of the world’s maple syrup. We are also the world’s largest importer of roasted coffee.
If you are feeling a tad heavy there is a Canadian solution – go to Hudson Bay where gravity has less pull and there you will weigh less than anywhere on earth. The Canadian Shield is the world’s oldest rock so we Canadians have a rock-solid history.
At the closest point, Russia is only 3.8 km from North America and when you are in Resolute, Nunavut the closest capital city is Moscow, Russia.
Our Indigenous friends have occupied these lands for 15,000 years and the bison is also Indigenous. Speaking about hanging around for a long time, William Lyon Mackenzie King was Prime Minister for more than 20 years.
A Canadian law makes it illegal to kill a sasquatch. Bigfoot will be pleased to know that.
We are gold medal champions at eating doughnuts. We consume more than one billion every year; not bad considering that we have only 0.5 per cent of the world’s population. However, we have a literacy rate of 99 per cent; likely from reading while eating those doughnuts.
The diversity of Canada allows us to experience so much of what nature and humanity has to offer; great varieties of landscapes and wonderfully diverse populations of birds, animals and people.
Perhaps one of the least appreciated values is space. Anyone who has walked the streets of New Deli or Beijing will know the value of space. We are in fact more human when we are not crushed into the personal space of unknown others. Canada is fortunate in having so much space.
Canada has more influence in world organizations than any other country with a population of only 40 million people. We can be very proud of our country; we have so much to celebrate.
About 50 kilometres west of Calgary on the Trans-Canada Highway – for many months – there has been an ongoing collection of people demonstrating while using very large signs demanding freedom. The demonstrators also have signs with nasty words written about a national politician. Nevertheless, they are allowed to express their view. Not one of those organizers nor any of the participants have fallen out of a window of a high-rise building nor have they found themselves in a plane that unfortunately exploded in mid-air. Perhaps the freedom they seek is the freedom they already have.
For all the news that is broadcast about whatever goes wrong on any given day, we are a fortunate group of people. So, thank you Canada.
