MyWestworld

Did You Know?

Posted on 27. Aug, 2008 by Kerry Banks in Travel Blog

Did you know that Canada possesses the world’s largest wildlife game sanctuary, or that mobster Al Capone once had a secret hideout located beneath the streets of Moose Jaw, or that Alberta boasts the world’s only official Flying Saucer Landing Pad? These are just a few of the surprising factoids that I discovered while perusing the Canadian Tourism Commission’s website (mediacentre.canada.travel/). Unfortunately, the site offers few details about these unusual pieces of Canadiana. Curious to know more, I’ve done some additional research. Here are 10 travel-related Did You Know? items, arranged in no particular order.

Highway 61, immortalized by Bob Dylan’s song and his album of the same name, as well as other blues singers, actually begins in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Highway 61 is an Ontario highway extending for 61 kilometres from a junction with Highways 11 and 17 and the Harbour Expressway in Thunder Bay, Ontario to the Pigeon River Bridge, where it meets Minnesota State Highway 61 at the Ontario-Minnesota border. The highway continues south all the way to New Orleans. The road is known as the Blues Highway because it runs through the Mississippi Delta, which was an important source of blues music. The junction of Highway 61 and Highway 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, is said to be the famous crossroads where, according to legend, guitarist Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for mastery of the blues.

The world’s largest wildlife sanctuary is located in Canada.

Most people would guess it had to be in Africa, but in fact, the Chapleau Game Preserve, which spans an astounding 800,000 hectares, is situated in northern Ontario. The preserve provides habitat for 119 species of birds and 50 species of mammals. Here you have a good chance of spotting the tallest animal in North America, the moose, and possibly also the smallest North American mammal, the pygmy shrew. The number of moose in the preserve is estimated at 2,500; black bear number around 2,000. There are also numerous timber wolves, mink, pine marten, lynx, otter, bald eagles, ospreys, blue herons and loons.

More than 100 billion tonnes of water flow in and out of the Bay of Fundy twice daily–more water than the combined flow of all the world’s freshwater rivers.

That, my friends, is a lot of water. This 270-kilometre long and 80-kilometre wide bay, located between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, is famous for having the highest tides on the planet (16.2 metres). It is also celebrated for its coastal rock formations, extreme tidal effects (vertical, horizontal, rapids and bores), as well as being a critical international feeding ground for migratory birds and a habitat for rare and endangered right whales.

Chicago Mobster Al Capone once had a secret hideout beneath the streets of Moose Jaw.

Under the streets of Moose Jaw lies an extensive network of tunnels, constructed in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s so that staff could move from one building to another and keeping the furnaces going, without having to go outdoors in the frigid winter weather. Eventually Chinese migrants lived and worked in the tunnels, providing cheap labour while existing in a sad state as the city’s subterranean society. Then along came prohibition and bootleggers and gangsters. Alcohol was legal in Canada and with ready access to Chicago by rail, it was a relatively simple matter for Al Capone to distil and ship alcohol in great quantities directly to the Windy City for sale to fund his criminal empire. When in Moose Jaw, Capone reportedly lived in a motel across the street from the CPR depot and freight yard and used the tunnels as a hideout. The tunnels are now a tourist attraction, with two interactive guided tours available. One tour, called the “Passage to Fortune,” tells the story of early Chinese immigrants in Canada. The other tour, the “Chicago Connection,” recounts the local history of bootlegging, including Capone’s visit in the 1920s.

North America’s oldest operating lighthouse can be found in Nova Scotia.

Built in 1759, the lighthouse on Sambro Island, Nova Scotia, has stood guard for two and half centuries. It was originally fitted with one of Canada’s most intriguing alarm clocks, a cannon, to awaken the lighthouse keeper. The gun was fired daily in the morning all the way from Halifax–nearly four kilometres away. Built of stone and sheathed with wood shingles to protect the mortar from deterioration in the salt atmosphere, the tower was originally white. It was painted with three red stripes in 1908, so it would be more visible in snow. The lighthouse was declared a National Historic Site in 1937. A $20 silver coin featuring the lighthouse was issued in 2004 by the Royal Canadian Mint, and Canada Post announced a permanent stamp honouring the site in December 2007.

In 2005, a panel of experts from National Geographic Traveller magazine voted Gwaii Haanas in B.C.’s Queen Charlotte Islands the best national park in North America.

The designation recognized the 1,470 square km wilderness park for its pristine environment and sustainable management practices. “High cultural integrity,” said one panelist. “Haida are very involved in park management. Residents display a real stewardship ethic.” Another said: “Beautiful and intact. A great model for other regions.” As, far back as 10,000 years ago, the land of Gwaii Haanas was home to the Haida people. Today, there are remnants of old ancient villages and Haida totem poles located throughout the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve. Contrary to many visitors’ expectations, the poles and historic artifacts are not preserved, but instead are left to decay as part of their natural evolution.

At the eastern tip of Prince Edward Island, there is a spectacular golden sand beach that sings when you walk on it.

Actually, the sound is closer to a squeak, but it’s distinctive and mysterious. It’s a phenomenon that scientists still don’t completely understand. Located east of the town of Souris in Basin Head Provincial Park, many consider this to be the best beach on the island, and not only because of the music it makes. “Singing Sands” have been reported on beaches in the North of Wales, on the little island of Eigg in the Scottish Hebrides and at a number of beaches along the Atlantic Coast. Studies have found that squeaking or whistling sand is found where quartz sand is very well rounded and highly spherical.

Saskatchewan’s Little Manitou Lake is a saltwater lake with a density greater than that of the Dead Sea.

Little Manitou Lake is not only easy to float in, it’s also impossible to sink in. Located about 100 kilometres southeast of Saskatoon, the lake was formed by receding glaciers during the most recent Ice Age. It is fed by underground springs, and has a mineral content high in sodium, magnesium and potassium. Since the 1800s, Native people have been bringing sick people to the lake that they named after the spirit Manitou. The earliest known practice of using this water to heal was when some Assiniboine people who were afflicted with smallpox were miraculously cured after drinking and submerging themselves in the lake water.

The world’s largest collection of pingos are found near Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories.

Pingos are cone-shaped mounds of earth-covered ice found in the Arctic, subarctic, and Antarctica that can reach up to 70 metres in height and up to two kilometres in diameter. These low hills are the result of frozen ground being forced upward by the pressure of subterranean water. The world’s largest concentration of them, more than 1,400 in all, are found in the Tuktoyaktuk area of the Mackenzie Delta. Some are as old as a thousand years. Hollow pingos were apparently used by Inuit hunters as meat freezers! Two of the region’s best known pingos are Ibyuk, 50 metres high and about 1,000 years old, and Aklisuktuk (“the one that is growing”), first sketched by explorer John Richardson in 1848.

The world’s only official Flying Saucer Landing Pad resides in St. Paul, Alberta.

The town of 5,400, located 200 kilometres east of Edmonton, built a Flying Saucer Landing Pad to celebrate Canada’s centennial in 1967. The Hon. Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Minister of Defense, even flew in by helicopter to officially open it. The construction cost was donated by members of the community and the land was provided by the town. A UFO Interpretive Display has been opened in the adjacent tourist information centre. There’s even a toll-free UFO hotline. Although St. Paul’s UFO landing pad attraction has never been fully embraced by the community, with only two businesses adopting an alien theme–UFO Pizza and the Galaxy Motel–this sitation may soon change. A recent proposal from a town marketing committee calls for alien-themed garbage cans on St. Paul’s main street, providing information on crop circles and cattle mutilations, painting six blocks of sidewalks bright green, erecting alien statues in parks and hosting UFO conferences.