Ward Hunt ice shelf breaks up

The Ward Hunt ice shelf on Ellesmere Island has broken after 3,000 years of undisturbed existence. NASA scientists attribute this change to human-caused climate change.

The breakup of the ice shelf is a loss to biodiversity since the shelf contained a rare microclimate known as an epishelf lake. An epishelf lake is a particular climate consisting of fresh, brackish, and salt water in a rare combination similar to that found in George Bush's brain.

Yellowknife Golf

In Yellowknife golf has a few additional rules. The course is mostly sand; so you have to take a little artificial grass mat around with you and hit the ball off the artificial grass. Secondly, you have to watch out for the ravens which are likely to carry off your ball. The course even has a special rule posted for that situation.

Indy Bookstores

If you are in NYC I recommend the following

1. Get off the subway in SoHo, e.g. Prince St. Station

2. Browse the stacks at Housing Works Used Bookstore (126 Crosby St, Soho). They have a marvelous selection with catwalks and a classic dark wood style. Their profits provide housing and healthcare for homeless New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS.

For other NYC bookstores check out Chekovsmistress.com

3. Dinner at the Hampton Chutney Co. Avocado and spinach dosa, plus mango lassi: $14

Yellow Alert

The Department Of Homeland Security has raised the terror alert level to orange for commercial aviation, yellow for everything else. This follows the arrests of people in Britain for plotting to blow up airliners.

How about an advisory level for climate change? Do Americans even recognize a threat that doesn't affect the next fiscal quarter? or the next five years? Climate change will affect more people than the worst-case scenario from last week. It may not be as dramatic or imminent but it is a threat that needs to be taken seriously.

Mailbox

Number twelve Beatrice street has a secret. There are two mailboxes at this house, and one of them is a mini art gallery called the Lower Mailbox Gallery. They reportedly hold art openings on the front porch, where wine is served in extra small glasses. Cute

Squash

Cooked. The first spaghetti squash from the garden on Sunday. Here it is. Squash is a native North American plant; one of the so-called Three Sisters of agriculture which included also maize and beans. The following recipe from epicurious works well:

Ingredients

• a 2- to 2 1/2-pound spaghetti squash, halved lengthwise, reserving 1 half for another use
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup finely chopped onions
• 1 cup thinly sliced mushrooms
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh chives
• 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Directions
Wrap the squash half in microwave-safe plastic wrap and microwave it, cut side up, at high power (100%) for 10 to 12 minutes, or until it feels soft when pressed. Let the squash stand for 5 minutes.

In a small microwave-safe dish combine the butter, the onion, and the mushroom and microwave the mixture at high power (100%), stirring once, for 5 minutes, or until the mushrooms are tender. Discard the squash seeds, scrape the flesh with a fork into a bowl, and toss it with the mushroom mixture, the parsley, the chives, the Parmesan, and salt and pepper to taste.

Jump Up

I went to the Caribana Festival of Bands parade. Caribana is Toronto's annual Carribbean festival modelled onTrinida & Tobago's carnival. The music was loud, the sun was hot. The crowd was enthusiastic. Alas no batteries for the camera so I couldn't take any photos.

Tips for next year's parade:
Bring a bike. Get onto Lakeshore at Strachan Ave. and then walk your bike westbound, moving up the parade from back to front. The parade is slow enough that you can overtake it, and that way you don't have to sit around all day waiting for it.

Yay Long Weekend - Simcoe Day

Happy birthday Mr. John Graves Simcoe

go

This week I began taking GO Transit to a customer site. GO allows bikes except through Union at rush hour.

Trains rock my world. Maybe it's the European in me. The ride is comfortable, fast, and productive if you have a laptop or a crackberry.

A two way ticket is $14 by GO, and over $50 by car (the mileage charged by my company for the same trip)

I get a thrill every time a train blasts through the station at 100 km/h.

Big Three Take a Hit

Detroit's Big Three automakers have taken a hit. Toyota now has a greater market share in the U.S. than Ford does.

• Ford: sales down 43.9% in July with July being Ford's 6th consecutive monthly sales decline
• DaimlerChrysler: sales down 35%
• GM: down 19% with July theirFord's 6th consecutive monthly sales decline

Time to stop selling inefficient vehicles boys. Wake up, or die Detroit automakers.

Giant Mine

We visited the Giant Mine, defunct since 1999. The Giant Mine has a toxic legacy: 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide dust remains following half a century of mining. Said one of our Yellowknife hosts: Why not solve the problem by getting everyone to return their gold and mix it with the arsenic?

The Giant Mine does not like visitors. Below are some photos taken from the parking lot of the Giant Mine and the unmarked road across the highway. Shortly after taking these images we were approached by security and asked to leave.

Prelude Lake

A road winds its way east for 62 km out of Yellowknife. Originally, the Diefenbaker government had proposed building a road all the way around Great Slave Lake. It was part of the Diefenbaker government's program of 'Roads To Resources'.

The road was never completed and now it dead ends at a lake. This road is called the Ingraham Trail and we visited one of the stops along the way, a park called Prelude Lake. The hiking was moderately difficult and the trail includes a very well designed set of interpretive plaques outlining the flora and fauna in the area.



Below is a foliose lichen, a food normally enjoyed only by caribou but also the explorer Sir John Franklin during his hapless 1821 expedition in the Canadian Arctic. The members of his expedition called the lichens Tripe de Roche and even tried to eat their own boots.



We also found this cool flower. Don't know what it is.

YK Dump

The Yellowknife dump is famous for its scavengers and is known as the "IKEA of dumps." The town's landfill has been featured in The Walrus and the International Herald Tribune. The site is unusual among North American dumps because it allows people to scavenge (although this is not advertised on the city's web site) From 3:30-5pm people can visit to scrounge through boxes left carefully and also not so carefully. We also saw people looking for spare parts for cars, and a helpful sign saying "help yourself to paint".

Scavenging was an eye-opening experience, or shall I say, nostril constricting-experience. As you might expect. Since the town doesn't have green bins like Toronto, the wet rotting garbage is mixed in with the dry, potentially useful garbage. And there are thousands of seagulls crapping everywhere.

Let's just say the reality of scavenging is much less pleasant than the idea of scavenging - reuse of items. I guess you could get used to the smell and the mess, and it would have helped to be properly dressed for scavenging. But it makes you think about all the things we throw away; how un-reusable and unrecyclable so much of our trash is, and how important it is to divert waste into multiple streams: wet waste, compost, recyclables, toxic waste, before it ends up here.

LOHAS

Conservative newsmagazine Newsweek has a good article on the Greening of America in their recent issue (July 17, 2006)

Gallup polling data shows that the number of Americans who say they worry about the environment has increased from 62 to 77 percent between 2004 and 2006. This data was gathered before the release of Al Gore's film on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth

Marketers have a term called LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) to describe eco-conscious consumers.

It's good to see the message is sinking in among the conservative media, though the article does peddle a fair share of despair over climate change: "In the face of the coming onslaught of pollutants from a rapidly urbanizing China and India, the task of avoiding ecological disaster may seem hopeless, and some environmental scientists have, quietly, concluded that it is" (p. 43)

Al Gore documents this trend "from denial to despair", in his movie An Inconvenient Truth. Having delayed, denied, obfuscated, and lied about climate change for decades, conservative politicians and media pundits have now completely flip-flopped. Climate change is real and serious, they say, but now it's far too late and too difficult to do anything about it. Whoops, we were wrong. Too bad it's too late.

Lite Ride 2

The Lite Ride from Goods-2-Go has proven to be an invaluable part of our urban vacation. Although not usable for mountain biking or long distance riding, for trips under 20km it is perfect. The unusual appearance of this bike got a lot of people interested.

Alaskan Huskies

Today we visited a professional sled dog racer, Kate Palfrey and her kennel of 54 Alaskan Huskies. Kate and her husband Warren recently competed in the Iditarod, an 1,100 mile sled race in Alaska. Pictured above is a month-old litter of Husky puppies. The dogs are clumsy and curious and you can already see their individual personalities starting to develop. Pictured below: the kennels where the adult teams live.

Green Issues in the North

Northerners are struggling with a number of political issues this summer

In Yellowknife the Arctic Energy Alliance and Aurora Research Institute have set up a wind monitoring station to determine if wind power is viable for Yellowknife. Although Yellowknife currently uses hydro-electric power generation, many smaller NWT communities get their power from burning nasty diesel fuel.

In Wood Buffalo National Park on the southern border of the NWT, two forest fires are currently burning out of control. In Fort Smith, a plan to conduct a controlled forest burn to protect the town was deep-sixed after residents vigorously opposed it. "It's the oddest friggin' thing I've ever heard of," said Ken Hudson, calling the plan "stupid." (News/North July 17, 2006) Ken Hudson is the president of the Fort Smith Metis Council.

Indeed. I hope that Mr. Hudson won't be looking for government compensation when the forest fire sweeps through his town, now that a large supply of flammable material has been assured.

In Yellowknife, MLA Bill Braden pushed for adoption of a report recommending one more MLA each for Yellowknife and Behchoko. Bill Braden notes that Yellowknife has half the population of the NWT but only 38% of the representation in the Legislative Assembly.

Wild urban plants

On Friday we went bird-watching at Niven Lake in the heart of Yellowknife. This urban lake used to be a sewage lagoon and is now a thriving wetland and is home to beaver, muskrat, and many species of birds and wild plants.

Pictured above (foreground) is foxtail barley The BC government lists it as a 'noxious weed'. I like to call it a 'native plant'. In the background, the red flower is fireweed.

Folk on the Rocks

We had a fabulous day at Folk on the Rocks. Not only did we see some quality artists but the organizers put the artists together in mash-ups. Bands that don't normally play together were paired off on some of the smaller stages during the afternoon shows. Brodie Dawson, local Yelloknife artist was matched with two seperate Ontario bands: Serena Ryder and The Marigolds. Whitehorse musician Indio Saravanja was paired with Petunia, an artist from New Brunswick. The result was a happy mix of compatible but different artists - a sound that we would not otherwise get to hear.

The food today: caribou burger on re-usable camping plate. Instead of generating massive quantities of paper plates, the festival has a deposit/return system which allows you to borrow a plate for your meal. Sweet.

Giant Mine

The front page story of the Yellowknifer the day we arrived had a story about the threat posed by the Giant Mine.

The Giant Mine has been open since 1948 in Yellowknife and was a major employer for a long time. However, it seems that the mining companies who cashed in on the gold rush didn't take care of something. 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide, to be precise. It's actually quite a common problem in resource based economies. Wealth gets privatized. Costs get socialized. Now the government is on the hook for a 200 million dollar cleanup while the former private sector managers are nowhere to be found. How can this be? I thought government was incompetent and the private sector efficient...

The latest problem making headlines is that a creek is threatening to flood the arsenic trioxide storage areas and spew deadly poison into Yellowknife Bay.

The US Center for Disease Control website lists the threat from ingested arsenic trioxide as "extremely hazardous. " Symptoms for poisoning include hemorrage, cerebral edema, and coma. The site indicates that 'small amounts of arsenic trioxide can lead to multiple organ damage and death' (source: CDC medical management guidelines )

In addition the EPA has classified arsenic trioxide as a human carcinogen: "Arsenic trioxide causes skin and lung cancer and may cause internal cancers such as liver, bladder, kidney, colon, and prostate cancers."

Sleep well kiddies.