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View from the Tetlit Gwinjik Territorial Viewpoint near Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories. The Dempster Highway descends from the Richardson Mountains to this vantage point just before the Peel River crossing. Look in the distance where a massive pyrocumulus cloud visible on the horizon, not good for this region. A heat wave was going on during my visit to the Arctic & Inuvik had hit 30*C - it felt very hot outside. As I had left town going south towards Tsiigehtchic, that was when I first spotted the massive fire cloud.
This year since March 2023, Canada experienced its worst fire season on record w/ nearly every province catching on fire. Though smaller than the 2019-2020 Australian bushfire season, total hectares burned in Canada as of September 20, 2023 was 17.577 million (43.43 million acres), which is larger than the state of Florida. The Northwest Territories was especially hard hit as Yellowknife & Hay River would get evacuated - this panorama was taken just as fires were started to outbreak all across the territory. In my photo, I believe this fire had the ID name of EV004-023 & was naturally started on July 1, 2023. From this viewpoint, it is roughly 120km to the east & is extremely remote, making it an out-of-control blaze w/ plenty of boreal spruce forest to consume. At the time of this writing (September 23, 2023), the fire is still active at 100,000 hectares, though probably not much longer due to the arrival of snow.
Most of my drive headed north to the Arctic had clear skies & it stayed that way as I ventured back south & jaunted to Skagway, Alaska for four days. However when I returned back into Canada, the air quality plummetted the moment I crossed back into the Yukon & British Columbia. It was bad air practically until I reached Vancouver. Some of the fires burning along my route included the Tintina Bridge Fire near Whitehorse (I had passed by that bridge just days before the fire began), the Little Blue River Fire which started out in the Liard Plain in Northern BC (which I had a long delay on the Cassiar Highway), & the Tintagel Fire which was burning within a few hundred metres of Highway 16 near Burns Lake, BC. Many other fires erupted including ones that burned around Kelowna & the Donnie Creek Fire in northeast BC became the largest fire in BC history, surpassing the size of Prince Edward Island by July 2, 2023.
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The capital of Canada is Ottawa, in the province of Ontario. There are offically ten provinces and three territories in Canada, which is the second largest country in the world in terms of land area.While politically and legally an independant nation, the titular head of state for Canada is still Queen Elizabeth.On the east end of Canada, you have Montreal as the bastion of activity. Montreal is famous for two things, VICE magazine and the Montreal Jazz Festival. One is the bible of hipster life (disposable, of course) and the other is a world-famous event that draws more than two million people every summer. Quebec is a French speaking province that has almost seceded from Canada on several occasions, by the way..When you think of Canada, you think of . . . snow, right?But not on the West Coast. In Vancouver, it rains. And you'll find more of the population speaking Mandarin than French (but also Punjabi, Tagalog, Korean, Farsi, German, and much more).Like the other big cities in Canada, Vancouver is vividly multicultural and Vancouverites are very, very serious about their coffee.Your standard Vancouverite can be found attired head-to-toe in Lululemon gear, mainlining Cafe Artigiano Americanos (spot the irony for ten points).But here's a Vancouver secret only the coolest kids know: the best sandwiches in the city aren't found downtown. Actually, they're hidden in Edgemont Village at the foot of Grouse Mountain on the North Shore."It's actually worth coming to Canada for these sandwiches alone." -- Michelle Superle, VancouverText by Steve Smith.
