Author: Alan

The Size of Places

I remember during the Bosnian war in the mid-90’s being amazed at the small scale of the places involved in our news. I would listen at 7:00 pm to Hrvatska Radio from Croatia on the shortwave and try to follow where Canadian troops from my then neighbouring base CFB Petawawa, some my clients, were involved. Bosnia and Herzegovina has an area of just over 50,000 square kilometres or 5/7ths the size of New Brunswick.

Today, I read about more deaths in Gaza as I have heard about for much of my life in the news and wondered how large it was. Just 360 square kilometres according to Wikipedia. The Population Resource Centre in error has it as slightly larger than Delaware [which actually has a land mass of around 5,000 square kilometres]. Al Jazerra is in agreement with wikipedia as is the Guardian Unlimited. It is about half the size of my City with over ten times the population.

At 9,984,670 square km, Canada could hold 28,527 Gaza strips or around 200 Bosnia and Herzegovinas.   PEI could hold 16 Gaza strips.

The View West

factories along Lake Ontario
Jesus light at sunset over Dupont

I caught this shot the other week, before the thaw which turned much of Lake Ontario to that spongy grey ice one step away from lolly. The factory in the foreground are the Dupont nylon and research plants with their 1200 jobs. In the background farther west down the shore you can see the LaFarge plant (concrete or asphalt) as well as the stacks of the Ontario Power Generation plant south of Napanee about 30 km to the west. Amherst Island sits on the horizon to the left of the picture. The Lake and the St. Lawrence River are lined with industry dependent on cheap bulk shipping for either materials in or products out.

Later: a definition of “lolly” can be found at my new best friend, the American Meteorological Society’s Glossary of Meteorology.

Canada’s Spying

The Toronto Star has an unlinkable but
interesting article on the high-tech Echelon surveillance system operated by
five nations known as the UKUSA alliance: the United States, Britain, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand. Apparently Canada spied for Thatcher on two of her
cabinet collegues under part of the agreement that allows effectively for
internal spying by a friendly nation within the circle. So who is spying on
Canadians on the request of our government? And for what?