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.