My family loved watching the full Jim Gaffigan special “The Pale Tourist.” This is an except from that, and while some of it is obvious not correct (often the punchlines), there is a great deal more Canadian geography in this sketch than I ever expected to see in by a bona fide comedian. Like with all things, but especially comedy, know your audience(s) and know that I don’t 100% endorse all statements, but boy, I wish there were more geographically-themed humor.
TAG: Canada.
"There’s a petition that calls for the United States government to adjust the border near Manitoba to give Canada the geographic oddity known as the Northwest Angle."
Source: www.cbc.ca
Enclaves and exclaves are often bizarre examples that test the normal rules regarding the political organization of space. Historical quirks, landform oddities, competing national goals, and irregular demographic patterns mean that the world is filled strange little case studies about places that seem to defy our normal expectations. However, the most enduring rule seems to be this: never voluntarily give up territory that you can easily control.
GeoEd TAGS: borders, political, territoriality, USA, Canada.
Scoop.it Tags: borders, political, territoriality, USA, Canada.
Sky-high food prices in the North have led many residents of Iqaluit to turn to Amazon Prime to save on necessities. But is that a sustainable solution?
Source: globalnews.ca
Nunavut is remote…far more remote than most of our students can imagine. They live over 1,000 miles from any city with half a million people. The entire territory is enormous, but sparsely populated with only 36,000 people. Try to image getting commercial goods to such a remote location. The Canadian government has invested heavily to subsidize systems to get food products and other necessities to Nunavut. Still, the transportation costs are so high, and the numbers are so few that economies of scale can’t help this situation.
Enter Amazon Prime in 2005, and the online retail giant began offering free shipping for “Prime” customers for a flat yearly subscription fee (today $99 in the U.S.). This was simply too good to be true for many customers in far-flung settlements in Nunavut. Amazon, probably not anticipating the overwhelming transportation costs associated with a place like Nunavut, in 2015 stopped offering Prime membership for Nunavut customers that do not live in the capital city of Iqaluit. Still, the capital city looks to Amazon Prime more so than the Canadian or territorial government as their lifeline to the global economy. Some even argue that Amazon Prime has done more to improve the standard of living and providing food security for Nunavut residents than the government.
Scoop.it Tags: Canada, distance, indigenous, poverty, development, economic, food, food distribution, density.
WordPress TAGS: Canada, distance, indigenous, poverty, development, economic, food distribution, density.
The unofficial greeting in the bilingual Canadian city of Montreal has long been a friendly ‘Bonjour, Hi!’ But that standard is no more since a motion mandating store clerks to greet customers only in French was passed in Quebec’s provincial legislature. The move reaffirms French as the primary language in the province, where use of English can be controversial. The motion – which is not a law – was passed unanimously, but the province’s premier called the debate ‘ridiculous’. Introduced by the fiercely Francophile Parti Quebecois, the motion ‘invites all businesses and workers who enter into contact with local and international clients to welcome them warmly with the word bonjour‘.”
Source: www.bbc.com
This is a great example of how culture isn’t just passively received, but it’s actively constructed. The call to defend cultural traits of a region to maintain it’s local distinctiveness is oftentimes why a region has a strong sense of place.
“It’s no secret that the Great Lakes are suffering tremendous ecological strain — Lake Erie was even pronounced “dead” for a time during the 1960s because of an overload of phosphorus from municipal waste. Back in 1615, though, when the entire region was pristine and explorers Samuel de Champlain and Étienne Brûlé gazed out together from Lake Huron’s shores, they dubbed it la mer douce, ‘the sweet sea.’ Today roughly one-quarter of Canada’s population and a 10th of America’s population drink from the Great Lakes basin; the beleaguered lakes alone hold more than a fifth of Earth’s freshwater.”
Source: www.canadiangeographic.ca
Questions to Ponder: What watershed do you live in? Where does your drinking water come from? When you flush the toilet, where does it go? How are places in your watershed linked? How does this similar map shed more light on these issues?
Tags: Canada, environment, resources, water, spatial, scale.
“I was inspired by 50% of the U.S. lives in these counties. map. I was wondering what the equivalent map for Canada would look like. I couldn’t find one, so I created my own.”
Source: www.reddit.com
During the U.S. presidential election much was made about the differences between rural and urban regions of the United States. Clearly the United States isn’t the only North American country that has a highly clustered population distribution.
Question to Ponder: How does this basic demographic reality impact Canadian politics, policies, infrastucture, culture, etc.?
Tags: Canada, map, North America, population, density.
More than 430 African migrants have arrived in Winnipeg since April, up from 70 three years ago. Most come by way of Minneapolis, sometimes after grueling treks across Latin America and stints in U.S. immigration detention.
A tangle of factors is fueling the surge: brisker traffic along an immigrant smuggling route out of East Africa, stepped-up deportations under the Obama administration and the lure of Canada’s gentler welcome. Advocates expect the Trump administration’s harder line on immigration will spur even more illegal crossings into Canada, where some nonprofits serving asylum seekers are already overwhelmed. Now Canadians worry smugglers are making fresh profits from asylum seekers and migrants take more risks to make the crossing.
Tags: migration, USA, Canada, borders, political.
Source: www.startribune.com
“The area below the red line includes most of Nova Scotia, in Canada’s east, but most of the population comes from the area a little farther west, in a sliver of Quebec and a densely populated stretch of Ontario near the Great Lakes.”
Source: www.vox.com
Admitted, the web Mercator projection of this map distorts the far northern territories of Canada, but still it hammers home some fascinating truths about Canada’s population distribution. Land-wise, Canada one of the world’s biggest countries, but population-wise, most of it is quite barren. What geographic factors explain the population concentration and distribution in Canada?
Tags: Canada, map, North America, population, density.
Can you guess where we are taking you today? Here’s a clue: This city’s name translates to “where the river narrows.”
Source: video.nationalgeographic.com
There is a delightfully simple premise to National Geographic video’s newest series: after seeing scenes from the cultural and physical landscapes of a place can you guess where in the world it is? You can find more resources about this unnamed country (no cheating) here.
GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION 
