There are days when Mother Nature just takes your breath away!
(These were all taken on the same day!)
(These were all taken on the same day!)
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Sunday, October 30, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
SkyWatch Friday ~ Extreme Weather
This mornings sunrise(?) saw the tailend of the overnight hurricane force winds but brought with it an unstable southwest weather system.
We are also experiencing extreme tides. Yesterday we had a 25' 3" high tide (about 16" over our usual high tides and the low was a "0" tide(usually it is 3 to 4 ft.)
High tide was at 2:53 PDT today. If we had been experiencing last nights winds during this tide there would have been a 1 to 3 ft surge and the waves would have breached the dunes.
As it turned out the winds calmed before high tide and the waves just scoured the beach of logs.
Still photos do no justice to the power of the ocean. Tlell is on the east side of Haida Gwaii about 100 km from mainland British Columbia so we don't get monumental surf but watching these waves form and watching what they do to the beach gives one a glimpse of what being on the ocean is like.
By the time the tide started to ebb and I headed back to the cabin there was no time to lose as another weather system was moving in. This is my Friday skywatching!
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Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Our World Tuesday ~ Agates
One of the many activities that visitors and Haida Gwaiians like to do on island is to search for agates. "Agate is a microcrystalline variety of silica, chiefly chalcedony, characterised by its fineness of grain and brightness of color. Although agates may be found in various kinds of rock, they are classically associated with volcanic rocks and can be common in certain metamorphic rocks."(from Wikipedia). Agates are a result of gas bubbles in lava. As the lava cools the gas escapes leaving a cavity.
Silica in solution seeps into the cavity and forms layers, gradually filling the cavity. As erosion by wind and water occurs the agate or nodule is released. Agate is translucent and relatively hard.
It shows up in various sizes and colours here on Haida Gwaii. In the photo above the big rock is opaque while the agates are translucent. The density of agates is considerably lighter than "normal rock".
Most agates found on Haida Gwaii are the size of the little ones in the forground but occasionally after a good storm some big ones will wash up on shore. The agate on the left weighs in at 6lb 2 oz and is currently being looked at for possible cutting to see what is inside. (My orange crock is size 11 for size comparison!)
This beautiful opal geode(a form of agate and quite possibly what the other big agate is) I found last week after one of our big storms.
In this case the nodule did not fill with silica before it was released from it's birthplace so crystals formed in the open space. You can see the layers of silica that formed to make this the agate.
This beach, within Naikoon Provincial Park is called Agate Beach for a reason! The two large agates I found come from ancient volcanic activity south of Tlell.
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Thursday, October 20, 2011
SkyWatch Friday ~ Some mornings....
Some mornings are just too beautiful for words....
Balance Rock is an erratic deposited by a glacier thousands of years ago.
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Saturday, October 01, 2011
SkyWatch Friday ~ Deceptive Beauty
C. Honisch
Despite the beautiful sunsets, we continue to be battered by amazing storms. 
C. Honisch
On Haida Gwaii we experience some of the highest tides on the west coast. Tides are influenced by the phases of the moon. The highest tides occur on the new moon and full moon. The above sunset shots were taken from the sea bottom on the opposing low tides that accompany the extreme highs.
C. Honisch
This was the first time in 24 hours that the wind had settled enough to get near the beach on a 24' foot tide. The danger of these high storm driven tides (besides the obvious!) is that they scour the beaches of protective logs that keep shorelines from eroding.
This is the same shoreline as above but before the storm.
This video was shot at high tide after 20 hours of 80 km winds. This beach was scraped clean of logs. Not sure why there is no sound which is unfortunate.
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Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Rough Seas
There are rough seas on the horizon as we head into what so far has been a record autumn with five storms bearing hurricane force winds in eleven days. Since Labour Day the ferry has been cancelled twice and delayed five times. These are the type of statistics we are used to in the middle of winter.
This is the weather satellite capture from this morning showing the tail end of a strong storm that grounded us yesterday(Haida Gwaii is on the far right and Russia is on the far left of this capture). Our weather systems orignate in the North Pacific circulating in a counter clockwise direction. Haida Gwaii's main weather comes from the southeast. Winds coming across the warm Japanese current pick up moisture and speed, as they meet the coastal mountains and the high pressure system that sits south of us they create the spiral that brings us our weather. If the high pressure system is weak our low pressure system will overwhelm the high and the system will move south over Vancouver Island, if it is strong it keeps the system north and we get wet and wind blown.
These two photos were taken from the deck of the cabin. The wind is blowing salt mist which plays havoc with camera lens. The grasses have already gone brown and are showing the direction of the wind and blowing sand. Even Marley is willing to watch from a distance!
Friday, September 16, 2011
SkyWatchFriday on Haida Gwaii
Click on any photo for some remarkable detail.
I consider it a privledge to be up early enough to watch the sunrise and on this particular morning you could actually see the mainland coast of British Columbia(100km away) from my meditation spot.
Clouds don't always need to be ominous!
And then the day begins.
My morning meditation bench.
SkyWatch Friday.
Friday, July 29, 2011
SkyWatch Friday and Weekend Reflections
A beautiful sky over the prairies as the west coast suffers through endless gray skies.
And a little history as Canadians move into a long weekend.
Rather than rewriting an excellent article from the Ottawa Citizen I will just share it below:
Monday, August 1, is a holiday in Canada. Everyone knows that. But what is the name of the holiday?
Most of us call it "the August 1 holiday," or "the civic holiday" or some other placeholder. Of course these are not its official name, which varies across the country.
The imaginative legislators of New Brunswick dubbed the holiday "New Brunswick Day." Showing equal verve, legislators in Saskatchewan and British Columbia, respectively, named the holiday "Saskatchewan Day" and "British Columbia Day." Alberta's legislators, being the bold mavericks they are, called it "Heritage Day."
In Ontario, until recently, there was no provincial name, and municipalities honoured local heroes - "Colonel By Day," "James Coburn Day" - with proclamations which everyone ignored. But three years ago, a private member's bill finally gave the holiday a name that manages to be provincewide without being provincial, in that other sense.
Know what it is?
Of course not. This name is deeply rooted in the Canadian past. It commemorates one of the greatest struggles in human history. And when people hear it - which they likely won't since no one uses it - they have no clue what it means.
It is "Emancipation Day."
You're scratching your head, aren't you? Don't be embarrassed. Be angry - angry that you have been denied a truly majestic story all Canadians should know and cherish.
On August 1, 1834, slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire. "Emancipation Day" has been celebrated ever since in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and elsewhere.
Now you're wondering what slavery has to do with Canada. We are the nation of the "Underground Railroad," which brought runaway American slaves to freedom here.
"Emancipation Day" can't be relevant to Canada because there were no slaves to emancipate. Right?
Go back to the beginning of the abolitionist movement, in Britain. The year is 1787.
"If, early that year, you had stood on a London street corner and insisted that slavery was morally wrong and should be stopped," wrote Adam Hochschild in his uplifting book Bury the Chains, "nine out of ten listeners would have laughed you off as a crackpot. The tenth might have agreed with you in principle, but assured that ending slavery was wildly impractical: the British Empire's economy would collapse. The parliamentarian Edmund Burke, for example, opposed slavery but thought that the prospect of ending even just the Atlantic slave trade was 'chimerical.'"
Four years later, Upper Canada - Ontario - became the newest jurisdiction in the British Empire and John Graves Simcoe was installed as its first lieutenant-governor. Simcoe, an army officer and veteran of the American Revolution, spent most of his early time in Upper Canada preparing for an apparently imminent war with the republicans to the south.
But Simcoe had another passion. He was an abolitionist. And he was offended that there was slavery in his new colony.
In 1793, a free black man named Peter Martin - who had served with Butler's Rangers in the American Revolution - told the legislature of the abduction of Chloe Cooley, a black slave who had been bound, gagged, thrown in a boat, and taken to the United States for sale. Simcoe seized the opportunity and moved to immediately abolish slavery.
Most of us call it "the August 1 holiday," or "the civic holiday" or some other placeholder. Of course these are not its official name, which varies across the country.
The imaginative legislators of New Brunswick dubbed the holiday "New Brunswick Day." Showing equal verve, legislators in Saskatchewan and British Columbia, respectively, named the holiday "Saskatchewan Day" and "British Columbia Day." Alberta's legislators, being the bold mavericks they are, called it "Heritage Day."
In Ontario, until recently, there was no provincial name, and municipalities honoured local heroes - "Colonel By Day," "James Coburn Day" - with proclamations which everyone ignored. But three years ago, a private member's bill finally gave the holiday a name that manages to be provincewide without being provincial, in that other sense.
Know what it is?
Of course not. This name is deeply rooted in the Canadian past. It commemorates one of the greatest struggles in human history. And when people hear it - which they likely won't since no one uses it - they have no clue what it means.
It is "Emancipation Day."
You're scratching your head, aren't you? Don't be embarrassed. Be angry - angry that you have been denied a truly majestic story all Canadians should know and cherish.
On August 1, 1834, slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire. "Emancipation Day" has been celebrated ever since in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and elsewhere.
Now you're wondering what slavery has to do with Canada. We are the nation of the "Underground Railroad," which brought runaway American slaves to freedom here.
"Emancipation Day" can't be relevant to Canada because there were no slaves to emancipate. Right?
Go back to the beginning of the abolitionist movement, in Britain. The year is 1787.
"If, early that year, you had stood on a London street corner and insisted that slavery was morally wrong and should be stopped," wrote Adam Hochschild in his uplifting book Bury the Chains, "nine out of ten listeners would have laughed you off as a crackpot. The tenth might have agreed with you in principle, but assured that ending slavery was wildly impractical: the British Empire's economy would collapse. The parliamentarian Edmund Burke, for example, opposed slavery but thought that the prospect of ending even just the Atlantic slave trade was 'chimerical.'"
Four years later, Upper Canada - Ontario - became the newest jurisdiction in the British Empire and John Graves Simcoe was installed as its first lieutenant-governor. Simcoe, an army officer and veteran of the American Revolution, spent most of his early time in Upper Canada preparing for an apparently imminent war with the republicans to the south.
But Simcoe had another passion. He was an abolitionist. And he was offended that there was slavery in his new colony.
In 1793, a free black man named Peter Martin - who had served with Butler's Rangers in the American Revolution - told the legislature of the abduction of Chloe Cooley, a black slave who had been bound, gagged, thrown in a boat, and taken to the United States for sale. Simcoe seized the opportunity and moved to immediately abolish slavery.
It was a radical, audacious move. And it was too much. Wealthy slaveowners in the legislature resisted and Simcoe was forced to compromise: Existing slaves would be denied their freedom but the importation of slaves would stop and the children of slaves would be freed when they reached age 25. In effect, slavery would slowly vanish.
It was not the sweeping victory Simcoe wanted. But it was the abolitionists' first legislative victory anywhere in the British Empire.
It made the "chimerical" look considerably more possible.
And it was possible. In 1807, the slave trade was abolished throughout the Empire. In 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was passed and, on August 1, 1834, it came into force.
And the celebrations began, in the Caribbean and elsewhere. "During the two and a half decades before the American Civil War," noted Adam Hochschild, "free blacks in the Northern states celebrated not July 4, when they were at risk of attack by drunken whites, but August 1, Emancipation Day in the West Indies, a date Frederick Douglass called 'illustrious among all the days of the year.'"
For generations, African-Canadians also celebrated Emancipation Day. But the memory faded in recent decades. The Ontario Black History Society is working to change that.
"We were able to get, first Toronto, then various cities, including the City of Ottawa, to recognize Emancipation Day," notes the society's president, Rosemary Sadlier. In 2008, a private member's bill passed the Ontario legislature and the generic August 1 holiday became Emancipation Day.
Not that the government bothered to tell anyone, which is why the reader has almost certainly never heard of this before.
It's also disappointing - and depressingly Canadian - that the holiday continues to go by a patchwork of other names across the country, most of which are devoid of even the slightest meaning. At the federal level, Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai introduced a private member's bill to mark Emancipation Day in 2001 but it didn't receive unanimous support and that was the end of it.
"This is the first global human rights legislation," marvels Sadlier. "How can people not know about it?"
In part, it's because politicians and popular historians have jettisoned the British elements of our national story, and if you conceive of "Canadian history" as only the history of what happened within our present borders, you won't see the connection between Simcoe's courageous efforts and the triumph of August 1, 1834.
But it's also because this is a country where politicians think it's a good idea to call a holiday "New Brunswick Day" or "Heritage Day." Or "Canada Day," for that matter.
The generic celebration of heritage has replaced real heritage. And politicians - whether from ignorance, risk aversion, or a simple deficiency of soul - are quite happy to let a magnificent, inspiring story like that of John Graves Simcoe and the abolitionist movement be forgotten.
Or perhaps that is too pessimistic. I'll let Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Heritage Minister James Moore, and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney decide.
Dan Gardner's column appears Wednesday and Friday. E-mail: dgardner@ottawacitizen.com.
It was not the sweeping victory Simcoe wanted. But it was the abolitionists' first legislative victory anywhere in the British Empire.
It made the "chimerical" look considerably more possible.
And it was possible. In 1807, the slave trade was abolished throughout the Empire. In 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was passed and, on August 1, 1834, it came into force.
And the celebrations began, in the Caribbean and elsewhere. "During the two and a half decades before the American Civil War," noted Adam Hochschild, "free blacks in the Northern states celebrated not July 4, when they were at risk of attack by drunken whites, but August 1, Emancipation Day in the West Indies, a date Frederick Douglass called 'illustrious among all the days of the year.'"
For generations, African-Canadians also celebrated Emancipation Day. But the memory faded in recent decades. The Ontario Black History Society is working to change that.
"We were able to get, first Toronto, then various cities, including the City of Ottawa, to recognize Emancipation Day," notes the society's president, Rosemary Sadlier. In 2008, a private member's bill passed the Ontario legislature and the generic August 1 holiday became Emancipation Day.
Not that the government bothered to tell anyone, which is why the reader has almost certainly never heard of this before.
It's also disappointing - and depressingly Canadian - that the holiday continues to go by a patchwork of other names across the country, most of which are devoid of even the slightest meaning. At the federal level, Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai introduced a private member's bill to mark Emancipation Day in 2001 but it didn't receive unanimous support and that was the end of it.
"This is the first global human rights legislation," marvels Sadlier. "How can people not know about it?"
In part, it's because politicians and popular historians have jettisoned the British elements of our national story, and if you conceive of "Canadian history" as only the history of what happened within our present borders, you won't see the connection between Simcoe's courageous efforts and the triumph of August 1, 1834.
But it's also because this is a country where politicians think it's a good idea to call a holiday "New Brunswick Day" or "Heritage Day." Or "Canada Day," for that matter.
The generic celebration of heritage has replaced real heritage. And politicians - whether from ignorance, risk aversion, or a simple deficiency of soul - are quite happy to let a magnificent, inspiring story like that of John Graves Simcoe and the abolitionist movement be forgotten.
Or perhaps that is too pessimistic. I'll let Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Heritage Minister James Moore, and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney decide.
Dan Gardner's column appears Wednesday and Friday. E-mail: dgardner@ottawacitizen.com.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
Have a wonderful long weekend and weekend everyone and may we give gratitude for what we have.
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