The 2008 World Cup, held in January at Canmore Alberta, drew many of the world’s top cross country skiers. The event was blessed with bright, sunny weather and cold, but not too cold, temperatures. There were four distance races: a 10km Skate race for women, a 15 km Skate race for men, a 15 km Pursuit for women and a 30km Pursuit for men.
Monthly Archive for January, 2010
Sprints were held in both classic and skate techniques at this World Cup in Canmore, Alberta. Chandra Crawford won the skate sprint to the delight of an enthusiastic crowd in her home town.
Lichens are an intriguing combination of a photosynthetic partner (usually an algae) and a fungus. This symbiotic relationship allows them to grow in places – surface of rock, tree bark, and shingles on roofs – where other organisms have great difficulty. These images are from Quetico Park or areas adjacent to the park.
Skiing action from a few Ontario Cup races held in Thunder Bay at the Lappe Nordic Centre and the Kamview Nordic Centre from 2006 to 2009.
Canmore, Alberta was host to a World Cup from December 12-15 in 2005 and Canadian skiers showed they could compete successfully against the best in the world. Beckie Scott won a silver medal in the 10 skate race and she and Sara Renner skied to silver medal in the team sprint before a large, enthusiastic audience. These photos were taken on slide film and the slides were then digitalized to use on the website.
A collection of cross country photos from many venues and through many years. Photos were taken in Thunder Bay (Lappe Nordic Centre, Kamview Nordic Centre and one at Big Thunder) with the exception of photos from trails near Atikokan, Ontario.
Continue reading ‘Cross Country Skiing in the Thunder Bay Area’
A photograph never captures the same image that the human eye sees. I have tried experimenting with very long exposures because they reveal aspects of moving water that aren’t apparent to the human eye.
Fossilized stromatolites can be found in a few locations northwestern Ontario. The fossilized stromatolites in the bedrock along the shore of Lake Superior between Rossport and Schreiber, Ontario are over two billion years old. A recent article about these stromatolites can be found in the November 2009 issue of Lake Superior Magazine. A less extensive, but easily accessible fossilized stromatolite, can be seen in a rockcut near Kakabeka Falls, Ontario
Originally published June 10th 2004, revised January 25, 2010
Shirley Peruniak: Quetico Park Naturalist
With the opening of Highway 11 from Thunder Bay to Atikokan in 1956, there was, for the first time, road access to the northern part of Quetico Park. One of the people who drove that road and started a canoe trip at French Lake that summer was a young woman named Shirley Peruniak. That canoe trip was the beginning of a love affair with Quetico that is still going strong today.
Shirley officially retired sixteen years ago after nineteen years as a Quetico Park naturalist. Fortunately for the park, even though she has retired, her ongoing quest to explore and gather information about Quetico continues. Her research into Quetico’s past culminated in the publication of Quetico Provincial Park: An Illustrated History in 2000.
Dave Elder, a former Quetico Park superintendent, calls Shirley the “heart and soul of Quetico”. Everybody who knows Shirley would agree with this assessment of her. She has definitely poured her heart and soul into her work in Quetico and her impact on co-workers in the park and park visitors has been profound.
Continue reading ‘Shirley Peruniak: Quetico Park Naturalist’
Quetico is celebrating its 100th Anniversary. Quetico was originally set aside in 1909 as the Quetico Forest Reserve, became a Provincial Park in 1913, logging was banned in 1972 and it was declared a wilderness park in 1978. Quetico is characterized by towering cliffs, rocky islands and sandy beaches in a watery landscape of clear water lakes, rivers, creeks and bogs. These compelling attributes that attract canoeists to Quetico are primarily the results of the actions of glacial ice and glacial meltwater at the end of the last Ice Age.
Silver Falls at dusk the day after ice-out in 2008.
Continue reading ‘Quetico Park: Twelve Thousand Years in the Making – A Century of Protection’