Canada's Rainforest

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Canada’s Rainforest

I am a Canadian and all my mystery, historical, romance, and young adult novels are set in Canada. Canada is the second largest country in the world and has almost twenty-five percent of the world’s temperate rainforest.

A rainforest is characterized by a dense, damp forest that receives up to 254cm (100inches) of moisture (rain, snow, drizzle, fog, or mist) each year. The trees are tall and form an overhead canopy.

There are two types of rainforest: temperate and tropical. A rainforest close to the equator is tropical; one between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic in the northern hemisphere or between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic Circle in the southern hemisphere is called temperate. Therefore, Canada’s rainforests are temperate.

New Zealand, Chile, and Norway also have temperate rainforests. These forests all have much the same characteristics but may have different plants and animals. While most of the temperate rainforests in other parts of the world are a mix of deciduous and coniferous trees, Canada’s rainforests are made up of coniferous trees such as pine, fir, and spruce.

Some of the similarities of rainforests are: trees that range from new saplings to tall, centuries-old growth; large logs lying on the forest floor; an abundance of bright green moss, ferns, and other vegetation hiding the forest floor; plants growing on other plants; and many layers of canopy overhead. Some of the dead logs will have seedlings to tall trees growing on them and are sometimes called a host or nurse log.

Canada’s rainforest ranges along the west coast of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. Their abundant rainfall comes from being close to the Pacific Ocean and coastal mountains. They are part of the Pacific Temperate Rainforest ecoregion which runs from Alaska to Northern California and is the world’s largest temperate rainforest.

Canada also has the world’s only temperate inland forest called the Interior Wet Belt. It runs from Fort George southeast to Revelstoke and further south to the United States border and owes its rain to weather systems that begin in the Pacific Ocean and flow west to rise over the Columbia Mountains.

The Great Bear Rainforest covers 32,000 square kilometres (12,000 sq miles.) along the central and northern coast of British Columbia. It is one of the largest remaining areas of unspoiled temperate rainforest in the world. Besides being home to grizzly bears, wolves, salmon, bald eagles and cougars, it is also home to the Kermode or Spirit Bear, which is a species of black bear. It is called the Spirit Bear because of its white-coloured coat caused by inheriting the genes of both parents. One in ten black bear cubs is born with this coat.

Rainforests cover less than ten percent of the world’s land surface but contribute to one-third of the world’s oxygen production.

Canada's Deserts

 

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https://books2read.com/The-Travelling-Detective-Boxed-Set

Canada’s Deserts

Only forty-one of the one-hundred ninety-five countries on this earth have deserts but the deserts cover almost one-third of the earth’s land mass. I am a Canadian writer and all my mystery, historical, romance, and young adult novels are set in Canada. Canada is the second largest country in the world and home to one desert and three pseudo-deserts. A pseudo-desert is defined as an area that has some of the qualities that make up a desert, but does not meet the technical standards to be termed a true desert

There are three main features of a desert: less than 250 millimetres (10 inches) of precipitation each year; sparse vegetation; and severe weather changes. Other characteristics include humidity, high winds, little cloud cover, and aridity. The types of deserts are semi-arid, cold, coastal, and hot and dry.

The people of the Southern Interior of British Columbia claim that Canada’s only desert is in the Osoyoos area. Many of the businesses in the region have the word ‘desert’ in their names, such as the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre and the Osoyoos Desert Centre. Tourists come to this part of British Columbia to see this popular desert.

But others say that, although it does have desert type plants like cacti and animals such as the sage grouse and tiger salamander, it is not really a desert because of the precipitation which is 323 mm (12.7 in) annually. It is defined as a pseudo-desert.

Another pseudo-desert in Canada is the Carcross Desert, located outside the community of Carcross in the Yukon. At 2.6 sq km (1sq mi) it is called the smallest desert in the world. But while it is termed a desert it is actually the remains of an ancient glacial lake which left the sand dunes when it dried up. In spite of the strong winds from Lake Bennett which bring in more sand, kinnikinnick, Yukon lupine, Baikal sedge, and lodgepole pines are able to survive.

The local people used the dunes for sandboarding, hiking, beach volleyball, and all-terrain vehicles and there are scenic tours for tourists.

The third pseudo-desert in Canada is the Great Saskatchewan Sand Hills covering 1,900sq km (734 sq mi). Like the Carcross Desert they are desert-like sand dunes situated just north of the village of Sceptre in southwestern Saskatchewan. Also like the Carcross Desert, the hills were left when glaciers melted 12,000 years ago and are home to a variety of plants and animals that have adapted to the dunes.

The Canadian Arctic Tundra is considered the only true desert in Canada. However, it isn’t a hot desert; it is a cold polar desert and covers a large area in northern Canada. The land is covered by thick layers of ice instead of sand and has a cold, harsh climate with temperatures dropping as low as -40 degrees Celsius (-40F). Trees have a difficult time surviving in the permafrost during the short growing season so the tundra is covered mainly by small shrubs, mosses, and lichens. A number of animals--arctic hares, muskoxen, polar bears, arctic foxes, and caribou--manage to live in this cold desert in the far north because they have thick fur coats to keep them warm.

Staking A Gold Claim

 

    

 

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       In the late 1930s my father, Oliver Donaldson, and his brothers, Gilbert and Albert, made their living by panning for gold on two gold claims on the Salmon River, now called the Salmo River, in southern British Columbia. In 1980, Dad, my Mom, my husband Mike, our five children, and I went on a holiday to the Salmo River and the site of the former claims. We found the bottom two rows of logs, all that was left of one of the cabins they had lived in and the second cabin, which was still standing, on the other side of the river.

       Under Dad’s direction we all panned the river. The children were quite excited at finding gold to take home. We toured the area seeing where Dad and his brothers had walked into town to sell their gold and buy some staples and where they had hunted for deer and picked apples to live on. After the trip, Mike and I vowed that someday we would return.

       In the spring of 1992, Mike, and I found ourselves preparing for a death and a wedding in our family. At the beginning of that year, Mike’s oldest sister Sallian had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and one of our sons and his fiancé had set a wedding date. For almost five months we visited Sallian, first at home and then in the hospital. I cannot describe the anger, sorrow, and frustration I felt as I watched what the disease was doing to her. She lost weight and the ability to look after herself. During her final month she was hardly more than a skeleton.

       For those same five months I experienced a mother’s delight and happiness as I helped with the marriage plans. I made the cake, watched my son pick out his tuxedo, found my dress, arranged for my hairdo, and planned a mixed shower of friends and family.

       Balancing my life while dealing with the opposing emotions was truly hard.

       Sallian died on May 25 at age 54. On June 27 over 300 people attended my son's wedding and partied well into the night.

       Like most people it took the death of someone close to me to make me realize how important really living is. I knew Mike and I had to do something adventurous with our lives, something out of the ordinary.

       That summer of 1992 we decided to leave life as we knew it and get a gold claim. Mike found books on gold panning and spent many hours talking from my Dad. He bought new rectangle-shaped, plastic gold pans, vials, and snuffer bottles. I phoned the Minerals Branch of the B.C. government and they sent us a map showing the separate gold claim regions of southern B.C. We set our sights on the Salmo River area.

      For our home we found a used twenty-four foot holiday trailer that had a floor plan we liked. Coincidentally, the people we bought it from had two gold claims in the Yukon. We sold our house, quit our jobs and on September 1, we began our journey west. Mike was pulling the holiday trailer with our half-ton truck, which had our all-terrain vehicle in the back. I was in our smaller four-wheel drive pulling a utility trailer with our prospecting equipment and other paraphernalia we thought we might need.

       It took two days of slow travel to reach the Selkirk Motel and Campsite on the side of the highway at Erie, about three kilometres west of the town of Salmo. We set up camp, hooking up to the water and power. We had until freeze-up to find a claim.

       Next morning we were up early and off to the Gold Commissioner’s Office in Nelson. There were no changes in the maps we had been sent. Since there was no need for both of us to get a Gold Miner’s Certificate, Mike bought one, two red metal tags, and a topographical map, and was given his recording form. We were hopeful as we headed to the Salmo River.

       Although the open spots we were looking for were on a different section of the river from my fathers, we didn’t mind. Getting a claim on the Salmo was what mattered. As we neared one location we slowed down and began watching the bush for a post with a tag on it that would show the boundary of the neighbouring claim. When we found it we checked the number on the tag with the number on the map and it matched. We went down the steep bank, holding onto small trees and bushes to keep from sliding. Mike ran a few pans from the downstream side of a large rock, one of the places Dad had told us that gold collects. Others were on the inside of curve on rivers and in the roots of trees beside the water. However, at this part of the river there wasn’t any gold to be found.

       We drove to another site further downstream. The bank was a sheer drop to the river. Discouraged, we returned to the campsite.

       The next day we went to find Dad’s former claim. We drove down to the border crossing at Nelway and turned right just before the Custom’s office. We travelled beside ranches and alongside the Pend D’Oreille River. After we crossed the bridge over the mouth of the Salmo River we turned right onto a narrow, gravel road. It was steep in places and there were many sharp curves just as we remembered. We drove over Wallach Creek but after that we couldn’t find anything else that looked familiar. It had only been twelve years since we had been there. When we went in 1980, it had been forty years since Dad had lived there, but he found it. Our memories were not quite as good as his.

       With a growing sense of urgency we spent days checking Rest Creek, Erie River, Limpid Creek and many others with little success.

       The Salmo River kept calling us and we returned to the bridge and mouth of the river. Mike tried for gold. No luck. We drove along the south side of the river where we found the second cabin Dad had shown us. There was a truck and camper in the yard. We stopped to talk to the man there and learned that four people, three men and a woman, now had my Dad’s and my uncle’s claims. He told us they were the two best claims on the river.

       I explained where the cabin had been on the north side and he told us how to reach it. This time we found the trail to the river and came upon the remains of the log cabin. Just past it we stood on the bluff looking down on the river as we had done twelve years earlier with my parents and our children. The memories came flooding back: the walk to the river with each child carrying a pie plate to use as a gold pan, finding gold only to discover that we had nothing to put it in, one daughter coming up with the idea of sticking it to bandages, camping near the river.

       But we didn’t have time to linger. We were working against the weather. Mike went over our maps of the Salmo River again and this time noticed that there is a small portion on the curve of the river that was open near the old cabin. Because the claims on either side formed rectangles it was missed by both of them. We found the posts of those claims then hurried to Nelson to confirm that the piece was available. It was.

       There wasn’t time to stake it that night so we had to wait until morning. We rose early, went out to the river and put one of Mike’s red tags on the post of the claim to the east of ours. Mike took a compass and orange flagging and we began to mark off the distance, tying the flagging to trees as we went. At the end of five hundred yards Mike cut a tree, leaving a stump about three feet high. He squared off the top and I nailed up our final tag with the information scratched by knife point onto it. The claim was five hundred yards by five hundred yards and was called the Donaldson.

       We hurried back to Nelson and handed in the recording form. We were ecstatic. Not only had we located an area on the same river as my father, but we actually had part of his old claim. We went to the river and found a clearing for us to set up camp when we came back the next spring. Mike took his gold pan and headed down to the water’s edge.

       I followed and sat on a large rock. As I watched the water flow sedately by, a deep sense of relaxation settled over me, the first I had felt since the beginning of the year. It helped me begin to deal with the fact that I had witnessed Death at work.

       Sallian was the first one in either of our immediate families to die. I had seen the tragedy of death strike my friends but didn’t understand how devastating it could be until it happened to me.

       We spent the winter in our holiday trailer in a campground in Vancouver and returned to the claim in the spring. Our campsite was in the middle of tall pine, birch, spruce, and cedar and I could just barely see the mountain tops to the south. The mountains to the north were higher and made a lovely backdrop to the trees. Each morning I walked through the bush to the river. I sat on a large triangle-shaped rock and watched the water drift by. A partridge sometimes drummed in the distance. Birds sang in the trees. I would take a deep breath of the cool, fresh air. It was a good place to be.

       We panned for gold, explored the area, and generally enjoyed our freedom but soon our adventure was over and in the fall we returned to the real world. We never did find much gold but then, for me, it really wasn’t about the gold.

       My mystery/romance novel, Gold Fever, is loosely based on my gold claim experience.

Famous Canadian Authors from British Columbia

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British Columbia

Stephen Reid was born in Massey Ontario (ON) on March 13, 1950. He is the author of two books but his main claim to fame is that he belonged to Canada’s notorious Stopwatch Gang of bank robbers. The gang which also included Lionel Wright and Patrick Michael "Paddy" Mitchell who was the leader, was given its name because of the stopwatch Reid carried during the robberies. The gang was also known for their politeness to their victims and their non-violent methods.

     During the 1970s and 1980s the three men stole an estimated $15 million from more than 140 banks, gas stations, and shops across Canada and the United States. With the help of an inside man they robbed the Ottawa, ON, airport of $750,000 in gold in 1974. They were arrested but by 1979 they had all escaped from prison.

     Stephen Reid was arrested in Arizona in 1980 and returned to Canada where he began serving a twenty-one year sentence at the Kent institution in Agassiz, B.C. He started writing in 1984 and sent his manuscript to Susan Musgrave who, though her home was on Haidi Gwaii off the coast of the B.C. mainland, was the writer-in-residence at the University of Waterloo at the time. They developed a relationship and were married at the prison in 1986. Reid’s first book, Jackrabbit Patrol was published that year.

     When Stephen was released on full parole in 1987 the couple lived in Sidney, B.C. where he taught creative writing at Camosun College. He also worked as a youth counsellor in the Northwest Territories. Unfortunately, he became addicted to heroin and cocaine and returned to his old ways, robbing a bank in Victoria in June 1999. This time he was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. In 2007, a National Film Board of Canada produced a documentary film titled Inside Time about Stephen Reid’s life. His second book, A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden: Writing from Prison, was published in 2012. It is a number of essays about his life in prison and he won the Victoria Butler Book Prize for it in 2013. Reid was granted full parole in 2014. He lived on Haidi Gwaii with his wife, Susan, until June 12, 2018 when he died from pulmonary edema and third degree heart block.

Note: Patrick Mitchell wrote his autobiography titled, This Bank Robber's Life, while he was in prison. He died of lung cancer on January 14, 2007 and his manuscript was published posthumously in 2015.

Lionel Wright, was nicknamed ‘The Ghost’ because he had the ability to blend into a crowd and disappear. He was released from prison in 1994 and his whereabouts are unknown.

Emily Carr was born on December 13, 1871, in Victoria, B.C. She was the second youngest of nine children and she and her siblings were raised by parents who kept the English customs they had been used to in England. Their home had high ceilings, decorative mouldings, and there was a parlour. Sunday mornings were for prayers, and there were evening Bible readings. Emily’s mother died in 1886 and her father in 1888.

     Emily’s father had encouraged her in her artistic pursuits but it wasn’t until two years after his death that she enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute. She returned to Victoria in 1892 and over the next twenty years she alternated between travelling to aboriginal villages in British Columbia to sketch and paint their lifestyle and going to England and France to study art. During that time she took a job teaching at the Ladies Art Club in Vancouver but the students didn’t like her because she smoked in class and cursed them. She left after a month.

     She continued to paint and even opened a gallery in Vancouver. However, it was not a success so 1913, she once again moved to Victoria. For the next fifteen years Emily ran a boarding house called the House of all Sorts. She continued to do a little painting and over time her work was recognized by influential members of the art world and she put on an exhibit at Canada’s National Gallery. She is best known for her paintings on Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and later in life her modernist and post-impressionist styles.

     Emily Carr suffered heart attacks in 1937 and 1939. She had a serious stroke in 1940 and another heart attack in 1942. These left her unable to paint so she concentrating on her writing. Her first book Klee Wyck was published in 1941 and she won the Governor-General Award for non-fiction for the book. The Book of Small came out in 1942 and The House of all Sorts, named after her boarding house which provided material for the book, was published in 1944.

     Emily Carr died from a heart attack On March 2, 1945. She had three books published posthumously: Growing Pains (1946); Pause, The Heart of a Peacock (1953); and Hundreds and Thousands (1966).

     As an author, Emily Carr was one of the earliest story tellers of life in the province of British Columbia.