Category: Whatnot (Page 1 of 12)

On September 25, 1890, 133 years ago today, the U.S. Congress established Sequoia National Park in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Sequoia National Park is the second-oldest national park in the U.S.

Sequoia National Park was established to protect giant sequoia trees, the largest living trees by volume on Earth.

The protected area has grown to include the nearby King’s Canyon National Park, Giant Sequoia National Monument, and Sequoia National Forest, protecting a total of 404,064 acres (631 sq. miles) and at least 8,000 sequoia specimens.

On October 26, 1976, UNESCO designated Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks as an International Biosphere Reserve as the best example of “South Sierran oak woodlands, chaparral, mixed conifer forests, sub-alpine and alpine environments.”

The national holiday of Switzerland is on 1 August.

The Federal Charter of 1291

Wikipedia

Samuel Lalande-Markon et Simon-Pierre Goneau au cap Anaulirvik

Translated from La Press »

On April 28, Samuel Lalande-Markon and Simon-Pierre Goneau reached Cape Anaulirvik (Wolstenholme) after a demanding three-month journey over 3,000 kilometers in difficult weather conditions.

“For me, it was something very emotionally charged,” comments Simon-Pierre Goneau. It’s a project that I had in mind for five years, so it was the realization of a dream. »

For his part, Samuel Lalande-Markon let himself be captivated by the landscape.

“It was really the most beautiful of our entire crossing.

Samuel Lalande-Markon has extensive experience in epic journeys: in 2018, he linked Montreal to Kuujjuaq by bike and canoe, a 31-day epic with David Désilets. In 2021, he had teamed up with the same partner to cross the province in an east-west axis, from Blanc-Sablon to the Cree community of Waskaganish, on the shores of James Bay.

For Simon-Pierre Goneau, this is his first major expedition, which he concocted after discovering that the southernmost point of Quebec was on private land near marker 720, at the border Canadian-American. With the permission of the owner, he undertook his crossing in 2020 by bicycle. Unfortunately, bad weather conditions and the pandemic forced him to abandon the project in Chisasibi, on James Bay.

He decided to resume this year, starting from Chisasibi. Samuel Lalande-Markon joined him there, leaving a fortnight earlier from the famous terminal 720 solo.

Read the rest of the article and see more photos of their adventure at La Press (in French)

Elsewhere » Le Soleil (FR) / Espace (FR) / Explorersweb (EN) /

Most Canadians will set their clocks forward an hour tonight before going to bed. Most provinces, as well as the territories of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, will set their clocks ahead one hour.

Yukon and most of Saskatchewan keep their clocks the same year-round. Yukon made the switch for the last time in March 2020, and standard time is now permanent there.

Also » CBC / Axios

David Weinberger, Ph.D. writing in Phycology Today »

I ran into him a couple of weeks ago at a conference and had multiple conversations, a few of them quite extended. When it was time to leave the conference, one of us said to the other that our intermittent friendship is long, deep, and important to us. The other agreed with his whole heart.

At age 72 I have discovered a type of friendship that I did not know existed. It’s a friendship that does not correlate with the amount of time we have spent together, the frequency of the meetings, how well we’ve “kept up” with the other, or the significance of the events we’ve participated in—no weddings, birthdays, or funerals.