The historic library of Stanstead and Derby Line stands on the Canada-U.S. border: the entrance is in the United States, the books are in Canada. In border communities like these twin towns along the Quebec-Vermont boundary, the tightening of customs controls is viewed with dismay.
The seal hunt is under pressure because of the threat of a European import ban. Fishing villages on Canada’s East Coast are ailing due to the collapse of the fur trade. “We don’t hunt for nothing, there’s a reason for it.”
Just like the ‘Anne Frank tree’ in Amsterdam, Vancouver also has a tree that citizens want to save: a dead, hollow tree in the city’s famous Stanley Park. Some Vancouverites are campaigning to keep the tree from being felled. “It’s not just an old, dead tree in the forest, but a monument.”
Canada is suffering a high number of casualties in the war in Afghanistan. It has become customary to pay respects to soldiers who have died in Kandahar along Highway 401 in Ontario. The stretch of road their caskets travel from Trenton to Toronto has been renamed ‘Highway of Heroes’.
Cannabis cultivation is flourishing on Canada’s West Coast. In British Columbia, fortunes are made by growing pot for export to the U.S. market. The ‘B.C. Bud’ industry brings in more money than the lumber business or tourism. Some propose legalization. But not everybody welcomes B.C.’s position as a marijuana Mecca.
One of the world’s southernmost populations of white whales can be seen during a boat tour of Quebec’s St-Lawrence River. In silence, the belugas swim alongside the boat and underneath it – a breathtaking glimpse of an exotic northern species.
The Canadian government offered its ‘sincere apologies’ yesterday for Canada’s past policy of sending indigenous children to Indian residential schools. Victims of the racist system express relief. “I thought it was normal, that I had to do this to become a human being.”
The drastic melt of the Arctic sea ice is a serious threat to the survival of polar bears, scientists say. The polar bear population is also under pressure because of the hunt by the Inuit. Still, efforts to list the symbol of the Arctic as a threatened species are met with resistance.
In the town of Churchill, on the shore of Canada’s Hudson Bay, people and polar bears live closely together. Because of climate change, the polar bear population is under pressure. Bears that wander into the village are not killed, but captured and moved away. That’s good for polar bears and for tourism.
Like the Netherlands, Canada is engaged in an intensive debate on whether or not to extend the military mission in southern Afghanistan. “It is time to define what are the attainable strategic goals,” says the Canadian politician and author Michael Ignatieff.
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