It is beautiful and should be in
everyone’s bucket list. We traveled from Vancouver to Calgary taking train in
the first part of the journey.
·
FlyCanada in Vancouver is breath-taking. We all
enjoyed the virtual reality of flying over the beautiful scenery in Canada.
·
We had 3 or 4 times of shark fin soup. It is
banned in many states including my home state. It may be good to strike a
balance as sharks could be over-populated. Do not know whether it is true or
not.
·
Chinese contributed a lot to railroad building
in US and Canada without recognition. You do not see any yellow faces in the
pictures taken in every milestone of the project. The tour guide told us that
there were about 50,000 Chinese to connect the last part of the railroad in
Canada. Many Chinese died due to assigning the riskiest tasks such as using
primitive explosives. It happened to be the toughest part of the project. Next
year will be the anniversary of the “Golden Spike”.
·
It may be not that interesting to most tourists
on how they solved the problem of compensating for the huge height drop in the
railway before digging a tunnel thru the mountain. The railroad goes back to
the mountain via another tunnel at a lower slope. I thought it might be better
and cheaper to have the railroad slopping down before the tunnel. They must
have their reasons.
·
Canadian Rockies is beautiful with fresh air and
clean water. It reminds us the best things on earth is free if we maintain them
without pollution.
·
Canadians are environmentally conscious. Canada
stops building many pipelines due to the potential environmental damages. It
exports oil but imports gasoline. Most likely they will relax some restrictions
and/or build refineries; money always talks louder than senses.
·
The sudden interest in lumber is due to Trump
talking about 50% on lumber from Canada. US has a lot of lumber but needs a lot
of imported lumber to build houses. Canada may consider shipping them to China.
We would protect the loggers but consumers will pay more.
·
Canada has a lot of pine trees. Lumber has many
different grades depending on the tree and part of the tree. The lowest grade
is good for making paper. The better grade the tree such as cedar, the longer
it lasts and the more expensive it is. Pines in southern California are lower
grade due to the tendency to split when nailed.
·
I saw many trees that were burnt down. I guess
they are Lodgepole pine. The tour guide told us it was good for the forest to
rebirth as the heat makes the bearing cones open.
·
Why not cut them down selectively such as one in
every four? It would bring some income, protect the environment (less carbon
dioxide during burning and having enough trees for the birds)... They must have
reasons that I do not know (see my friend’s explanation next).
·
From my friend: “Forest ecosystems are complex and the science
of forestry is not nearly as simple as most people seem to think.
Selective
logging is widely practiced, and can be ecologically less damaging than clear-cutting,
but neither method benefits the forest the way fire does. Logging is
agriculture, extracting nutrition and energy from the ecosystem, whereas fire
is a recycling process.
It's a lot
easier to assign economic value to timber products than to ecosystem values,
which is why forest fires are almost universally characterized as destructive.”
When you’re rich, you can
be kind to the environment. Or, let nature take care of herself.
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