150 Little Known Canadian Facts #2

Here is the second installment of our little discovery of Canada—12 down and 138 more to go.

7.  Canada has a not-so-secret underground. Two kilometres below the surface near Sudbury, ON, is SNOLAB. It was designed to study neutrino and dark matter physics. It is the deepest and cleanest world class lab in the world wholly dedicated to this type of research. It covers 5,000 m² space underground, with a support lab encompassing an area 3,100 m² above ground. If you don’t believe us check out www.snolab.ca.

8.  At Canada’s Centennial birthday in 1967, a unique project was given the “green light.” In St. Paul, AB, the world’s first UFO landing site was built. It was a officially opened by the Minister of National Defense, Paul Hellyer, though he didn’t arrive by UFO—just a helicopter. St. Paul was designated as “Centennial Star” because of this.

9. Wood Buffalo National Park has the world’s largest beaver dam. “Just how big is it?” you ask. It’s 850 m long (2,790 ft) and you can see it from space. No one knows how old it is, but it only discovered in 2007 by a researcher looking at satellite images; research suggests it wasn’t around before 1975. If you’re wondering how anyone could miss such a large beaver dam, remember that the park is larger than Switzerland.

10. In the summer of 2016, the Canadian Parliament proposed a change to the lyrics of our national anthem that would make the song more gender inclusive. This wouldn’t be the first time that O Canada’s lyrics have been changed. Since it was first written in 1908, the lyrics to the English version of the song have been altered on at least five separate occasions. In fact, Robert Stanley Weir’s original English version made reference to both Canada’s sons and its maidens.

11. It’s widely believed that the popular children’s cartoon character Winnie-the-Pooh is named after the Canadian city of Winnipeg, but the story is a little bit more complicated than that. A.A. Milne, author of Winnie-the-Pooh, named his character after his son’s beloved teddy bear. His son, Christopher Robin, had named this teddy bear after his favourite resident of the London Zoo, Winnie the black bear. It was this Winnie who was named after the city of Winnipeg, but frustratingly, Winnie herself hailed from Ontario, not Manitoba.

12. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were formed in 1873 to enforce law and order across the unsettled prairies, as well as to act as boarder guards to keep an eye on our American neighbours. Initially, it was thought that the RCMP would be a temporary fix, to be phased out as provincial police forces could be established. But the Mounties became so successful and iconic that they remain Canada’s federal police force to this day.