0346, 2027, 2227, 2513, 3396, 3412 CANADA (Alberta) / UNITED STATES (Montana) - Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park (UNESCO WHS)

3396 Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park

The Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park is the union of the Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada and the Glacier National Park in the United States. Situated on the border between the two countries and offering outstanding scenery, the park is exceptionally rich in plant and mammal species as well as prairie, forest, and alpine and glacial features. It has a distinctive climate, physiographic setting, mountain-prairie interface, and tri-ocean hydrographical divide.

2027 CANADA - Waterton Lakes National Park -
Prince of Wales Hotel on the shore of Waterton Lake

Waterton Lakes National Park was named after Waterton Lake, in turn after the Victorian naturalist and conservationist Charles Waterton. The park contains 505 km2 of rugged mountains and wilderness, and ranges in elevation from 1,290m at the townsite to 2,910m at Mount Blakiston. Overlooked by the historic Prince of Wales Hotel, Waterton Lake is composed of two bodies of water, connected by a shallow channel known locally as the Bosporus.

2227 CANADA - Waterton Lakes National Park - Crypt Lake

Crypt Lake is a pristine alpine lake occupying a cirque that often has ice into August. Most of the area around the lake is covered in scree and/or snow, and hiking around the circumference of the lake requires approximately 45 minutes. The Crypt Lake Trail is one of the premium hikes in park. Wildlife can be spotted in the mountains towering above including mountain goat and bighorn sheep. The slopes along the Crypt Lake Trail serve as primary bear country. From Crypt Lake it is only a short walk to the edge of Crypt Falls with views over the valley below.

2513 CANADA - Waterton Lakes National Park - Cameron Falls

Located in Montana, Glacier National Park includes parts of three sub-ranges of the Rocky Mountains (Clark, Lewis, and Livingston Range), with at least 150 named mountain peaks over 2,400 m, over 130 named lakes (from a total of 700), more than 1,000 different species of plants and hundreds of species of animals. Of the estimated 150 glaciers which existed in the park in the mid-19th century, only 25 active glaciers remained by 2010, and is estimated that all the glaciers may disappear by 2020 if the current climate patterns persist.

0346 UNITED STATES - Glacier National Park -
Clements Mountain

Clements Mountain (2670m), located in the Lewis Range, which stands tall over Logan Pass and above the Hidden Lake Trail. The peak was named after Walter M. Clements who had worked to set up a treaty between the Native American tribe Blackfeet and the U.S. Government for the purchase of tribal lands east of the continental divide which became part of the park.

3412

Today, Blackfeet Indian Reservation borders the park in the east. Like other peaks in Glacier National Park, Clement Mountain exhibits a classic "Matterhorn" shape. Foreground is dominated by a plateau covered with a species of monkey-flowers, perhaps Lewis' monkeyflower (Mimulus lewisii), which is native to western North America, from Alaska to California and Colorado.

0861, 1184, 1775, 1947, 2923, 2934 CANADA (Alberta / British Columbia) - Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks (UNESCO WHS)

0861 Banff National Park - Peyto Lake

Posted on 14.11.2013, 16.08.2014, 25.07.2015, 10.10.2015, 01.01.2017, 24.01.2017
Renowned for their scenic splendor, the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks are comprised of Banff, and Jasper parks in Alberta, and Kootenay, Yoho, Mount Robson, Mount Assiniboine and Hamber parks in British Columbia. Together, they exemplify the outstanding physical features of the Rocky Mountain Biogeographical Province. Classic illustrations of glacial geological processes - including icefields, remnant valley glaciers, canyons and exceptional examples of erosion and deposition - are found throughout the area. The Burgess Shale Cambrian and nearby Precambrian sites contain important information about the earth's evolution.

1947 Banff National Park - Lake Louise

Located at 110-180km west of Calgary, Banff National Park is Canada's oldest national park, established in 1885. Named for an early trail guide and trapper, Peyto Lake is a glacier-fed lake formed in a valley of the Waputik Range, between Caldron Peak, Peyto Peak and Mount Jimmy Simpson, at an elevation of 1,860m. During the summer, significant amounts of glacial rock flour flow into the lake, and these suspended rock particles give the lake a bright, turquoise colour. The lake is fed by the Peyto Creek, which drains water from the Caldron Lake and Peyto Glacier, and flows into the Mistaya River. Lake Louise, named Lake of the Little Fishes by the Stoney Nakota First Nations people, is also a glacial lake within the same park, drained through the 3 km long Louise Creek into the Bow River, and having characteristics similar to Peyto Lake.

1184 Jasper National Park - Athabasca Glacier

 

One of the icefield of Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks is Columbia Icefield, which lies partly in the northwestern tip of Banff National Park and the southern end of Jasper National Park. It is about 325 km² in area, 100 to 365m in depth and receives up to 7m of snowfall per year. The icefield feeds eight major glaciers, including Athabasca Glacier. It currently recedes at a rate of about 5m per year and has receded more than 1.5km in the past 125 years and lost over half of its volume. The glacier moves down from the icefield at a rate of several centimetres per day. Due to its close proximity to the Icefields Parkway, between the Alberta towns of Banff and Jasper, and rather easy accessibility, it is the most visited glacier in North America.

1775 Jasper National Park - Maligne Lake

 

Jasper National Park is the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies, and includes the glaciers of the Columbia Icefield, hot springs, lakes, waterfalls and mountains. Located 44km south of Jasper town, Maligne Lake (from the French word for malignant or wicked) is famed for the colour of its water, the surrounding peaks, the three glaciers visible from the lake and Spirit Island. It is fed and drained by the Maligne River, which enters the lake on its south side, near Mount Unwin and drains the lake to the north. Spirit Island is a tiny tied island, frequently photographed, a view which many people associate with the Canadian Rockies.

2923 Yoho National Park - Emerald Lake

Located in southeastern British Columbia, Yoho National Park was named after a Cree expression of awe and wonder. Emerald Lake is the largest of Yoho's 61 lakes and ponds, as well as one of the park's premier tourist attractions. It is enclosed by mountains of the President Range, as well as Mount Burgess and Wapta Mountain. This basin traps storms, causing frequent rain in summer and heavy snowfalls in winter. This influx of moisture works with the lake's low elevation to produce a unique selection of flora. Due to its high altitude, the lake is frozen from November until June. The vivid turquoise color of the water, caused by powdered limestone, is most spectacular in July as the snow melts from the surrounding mountains.

2934 Yoho National Park -
A fossil of Bathyuriscus rotundatus

 

The Burgess Shale, located in Yoho National Park, has among the world's richest deposits of rare fossils. Bathyuriscus is an extinct genus of Cambrian trilobite. It was a nektobenthic predatory carnivore. The genus Bathyuriscus is endemic to the shallow seas that surrounded Laurentia. Its major characteristics are a large forward-reaching glabella, pointed pleurae or pleurae with very short spines, and a medium pygidium with well-impressed furrows.In Greek, bathys means deep, and oura - tail, so Bathyuriscus means a trilobite with a deep tail. On the other hand, rotundatus comes from the Latin rotundus - round, presumably alluding to the rounded outline of the dorsal shield.

2785 CANADA (Alberta) - The map of the province

Alberta is a western province of Canada, one of the three prairie provinces, and is bounded by the provinces of British Columbia to the west and Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories to the north, and the U.S. state of Montana to the south. Alberta's capital, Edmonton, is near the geographic centre of the province and is the primary supply and service hub for Canada's crude oil, oil sands and other northern resource industries. About 290km south of the capital is Calgary, the largest city in Alberta.

2500 CANADA (Alberta) - The Cree

The Cree (autonym: nehiyawak) are the most populous and widely distributed First Nations in Canada, with over 317,000 members (2015) living in the Subarctic region from Alberta to Quebec, as well as portions of the Plains region in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Moving from west to east their main divisions, based on environment and dialect, are the Plains (Alberta and Saskatchewan), Woods (Saskatchewan and  Manitoba), Swampy (Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario), Moose (Ontario) and James Bay/Eastern (Québec) Cree. In the United States, they live mostly in Montana.

2101 CANADA (Alberta) - The Stoney Nakoda Nation

2101 Stoney Nakoda Nation - Beaver Family
(Sampson, Leah and baby Frances Louise), 1906

The Nakoda (also known as Stoney or Îyârhe Nakoda), lived along Alberta's  Rocky Mountains foothills from the headwaters of the Athabasca River south to Chief Mountain in Montana. They refer to themselves as Nakoda, meaning friend, ally. The name Stoney was given them by white explorers, because of their technique of using fire-heated rocks to boil broth in rawhide bowls. They are very closely related to the  Assiniboine who are also known as Stone Sioux (from Ojibwe asinii-bwaan).

2054, 2055 CANADA ( Alberta) / UNITED STATES (Montana) - Blackfoot Confederacy

2054 Bull Bear, a Siksika warrior

The Blackfoot Confederacy or Niitsitapi (meaning "original people") is the collective name of three First Nation band governments in the province of Alberta, in Canada, and also a Native American tribe in  Montana, United States. There are three tribes in Canada, the Siksika (Blackfoot), the Kainai or Kainah (Bloods) and the Northern Piegan (Poor Robes) or Peigan or Pikuni, and one tribe in the United States: the Southern Piegan (Poor Robes) or Pikuni in Montana.

2055 A Blakfoot little girl (ca. 1900)

Historically, the member peoples of the Confederacy were nomadic bison hunters and trout fishermen, who ranged across large areas of the northern Great Plains of Western North America, specifically the semi-arid shortgrass prairie ecological region. They followed the bison herds as they migrated between what are now the United States and Canada, as far north as the Bow River. In the first half of the 18th century, they acquired horses and firearms from white traders and their Cree and Assiniboine go-betweens.

1870 CANADA (Alberta / Northwest Territories) - Stars and Aurora Borealis in Buffalo National Park

Located in northeastern Alberta and southern Northwest Territories, Wood Buffalo National Park is the second-largest national park in the world (after Northeast Greenland National Park), an UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983, but also the world's largest dark sky preserve. A dark sky preserve is an area, usually surrounding a park or observatory, that is kept free of artificial light pollution.

0928 CANADA (Alberta) - The rugged Alberta Badlands

Badlands are a type of dry and barren terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded by wind and water. Canyons, ravines, gullies, hoodoos, winding channels and other such geological forms are common in badlands, which often have a spectacular colour display that alternates from dark black/blue coal stria to bright clays to red scoria. The term is a translation from les mauvaises terres, words coined by early French trappers and traders who traveled on the White River area in North Dakota. Still earlier in history, Sioux Indians also referred to the barren and rugged landscape of South Dakota as Mako Sika, meaning land bad.

0054 CANADA (Alberta) - A 190 meters height torch

If the previous post was dedicated to the Milad Tower, the sixth tallest tower in the world, now I will write a few lines about the Calgary Tower (originally called the Husky Tower - a more interesting name, in my opinion), which, with its only 190m height, it's not at least in the list with the World's 150 tallest towers, but that doesn't make it less interesting. But I must say first that, although I'm not a sports fan, mainly of the winter sports, Calgary remained in my mind associated with the 1988 Winter Olympics. Maybe because on that occasion I first heard about it, God knows. Memory works as it wants, not as we wants.

Appeared as a post of the North-West Mounted Police in 1875, Calgary was incorporated as a town in 1884, to one year after the Canadian Pacific Railway reached the area, but its development really began in 1947 (when huge reserves of oil were discovered in area), with an substantially increase after 1973, once with the Arab Oil Embargo. From 1951 onwards the city's population has dramatically grown, with at least 100,000 and at most 200,000 inhabitants every 10 years.

I feel a special empathy for Calgary, because Ploiesti, the city where I live, also owes its development to the oil industry. Unfortunately Ploiesti was, Calgary is. In addition, you can't be indifferent to a town located at the transition zone between the hills and the prairies, at about 700 km from ocean, and which was named Calgary, from the Gaelic Cala ghearraidh, meaning "beach of the meadow".  

After a (too) long introduction, I finally reached at the Calgary Tower, about which I add only that "it was conceived as a joint venture between Marathon Realty Company Limited and Husky Oil as part of an urban renewal plan and to celebrate Canada's centennial of 1967". But also that "the structure was designed by W.G. Milne & A. Dale and Associates", and "the construction was completed in 15 months". Lastly, "a natural gas-fired cauldron was constructed at the top for 1988 Winter Olympics" and one torch is ignited for special events. A 190 meters height torch it’s very cool.

In the left of tower can be seen one of the two office towers of Bankers Hall (East and West), designed by the architectural firm Cohos Evamy in postmodern style. I can't say which one can be seen in the picture, but the two buildings are anyway twins, both with the same hight (197m), only that one was completed in 1989 and the other one in 2000. At the top right edge can be seen the last floors of the Scotia Centre (the building with four vertical ribs) completed in 1976 and having 155m hight. Unfortunately I couldn't identify other buildings in the image.

I received this postcard from a new pal from beyond the seas, Glenn, who is one of more than 1.23 million residents of Calgary's Metropolitan Area. I highly recommend his blog, Gem’s World Postcards, one of the most interesting found so far by me. Many thanks, Glenn, and I wish you to cover all the white spots on your map.  

The stamp is part of a series of two entitled Royal Wedding 2011, issued on April 29, 2011. Of course it’s about the wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine Middleton, which took place on that day at Westminster Abbey in London. To mark this momentous occasion, Canada Post will issue two commemorative stamps on the Royal Couple’s wedding day. One stamp will be released at the domestic rate (PERMANENT™), and another at the international rate (acesta se află pe cartea poştală). The PERMANENT™ stamp bears a picture taken when the couple announced their engagement in November 2010. The international stamp features the official engagement picture taken by Mario Testino, one of the world’s most well known fashion photographers. In the latter picture, against Miss Middleton’s white dress, the beautiful sapphire and diamond engagement ring first worn thirty years ago by Lady Diana Spencer, who became Princess of Wales, Prince William’s mother, is highly visible. Isabelle Toussaint, the Montreal-based graphic artist is the designer of the stamp products.

sender: Glenn Moores (direct swap)