1.
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
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Marie is a city on the St. Marys River in Ontario, Canada, close to the US-Canada border. It is the seat of the Algoma District and the third largest city in Northern Ontario, after Sudbury, to the south, across the river, is the United States and the city of Sault Ste. These two communities were one city until a new treaty after the War of 1812 established the border between Canada and the United States in this area at the St. Marys River. In the 21st century, the two cities are joined by the International Bridge, which connects Interstate 75 on the Michigan side, French colonists referred to the rapids on the river as Les Saults de Ste. Marie and the name was derived from that. The rapids and cascades of the St. Marys River descend more than 20 feet from the level of Lake Superior to the level of the lower lakes. Hundreds of years ago, this slowed shipping traffic, requiring a portage of boats. The entire name translates to Saint Marys Rapids or Saint Marys Falls, the word sault is pronounced in French, and /ˈsuː/ in the English pronunciation of the city name. Residents of the city are called Saultites, Marie is bordered to the east by the Rankin and Garden River First Nation reserves, and to the west by Prince Township. Native American settlements, mostly of Ojibwe-speaking peoples, existed here for more than 500 years, in the late 17th century, French Jesuit missionaries established a mission at the First Nations village. This was followed by development of a fur trading post and larger settlement, as traders, trappers and it was considered one community and part of Canada until after the War of 1812 and settlement of the border between Canada and the US at the Ste. The US prohibited British traders from operating in its territory, the historic Ojibwe, an Anishinaabe language people, originally called this area Baawitigong, meaning place of the rapids. They used this as a meeting place during whitefish season in the St. Marys Rapids. After the visit of Étienne Brûlé in 1623, the French called it Sault de Gaston in honour of Gaston, Duke of Orléans, in 1668, French Jesuit missionaries renamed it as Sault Sainte Marie, and established a mission settlement on the rivers south bank. Later, a fur trading post was established and the settlement expanded to both sides of the river. Marie is one of the oldest French settlements in North America and it was at the crossroads of the 3, 000-mile fur trade route, which stretched from Montreal to Sault Ste. Marie and to the North country above Lake Superior, a cosmopolitan, mixed population of Europeans, First Nations peoples, and Métis lived at the village spanning the river. The city name originates from Saults de Sainte-Marie, archaic French for Saint Marys Falls, etymologically, the word sault comes from an archaic spelling of saut, which translates most accurately in this usage to the English word cataract
2.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
3.
Ontario
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Ontario, one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada, is located in east-central Canada. It is Canadas most populous province by a margin, accounting for nearly 40 percent of all Canadians. Ontario is fourth-largest in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and it is home to the nations capital city, Ottawa, and the nations most populous city, Toronto. There is only about 1 km of land made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border. Ontario is sometimes divided into two regions, Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario. The great majority of Ontarios population and arable land is located in the south, in contrast, the larger, northern part of Ontario is sparsely populated with cold winters and is heavily forested. The province is named after Lake Ontario, a thought to be derived from Ontarí, io, a Huron word meaning great lake, or possibly skanadario. Ontario has about 250,000 freshwater lakes, the province consists of three main geographical regions, The thinly populated Canadian Shield in the northwestern and central portions, which comprises over half the land area of Ontario. Although this area mostly does not support agriculture, it is rich in minerals and in part covered by the Central and Midwestern Canadian Shield forests, studded with lakes, Northern Ontario is subdivided into two sub-regions, Northwestern Ontario and Northeastern Ontario. The virtually unpopulated Hudson Bay Lowlands in the north and northeast, mainly swampy. Southern Ontario which is further sub-divided into four regions, Central Ontario, Eastern Ontario, Golden Horseshoe, the highest point is Ishpatina Ridge at 693 metres above sea level located in Temagami, Northeastern Ontario. In the south, elevations of over 500 m are surpassed near Collingwood, above the Blue Mountains in the Dundalk Highlands, the Carolinian forest zone covers most of the southwestern region of the province. A well-known geographic feature is Niagara Falls, part of the Niagara Escarpment, the Saint Lawrence Seaway allows navigation to and from the Atlantic Ocean as far inland as Thunder Bay in Northwestern Ontario. Northern Ontario occupies roughly 87 percent of the area of the province. Point Pelee is a peninsula of Lake Erie in southwestern Ontario that is the southernmost extent of Canadas mainland, Pelee Island and Middle Island in Lake Erie extend slightly farther. All are south of 42°N – slightly farther south than the border of California. The climate of Ontario varies by season and location, the effects of these major air masses on temperature and precipitation depend mainly on latitude, proximity to major bodies of water and to a small extent, terrain relief. In general, most of Ontarios climate is classified as humid continental, Ontario has three main climatic regions
4.
Aerial firefighting
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Aerial firefighting is the use of aircraft and other aerial resources to combat wildfires. The types of aircraft used include fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, smokejumpers and rappellers are also classified as aerial firefighters, delivered to the fire by parachute from a variety of fixed-wing aircraft, or rappelling from helicopters. Chemicals used to fight fires may include water, water enhancers such as foams and gels, a wide variety of terminology has been used in the popular media for the aircraft used in aerial firefighting. The terms airtanker or air tanker generally refer to fixed-wing aircraft based in the United States, the term waterbomber is used in some Canadian government documents for the same class of vehicles, though it sometimes has a connotation of amphibians. Air attack is a term used for the actual application of aerial resources. The Air Tactical Group Supervisor, often called air attack, is flying at an altitude above other resources assigned to the fire, often in a fixed-wing plane. A wide variety of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft are used for aerial firefighting, helicopters may be fitted with tanks or they may carry buckets. Some helitankers, such as the Erickson AirCrane, are outfitted with a front-mounted foam cannon. Buckets are usually filled by submerging or dipping them in lakes, rivers, reservoirs, the most popular of the buckets is the flexible Bambi Bucket. Tanks can be filled on the ground or water can be siphoned from lakes, rivers, reservoirs, currently the worlds largest helicopter, the Mil Mi-26, uses a Bambi bucket. Various aircraft have used over the years for firefighting. In 1947, the United States Air Force and United States Forest Service experimented with World War II aircraft dropping water-filled bombs, the bombs were unsuccessful, and internal water tanks were used instead. Though World War II and Korean War-era bombers were for a time the mainstay of the aerial firefighting fleet. The smallest are the Single Engine Air Tankers and these are agricultural sprayers that generally drop about 800 US gallons of water or retardant. Both SEATs types are operated by Air Spray USA Ltd, another is the Soviet Antonov An-2 biplane which can be fitted with floats that can scoop water from the surface of a body of water. An advantage of the biplane is that it has a stall speed than a monoplane meaning it a can fly more slowly over a fire which enhances the accuracy of water or retardant drops. Conair also converted a number of Convair 580 and Fokker F27 Friendship turboprops to air tankers, the largest aerial firefighter ever used is a Boeing 747 aerial firefighter, known as the Global Supertanker that can carry 19,600 US gallons fed by a pressurized drop system. The Supertanker entered service for the first time in 2009, fighting a fire in Cuenca, the tanker made its first American operation on August 31,2009 at the Oak Glen Fire
5.
Hangar
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A hangar is a closed building structure to hold aircraft, spacecraft or tanks in protective storage. Most hangars are built of metal, but other such as wood. The word hangar comes from Middle French hanghart, of Germanic origin, from Frankish *haimgard, from *haim, hangars are used for protection from the weather, direct sunlight, maintenance, repair, manufacture, assembly and storage of aircraft on airfields, aircraft carriers and ships. The Wright brothers stored and repaired their aircraft in a wooden hangar constructed in 1902 at Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina for their glider, after completing design and construction of the Wright Flyer in Ohio, the brothers returned to Kill Devil Hill only to find their hangar damaged. They repaired the structure and constructed a new workshop while they waited for the Flyer to be shipped, bleriot was in a race to be the first man to cross the English Channel in a heavier-than-air aircraft and set up his headquarters in the unused shed. In Britain, the earliest aircraft hangars were known as aeroplane sheds and these were built in 1910 for the Bristol School of Flying and are now Grade II* Listed buildings. Examples of the latter survive at Farnborough, Filton and Montrose airfields, during World War I, other standard designs included the RFC General Service Flight Shed and the Admiralty F-Type of 1916, the General Service Shed and the Handley Page aeroplane shed. Airship hangars or airship sheds are generally larger than conventional aircraft hangars, most early airships used hydrogen gas to provide them with sufficient buoyancy for flight, so their hangars had to provide protection from stray sparks to keep the gas from exploding. Hangars that held several airships were at risk from chain-reaction explosions, for this reason, most hangars for hydrogen-based airships were built to house only one or two such craft. During the Golden Age of airship travel from 1900, mooring masts and sheds were constructed to build, steel rigid airship hangars are some of the largest in the world. Hangar 1, Lakehurst, is located at Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst, the structure was completed in 1921 and is typical of airship hangar designs of World War I. The site is best known for the Hindenburg disaster, when on May 6,1937, Hangar No.1 at Lakehurst was used to build and store the American USS Shenandoah. The hangar also provided service and storage for the airships USS Los Angeles, Akron, Macon, as well as the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg. The largest hangars ever built include the Goodyear Airdock measuring 1, 175x325x211 feet, the Goodyear Airdock, is in Akron, Ohio and the structure was completed on November 25,1929. The Airdock was used for the construction of the USS Akron and her sister ship, Hangar One at Moffett Federal Field, is located in Mountain View, California. The structure was completed in 1931, the US Navy established more airship operations during WWII. As part of this ten lighter-than-air bases across the United States were built as part of the defense plan. Hangars at these bases are some of the worlds largest freestanding timber structures, an alternative to the fixed hangar is a portable shelter that can be used for aircraft storage and maintenance
6.
Floatplane
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A floatplane is a type of seaplane, with one or more slender pontoons mounted under the fuselage to provide buoyancy. By contrast, a flying boat uses its fuselage for buoyancy, either type of seaplane may also have landing gear suitable for land, making the vehicle an amphibious aircraft. Since World War II and the advent of helicopters, advanced aircraft carriers and land-based aircraft and this, coupled with the increased availability of civilian airstrips, have greatly reduced the number of flying boats being built. These floatplanes have found their niche as one type of plane, for light duty transportation to lakes. They may operate on a basis, provide scheduled service, or be operated by residents of the area for private. Floatplanes have often been derived from land-based aircraft, with fixed floats mounted under the fuselage instead of retractable undercarriage, attaching floats to a landplane also allows for much larger production volumes to pay for the development and production of the small number of aircraft operated from water. Additionally, on all but the largest seaplanes, floatplane wings usually offer more clearance over obstacles, such as docks, a typical single engine flying boat is unable to bring the hull alongside a dock for loading while most floatplanes are able to do so. Floats inevitably impose extra drag and weight, rendering floatplanes slower and less manoeuvrable during flight, with a rate of climb. Some early twin float designs had additional wingtip stabilizing floats, by comparison, dual floats restrict handling, often to waves as little as one foot in height. However, twin float designs facilitate mooring and boarding, and – in the case of torpedo bombers – leave the free to carry a torpedo. Popular Science, February 1945, pp. 134–135
