Bow Valley Provincial Park
Bow Valley Provincial Park is a provincial park located in Alberta, Canada. Established in 1959 in the arch of Bow River, at the confluence with Kananaskis River, the park is one park of many within the Kananaskis Country park system; the park features setting for trout fishing in the Bow River and spectacular mountain scenery, being located east of the Rocky Mountains in the Bow Valley. A much larger area, the Bow Valley Wildland Provincial Park contains the 575 km2 Yamnuska Natural Area that protects the sub-alpine ecosystem present in the Canadian Rockies foothills, between the Kananaskis park system and the Banff National Park, which it borders to the west; the following activities are available in the park: Birdwatching Camping Canoeing and rafting Fishing Back country and front country hiking Horseback riding Mountain biking Rock climbing Snowshoeing Wildlife viewing Windsurfing List of Alberta provincial parks List of Canadian provincial parks List of National Parks of Canada Alberta Tourism, Recreation & Culture.
"Bow Valley Provincial Park". Archived from the original on 2007-06-24. Retrieved 2007-07-22. CS1 maint: Uses authors parameter
Australia
Australia the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area; the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea and East Timor to the north. The population of 25 million is urbanised and concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, its largest city is Sydney; the country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians for about 60,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, it is documented. After the European exploration of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, who named it New Holland, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national day; the population grew in subsequent decades, by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Being the oldest and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils, Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east. A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world. Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications and manufacturing. Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Australia is a developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy.
It has a high-income economy, with the world's tenth-highest per capita income. It is a regional power, has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the world's ninth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 26% of the population. Having the third-highest human development index and the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks in quality of life, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative livability surveys. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum and the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism; the name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts; the name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". The first time that Australia appears to have been used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known by that name; the first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office. Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under". Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", "the Wide Brown Land".
The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country". Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia; these first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth. At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest. Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime; the Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited s
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a buffalo jump located where the foothills of the Rocky Mountains begin to rise from the prairie 18 km west of Fort Macleod, Canada on highway 785. It is home of the museum of Blackfoot culture. Joe Crowshoe Sr. – Aapohsoy’yiis – a ceremonial Elder of the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta, was instrumental in the development of the site. The Joe Crow Shoe Sr. Lodge is dedicated to his memory, he dedicated his life to preserving Aboriginal culture and promoting the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and in 1998 was awarded the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for "saving the knowledge and practices of the Blackfoot people." The buffalo jump was used for 5,500 years by the indigenous peoples of the plains to kill buffalo by driving them off the 11 metre high cliff. Before the late introduction of horses, the Blackfoot drove the buffalo from a grazing area in the Porcupine Hills about 3 kilometres west of the site to the "drive lanes", lined by hundreds of cairns, by dressing up as coyotes and wolves.
These specialized "buffalo runners" were young men trained in animal behavior to guide the buffalo into the drive lanes. At full gallop, the buffalo would fall from the weight of the herd pressing behind them, breaking their legs and rendering them immobile; the cliff itself is about 300 metres long, at its highest point drops 10 metres into the valley below. The site was in use at least 6,000 years ago, the bone deposits are 12 metres deep. After falling off the cliff, the injured buffalo were finished off by other Blackfoot warriors at the cliff base armed with spears and clubs; the carcasses were processed at a nearby camp. The camp at the foot of the cliffs provided the people with everything they needed to process a buffalo carcass, including fresh water; the buffalo carcass was used for a variety of purposes, from tools made from the bone, to the hide used to make dwellings and clothing. The importance of the site goes beyond just providing food and supplies. After a successful hunt, the wealth of food allowed the people to enjoy leisure time and pursue artistic and spiritual interests.
This increased the cultural complexity of the society. In Blackfoot, the name for the site is Estipah-skikikini-kots. According to legend, a young Blackfoot wanted to watch the buffalo plunge off the cliff from below, but was buried underneath the falling buffalo, he was found dead under the pile of carcasses, where he had his head smashed in. Head-Smashed-In was abandoned in the 19th century after European contact; the site was first recorded by Europeans in the 1880s, first excavated by the American Museum of Natural History in 1938. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1968, a Provincial Historic Site in 1979, a a World Heritage Site in 1981 for its testimony of prehistoric life and the customs of aboriginal people. Opened in 1987, the interpretive centre at Head-Smashed-In is built into the ancient sandstone cliff in naturalistic fashion, it contains five distinct levels depicting the ecology, mythology and technology of Blackfoot peoples within the context of available archaeological evidence, presented from the viewpoints of both aboriginal peoples and European archaeological science.
The centre offers educational public and school programs which can be booked throughout the year. Each year Head-Smashed-In hosts a number of special events and native festivals known throughout the world for their color and authenticity, including Buffalo Harvest Days, which brings together First Nations artists and craftspeople who display a wide variety of jewelry, clothing and crafts. Visitors can witness traditional drumming and dancing demonstrations every Wednesday in July and August at 11 a.m and 1:30 p.m. at the centre. There is now a permanent exhibition at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. Lost Identities: A Journey of Rediscovery made its first appearance here in 1999, but now it is back to stay; the exhibition, is a collaboration of many historical societies and museums that have given voice to otherwise silent photographs. These photographs have been unidentified for some time, but "the exhibit travel led to the Aboriginal communities" finding the voice and story behind the photographs taken in these communities.
The facility was designed by an architectural firm in Calgary. The design was awarded the Governor General's Gold Medal for Architecture in 1990. List of Canadian provincial parks List of World Heritage Sites in North America Archaeology of Native North America, 2010, Dean R. Snow, Prentice-Hall, New York. Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre
Provincial park
A provincial park is a park administered by one of the provinces of a country, as opposed to a national park. They are similar to state parks in other countries, they are open to the public for recreation. Their environment may be more or less protected. Argentina, Belgium and South Africa are among the countries that have provincial parks. Provincial parks in the Misiones Province of Argentina include the Urugua-í Provincial Park and Esmeralda Provincial Park; the Ischigualasto Provincial Park called Valle de la Luna, due to its otherworldly appearance, is a provincial protected area in the north-east of San Juan Province, north-western Argentina. The Aconcagua Provincial Park is in Mendoza Province; the highest point is the north summit of the Cerro Aconcagua at 6,962 metres. The Parque Provincial Pereyra Iraola is the largest urban park in the Buenos Aires Province, it is the richest center of biodiversity in the province. Provincial parks in Belgium include Bois des Chevetogne, Hélécine, Palogne and Wégimont.
These are public areas administered by the province for outdoor recreation such as swimming, canoeing and camping, with few or no protected portions. Provincial parks in Canada are protected areas of land and/or water designated by one of the provincial governments to protect nature or historical sites and to support recreation and education; the first provincial park, created in 1885, was the Queen Victoria Park at Niagara Falls, The largest is the 24,087-hectare Polar Bear Provincial Park on Hudson Bay. Although provincial parks in Canada are not the same as national parks, their structures and purposes are similar; the provincial and territorial parks systems have various park categories. Parks may be ecological reserves without facilities for use by the general public, day use parks or recreational parks that offer many services to visitors including bicycle, canoe, or kayak rentals, camping sites, hiking trails and beaches. In the province of Quebec, the provincial parks are labelled "national parks" and are all IUCN category II protected areas, are managed by Société des établissements de plein air du Québec.
Many parks in the other provinces have the IUCN designation. Nwanedi Provincial Park is a scenic nature and game reserve on the foothills of the Venda mountains in the northern part of the Limpopo province of South Africa. Mokolo Dam Provincial Park surrounds the Mokolo Dam on the Mokolo River, it is located 32 km south of Lephalale, just northeast of the Marakele National Park and not far from the Lapalala Game Reserve. Letaba Ranch Provincial Park in Limpopo Province is north of Phalaborwa, next to the Kruger Park and has an area of about 42,000 ha; the Letaba River, runs through the park
Banff National Park
Banff National Park is Canada's oldest national park and was established in 1885. Located in the Rocky Mountains, 110–180 kilometres west of Calgary in the province of Alberta, Banff encompasses 6,641 square kilometres of mountainous terrain, with numerous glaciers and ice fields, dense coniferous forest, alpine landscapes; the Icefields Parkway extends from Lake Louise. Provincial forests and Yoho National Park are neighbours to the west, while Kootenay National Park is located to the south and Kananaskis Country to the southeast; the main commercial centre of the park is the town of Banff, in the Bow River valley. The Canadian Pacific Railway was instrumental in Banff's early years, building the Banff Springs Hotel and Chateau Lake Louise, attracting tourists through extensive advertising. In the early 20th century, roads were built in Banff, at times by war internees from World War I, through Great Depression-era public works projects. Since the 1960s, park accommodations have been open all year, with annual tourism visits to Banff increasing to over 5 million in the 1990s.
Millions more pass through the park on the Trans-Canada Highway. As Banff has over three million visitors annually, the health of its ecosystem has been threatened. In the mid-1990s, Parks Canada responded by initiating a two-year study, which resulted in management recommendations, new policies that aim to preserve ecological integrity. Banff National Park has a subarctic climate with three ecoregions, including montane and alpine; the forests are dominated by Lodgepole pine at lower elevations and Engelmann spruce in higher ones below the treeline, above, rocks and ice. Mammal species such as the grizzly bear, wolverine, bighorn sheep and moose are found, along with hundreds of bird species. Reptiles and amphibians are found but only a limited number of species have been recorded; the mountains are formed from sedimentary rocks which were pushed east over newer rock strata, between 80 and 55 million years ago. Over the past few million years, glaciers have at times covered most of the park, but today are found only on the mountain slopes though they include the Columbia Icefield, the largest uninterrupted glacial mass in the Rockies.
Erosion from water and ice have carved the mountains into their current shapes. Throughout its history, Banff National Park has been shaped by tension between conservationist and land exploitation interests; the park was established on 25 November 1885 as Banff Hot Springs Reserve, in response to conflicting claims over who discovered hot springs there and who had the right to develop the hot springs for commercial interests. The conservationists prevailed when Prime Minister John A. Macdonald set aside the hot springs as a small protected reserve, expanded to include Lake Louise and other areas extending north to the Columbia Icefield. Archaeological evidence found at Vermilion Lakes indicates the first human activity in Banff to 10,300 B. P. Prior to European contact, including the Stoneys, Tsuu T'ina, Kainai and Siksika, resided in the region where they hunted bison and other game. With the admission of British Columbia to Canada on 20 July 1871, Canada agreed to build a transcontinental railroad.
Construction of the railroad began in 1875, with Kicking Horse Pass chosen, over the more northerly Yellowhead Pass, as the route through the Canadian Rockies. Ten years on 7 November 1885, the last spike was driven in Craigellachie, British Columbia. With conflicting claims over the discovery of hot springs in Banff, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald decided to set aside a small reserve of 26 square kilometres around the hot springs at Cave and Basin as a public park known as the Banff Hot Springs Reserve in 1885. Under the Rocky Mountains Park Act, enacted on 23 June 1887, the park was expanded to 674 km2 and named Rocky Mountains Park; this was Canada's first national park, the third established in North America, after Yellowstone and Mackinac National Parks. The Canadian Pacific Railway built the Banff Springs Hotel and Lake Louise Chalet to attract tourists and increase the number of rail passengers; the Stoney First Nations were removed from Banff National Park between the years 1890 and 1920.
The park was designed to appeal to sportsmen, tourists. The exclusionary policy met the goals of sports hunting and game conservation, as well as of those attempting to "civilize" the Indians. Early on, Banff was popular with wealthy European and American tourists, the former of which arrived in Canada via trans-Atlantic luxury liner and continued westward on the railroad; some visitors participated in mountaineering activities hiring local guides. Guides Jim and Bill Brewster founded one of the first outfitters in Banff. From 1906, the Alpine Club of Canada organized climbs and camps in the park. By 1911, Banff was accessible by automobile from Calgary. Beginning in 1916, the Brewsters offered motorcoach tours of Banff. In 1920, access to Lake Louise by road was available, the Banff-Windermere Road opened in 1923 to connect Banff with British Columbia. In 1902, the park was expanded to cover 11,400 km2, encompassing areas around Lake Louise, the Bow, Red Deer and Spray rivers. Bowing to pressure from grazing and logging interests, the size of the park was reduced in 1911 to 4,663 km2, eliminating many eastern foothills areas from the park.
Park boundaries changed several more times up until 1930, when the area of Banff was fixed at 6,697 km2, with the passage of the National Parks Act. The Act, which took effect May 30, 1930 renamed the par
Peter Hemingway
Peter George Hemingway was a British architect who practiced in Canada and designed many public works including the Muttart Conservatory and the Central Pentecostal Tabernacle. Hemingway was born in Minster and after gaining a diploma from Rochester Technical College he emigrated to Canada in 1955. Serving in the Alberta Department of Public Works, Hemingway founded his own practice in 1956. Hemingway won the Massey medal twice for his architecture projects, he died on May 15, 1995. The Peter Hemingway Fitness and Leisure Centre known as Coronation Pool and the Stanley Engineering Building. However, his most well-known and recognizable building is the Muttart Conservatory, a group of pyramid-shaped greenhouses in the Edmonton river valley, he was the architect of the Central Pentecostal Tabernacle in Central Edmonton, demolished in 2007 despite attempts for it to be given protective status. In 1982 he served as President of the Alberta Association of Architects, he was a frequent contributor to professional publications.
Projects include.
Pyramid
A pyramid is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single point at the top, making the shape a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be quadrilateral, or of any polygon shape; as such, a pyramid has at least three outer triangular surfaces. The square pyramid, with a square base and four triangular outer surfaces, is a common version. A pyramid's design, with the majority of the weight closer to the ground, with the pyramidion on top, means that less material higher up on the pyramid will be pushing down from above; this distribution of weight allowed early civilizations to create stable monumental structures. Civilizations in many parts of the world have built pyramids; the largest pyramid by volume is the Great Pyramid of Cholula, in the Mexican state of Puebla. For thousands of years, the largest structures on Earth were pyramids—first the Red Pyramid in the Dashur Necropolis and the Great Pyramid of Khufu, both in Egypt—the latter is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still remaining.
The Mesopotamians built the earliest pyramidal structures, called ziggurats. In ancient times, these were brightly painted in gold/bronze. Since they were constructed of sun-dried mud-brick, little remains of them. Ziggurats were built by the Sumerians, Elamites and Assyrians for local religions; each ziggurat was part of a temple complex. The precursors of the ziggurat were raised platforms that date from the Ubaid period during the fourth millennium BC; the earliest ziggurats began near the end of the Early Dynastic Period. The latest Mesopotamian ziggurats date from the 6th century BC. Built in receding tiers upon a rectangular, oval, or square platform, the ziggurat was a pyramidal structure with a flat top. Sun-baked bricks made up the core of the ziggurat with facings of fired bricks on the outside; the facings were glazed in different colors and may have had astrological significance. Kings sometimes had their names engraved on these glazed bricks; the number of tiers ranged from two to seven.
It is assumed that they had shrines at the top, but there is no archaeological evidence for this and the only textual evidence is from Herodotus. Access to the shrine would have been by a series of ramps on one side of the ziggurat or by a spiral ramp from base to summit; the most famous pyramids are the Egyptian — huge structures built of brick or stone, some of which are among the world's largest constructions. They are shaped as a reference to the rays of the sun. Most pyramids had a polished reflective white limestone surface, to give them a shining appearance when viewed from a distance; the capstone was made of hard stone – granite or basalt – and could be plated with gold, silver, or electrum and would be reflective. After 2700 BC, the ancient Egyptians began building pyramids, until around 1700 BC; the first pyramid was erected during the Third Dynasty by the Pharaoh Djoser and his architect Imhotep. This step pyramid consisted of six stacked mastabas; the largest Egyptian pyramids are those at the Giza pyramid complex.
The Egyptian sun god Ra, considered the father of all pharaohs, was said to have created himself from a pyramid-shaped mound of earth before creating all other gods. The age of the pyramids reached its zenith at Giza in 2575–2150 BC. Ancient Egyptian pyramids were in most cases placed west of the river Nile because the divine pharaoh's soul was meant to join with the sun during its descent before continuing with the sun in its eternal round; as of 2008, some 135 pyramids have been discovered in Egypt. The Great Pyramid of Giza is one of the largest in the world, it was the tallest building in the world until Lincoln Cathedral was finished in 1311 AD. The base is over 52,600 square metres in area. While pyramids are associated with Egypt, the nation of Sudan has 220 extant pyramids, the most numerous in the world; the Great Pyramid of Giza is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It is the only one to survive into modern times; the Ancient Egyptians covered the faces of pyramids with polished white limestone, containing great quantities of fossilized seashells.
Many of the facing stones have been removed and used for construction in Cairo. Most pyramids are located near Cairo, with only one royal pyramid being located south of Cairo, at the Abydos temple complex; the pyramid at Abydos, Egypt were commissioned by Ahmose I who founded the 18th Dynasty and the New Kingdom. The building of pyramids began in the Third Dynasty with the reign of King Djoser. Early kings such as Snefru built several pyramids, with subsequent kings adding to the number of pyramids until the end of the Middle Kingdom; the last king to build royal pyramids was Ahmose, with kings hiding their tombs in the hills, such as those in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor's West Bank. In Medinat Habu, or Deir el-Medina, smaller pyramids were built by individuals. Smaller pyramids were built by the Nubians who ruled Egypt in the Late Period, though their pyramids had steeper sides. Nubian pyramids were constructed at three sites in Sudan to serve as tombs for the kings and queens of Napata and Meroë.
The pyramids of Kush known as Nubian Pyramids, have different characteristics than the pyramids of Egypt. The Nubian pyramids were constructed at a steeper angle than Egyptian ones. Pyramids were still being built in Sudan as late as 200 AD. One of the unique structures of Igbo culture was the Nsude Pyramids, at the Nigerian town of Nsude, northern Igboland. Ten pyramidal structures were built of clay/mud; the first base section was 60 ft. in circumference and 3 ft. in he
