Flooding in Southern Alberta Forces Evacuation Multpile Cities, Kills Three

Floodwaters that were responsible for the deaths of at least three people made their way into the heart of Alberta's largest city, forcing the evacuation of at least 75,000 people from their homes over the weekend.

In downtown Calgary, water was inundating homes and businesses in the shadow of skyscrapers. Water has swamped cars and train tracks.

The city said the home rink of the National Hockey League's Calgary Flames flooded and the water inside was 10 rows deep. That would mean the dressing rooms are likely submerged as well.

"I think that really paints a very clear picture of what kinds of volumes of water we are dealing with," said Trevor Daroux, the city's deputy police chief.

At the grounds for the world-famous Calgary Stampede fair, water reached up to the roofs of the chuck wagon barns. The popular rodeo and festival is the city's signature event. Mayor Nenshi said it will occur no matter what.

About 1,500 have gone to emergency shelters while the rest have found shelter with family or friends, Nenshi said.

The flood was forcing emergency plans at the Calgary Zoo, which is situated on an island near where the Elbow and Bow rivers meet. Lions and tigers were being prepared for transfer, if necessary, to prisoner holding cells at the courthouse.

Schools and court trials were canceled Friday and residents urged to avoid downtown. Transit service in the core was shut down.

Alberta Premier Alison Redford warned that communities downstream of Calgary had not yet felt the full force of the floodwaters.

Officials estimate that as many as 350,000 people work in downtown Calgary on any given weekday, but that was not a problem on Friday as most residents and commuters heeded official warnings about travelling to downtown Calgary.

To the southeast, authorities have ordered the evacuation of more than 10,000 residents of low-lying areas around Medicine Hat, AB. Water from the Bow River flows into the South Saskatchewan River, which bisects the town of about 60,000.

The flooding has also affected a number of Indian reservations (called First Nations Communities in Canada) to the south and east of Calgary and residents have been advised to boil tapwater before using it. Nearby schools are closed until further notice as many of them are being used to shelter evacuees.

The Canadian military was activated to help with flood control and evacuation in the province. Canadian Prime minister Stephen Harper, a Calgary resident himself, viewed the damage from above via helicopter.

To the west, the flooding had knocked Canadian Pacific's transcontinental mainline out of commission between Banff and Calgary, leaving some CP freight trains stranded in Alberta or British Columbia as the railroad negotiates with Canadian National and other carriers to accommodate detour traffic. Additional damage, including a washed out bridge, has been reported on CP's Crowsnest subdivision further south.

With a population of one million, Calgary is the largest city in Alberta and fifth largest metropolitan area in Canada. The TransCanada Highway and Canadian Pacific's transcontinental mainline both pass through the city. The city is probably best known as an energy and agricultural hub for western Canada and home of the Calgary Stampede- a 10 day rodeo and exhibition held every July in the city [Organizers of this year's Stampede have announced that the event will go on as planned, despite there being less than two weeks from the scheduled start- NANESB!] Calgary hosted the 1988 winter Olympics and is the home of the NHL's Calgary Flames as well as the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League and Calgary Hitmen of the WHL.

While much of the drilling and refining takes place elsewhere in the province, Calgary has been an administrative center for the oil and natural gas companies operating in western Canada since the 1970s- more than 80% of the gas companies operating in Canada are based out of Calgary. In 1996, the Canadian Pacific Railway relocated their headquarters from Montreal to Calgary.

Commemerations for 69th Anniversary of D-Day Begins in Normandy

Veterans and their families gathered at military cemeteries throughout northwestern France on Thursday to mark the 69th anniversary of the Allied D-Day invasion of nazi-occupied France.

The massive frontal assault by the Allies against the heavily fortified defenses of the Wehrmacht along the Atlantic coast of France opened up a second front against hitler's military and spelled the beginning of the end for the third reich [the Germans had been fighting losing battle against the Red Army on the Eastern Front since the 1943 Battle of Stalingrad- NANESB!].

After Allied naval bombardment on the morning of June 6th, 1944 forces from the United States, Great Britain, Canada as well as exiled troops from Poland and the Czechoslovakia launched a frontal assault against the entrenched Germans. With the Canadian forces landing at Juno Beach and the British taking Sword, while the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions of the US Army stormed Omaha and the US Army's 4th Infantry Division took Utah beach. Support was provided by the 101st Airborne Division as well as airborne units from Canada and Britain who were tasked with landing behind enemy positions and seizing strategic bridges and road junctions while US Army Rangers scaled sheer cliffs along coastal defenses in an audacious bid to take out German heavy artillery.

Acting on coded messages transmitted via the BBC, the French Resistance hindered the occupying Germans by sabotaging the rail network and telegraph lines in the days leading up to the Allies assault on Normandy beaches.

While the Germans knew that an Allied assault on the mainland was almost inevitable, they were slow to act due to previous false alarms from their military intelligence and the belief that they thought the actual D-Day assault was a decoy to draw Wehrmacht defenses away from an even bigger Allied assault. The total number of Allied casualties on D-Day is said to be no less than 12,000 with more than 2300 Americans killed or missing in action on the first day.

Within 3 days, the British had built a massive temporary port to facilitate the offloading of troops and supplies, strengthening the Allied foothold on the Normandy beach. Within three months, the Allies would liberate Paris.

The Higgins landing craft that was used during D-Day as well as numerous amphibious campaigns throughout the Pacific was considered instrumental by Allied Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower. The fact that the Higgins boat was manufactured in New Orleans and tested along the shores of nearby Lake Pontchartrain factored into the decision to establish the National WWII Museum (formerly the National D-Day Museum) in the Big Easy.

Highway of Heroes- A Canada Day Tale From Not Another New England Sports Blog

Photo- Military Mom At Home

In honor of Canada Day today, I thought it would be appropriate to look into the Highway of Heroes phenomenon in the province of Ontario.

For the Canadian military, it is standard practice to have an autopsy performed on any serviceman or woman killed in the line of duty. The bodies of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan are flown to the CFB Trenton Air Force Base and then driven about 100 miles to the west where the autopsy is performed at the Centre for Forensic Sciences in Toronto.

The procession has been taking place since 2002 and is always given a police escort the entire way. Much of this journey includes Ontario Highway 401, a freeway sometimes known as the Kingsway.

With the very first of the casualties being repatriated one final time, Pete Fischer- a photographer for Northumberland Today- noticed a crowd of about 30 onlookers, including a pair of policemen, gathered on an overpass and saluting as the hearses made their way down the 401. From there, the crowds from the townships and counties the procession passed through would steadily grow. Canadian flags, handmade signs and ribbons would adorn some overpasses while police officers or firefighters in uniform would park their vehicles alongside the 401 or an overpass and salute the procession.

In his bid to have the province officially recognize the Trenton-Toronto stretch of the 401 as the Highway of Heroes, Fischer recounted:

Every person who stands on a bridge will tell you it’s a feeling like no other. As you wait, you talk with people who have been there before, who you’ve come to know. People smile, share feelings, talk about how many times they’ve stood on various bridges. It’s a mix of pride and sadness.

When the convoy of vehicles is seen approaching, murmurs in the crowd can be heard: “Here they come.” There’s silence as people get ready. Then, there’s a sudden sea of arms waving Canadian flags, wanting to let family members in the procession know we are there for them, that we share their pain and are proud to be Canadian.

It’s not unusual to see a soldier’s hand waving a beret from a hearse, or a family member waving from a limousine, to acknowledge the people on the bridge. Those waves are simple gestures, but more than enough for everyone on a bridge to know in that split second that everyone has made a connection to the people in those vehicles.

Rain or shine, an impromptu, grassroots honor guard is present along ramps and overpasses of the 401 to pay their respects for the fallen one final time.

In August 2007, those advocating for official recognition got their wish as the province unveiled new signs along the 401 designating the 100-mile stretch the Highway of Heroes.

More recently, a stretch of the Trans-Canada highway through British Columbia was also re-named the Highway of Heroes at the urging of the Royal Canadian Legion, veterans and family members of the more than dozen BC natives killed in Afghanistan.

Keep in mind that aside from the Winter Olympics or Don Cherry, Canadians by and large tend to shy away from wearing their patriotism on their sleeves. I have nothing else to add other than I thought that was a very moving and sincere gesture by the folks living in some of these towns along the 401 to pay their last respects to Canada's fallen soldiers.

RCMP: Anti-Tank Weapon With Live Ammunition Discovered Abandoned Next to BC Highway

Crews contracted by BC Hydro to clear brush from underneath power lines discovered a loaded anti-tank weapon not 20 feet from the Trans Canada Highway on Friday.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a Canadian Forces ordinance disposal unit were called to secure the area about 25km north of Victoria BC and take custody of the device.

The weapon was identified as an M72 Light Anti-tank Weapon (a predecessor to the US Army's AT-4). RCMP Sgt. Rob Webb said that the weapon appeared to be at that location for a few weeks before being discovered.

I'm not sure why a loaded anti-tank weapon would be abandoned by the side of the road in Canada, but it does seem pretty disturbing in light of today's other events. Police elsewhere in British Columbia have said they seized a similar weapon in a raid on a marijuana growing operation in a rural area outside of Kamloops earlier this year. So there may be nothing more to it than that, but it seems extremely foolish to dismiss this report with a mere "Oh come on now, that could be anybody's loaded rocket launcher abandoned by the side of the road."

Also keep in mind that for the failed 1999 Millennium Bombing plot, one of the perpetrators was discovered attempting to enter the USA through Port Angeles, WA with explosives after taking a car ferry from Victoria, BC.

Quebec Women's Group: Canadian Soldiers 'Cannon Fodder'

Isn't that something? Apparently they don't have their own Cindy Sheehan up there, so anti-war and anti-military groups have to make up their own.

MONTREAL— A feminist coalition in Quebec has come under fire for placing on YouTube an anti-war video that compares military recruits to “cannon fodder.”

It shows an actress playing the part of a grieving mother. As she fills a military-issue bag with her children’s personal belongings, including a rifle, she explains that her eldest son has died in Afghanistan and, as she places a red, flowery bra in the bag, that her youngest daughter has just been recruited in school.

“People say, ‘Make love not war,’” the actress begins. “But you should say, ‘Make love for war,’ because you need a lot of children to make an army.”

“If I’d known that in giving birth I was going to supply cannon fodder,” she continues, “I might not have had kids.”

When challenged by real-life mothers of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, the Quebec-based group was initially defiant before issuing a tepid non-apology apology and editing the video.

“I can understand why some women and mothers of military officers felt hurt but it was never and still not our intention to question them or the role of their children,” Conradi said. “What we’re trying to do is make the government responsive to a critique.”

There are different perspectives that need to be heard, Conradi reasoned. “What we’re saying is that the army is using our children. We’re not saying that women shouldn’t have had those children.”

For Céline Lizotte, these words strike at the heart of what it means to be a mother, and particularly the mother of a soldier.

Lizotte’s son, Corporal Jonathan Couturier, died in September, 2009 after his vehicle hit a roadside bomb in the Panjwaii district near Kandahar, Afghanistan. He was 23.

“It’s a huge lack of respect, an insult,” Lizotte said in an interview. “I don’t consider my son as cannon fodder. What were they looking to get across with this video? It has nothing to do with feminists.”

Lizotte, who is demanding the video be removed from the web, said you can’t criticize the government by “going after someone’s grief.”

No mother can know what her child will grow up to be, she added. “It’s the career my son chose and it’s the career I respect.”

This story was actually brought to my attention on another news outlet's website, but the sheer, willful idiocy and malice directed at some of these military mothers in the comments section was staggering....starting with a basic reading comprehension problem (many commenters in favor of the group failed to realize the woman in the video was an actress) and followed up with a selective application of Freedom of Expression- i.e. the Quebecois women's group was within their rights to make the video, but the military families had no business objecting to it.

Happy Canada Day from Not Another New England Sports Blog!

While our independence day is right around the corner, today marks Canada Day (formerly Confederation Day) for our neighbors up north. Sure- we may think of Canada as a safe haven for draft-dodging hippies back during the Vietnam era, but there's more to the Great White North than geriatric hippies and lengthy wait times to see a doctor under their healthcare system.

[Nose Art on WWII-era RCAF Lancaster]

Don't let the decades of Trudeau-esque nanny statism fool you, either- Canada's rugged individualism has been out there for all to see over the last few years [I could even make the case that it was there all along, just not noticed until fairly recently- NANESB!].

You want badass? How about driving 18 wheelers over frozen lakes? You want even more badass? Try being the first one to drive heavy vehicles across the frozen waters in the wilderness: that sounds like ex-soldier, ex-Mountie John Denison ,who began supplying remote mining camps in the Northwest Territories at first with 'Cat trains'- a bulldozer pulling several sleds loaded down with supplies and lashed together- and then with a secondhand Army truck in the 1950s. Today there is a fairly well co-ordinated system overseeing operations of the seasonal ice roads in the Northwest Territories; that's not to say it's no longer dangerous, but imagine heading out into the wilderness in not much more than a secondhand two and a half ton truck. Denison was considered the original architect of the ice roads and was awarded the Order of Canada in 1998. John Denison passed away in Kelowna, BC in 2001 at the age of 84.

Not badass enough? Try one of the longest confirmed sniper kills on record! Then-Master corporal Rob Furlong of Princess Pat's Light Infantry set a world record in 2002 with the longest confirmed kill during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan's Shah-i-Kot valley, when he dropped a machine gun toting Al Qaeda fighter from a distance of more than 2600 yards (or just over a mile and a half). Having said that, Furlong's record was recently surpassed by a British sniper- also in Afghanistan.

Keep in mind that Canada entered WWII two years ahead of the USA. James Doohan- the actor who played Scotty on Star Trek- was with the Canadian Army when they stormed Juno beach on D-Day. He was hit by gunfire and lost his finger that day but would survive. Later on in his acting career, cameramen would ty and avoid filming his hand that was missing the finger.

Let's not forget ice-hockey, hardly a pursuit for the faint of heart. Sure, it's been awhile since a Canadian team brought home the Stanley Cup, but Canada provides a good deal of the manpower for those championship teams.

One possible upside of the 'Fairness Doctrine' being imposed on American broadcaster is that USA viewers could be treated to a 76 year old Don Cherry reducing Keith Olberman to a snivelling, incoherent shell of a human being with just one glance...well....I guess an even more incoherent snivelling shell of a human being during NBC's Football Night in America (a name NBC 'borrowed' from CBC's long-running Hockey Night in Canada). Hell, Cherry would probably make Olberman's awkward, gangly stepson Rachel Maddow hold his technicolor dream coat while he effortlessly sapped the MSNBC 'personality' of his will to live.
And let us not forget the First Canadians (an Anglo Canadian neolingism for 'Native Americans')such as the Baker Twins- Shannon and Shauna- from the Stellat'en First Nations Reservation in Northwestern British Columbia. OK....to be honest, since I don't watch Smallville, I only found out about them like 20 minutes ago. Apparently Shannon's appearance on Smallville was supposed to be a one-time deal that got extended when the producers found out she had a real-life identical twin.

[Image: CMT]

There's also a good number of country musicians that hail from Canada. In the interest of full disclosure, I hardly ever listen to country music but have to acknowledge that a disproportionate number of attractive women seem to gravitate towards that medium as performers. Montreal-born and Medicine Hat, Alberta-raised Terri Clark (shown above) has been in the business for the last 15 years.

Image: Rocky Mountain Rail Society

Let us not forget the iron horses that- just as in our history- played a pivotal role in the development and expansion of Canada. One could make the argument that Canada as a nation would not have survived were it not for the completion of the Canadian Pacific line between Ontario and the then-obscure pacific coast port of Vancouver. In fact, completion of the line was a condition for British Columbia's 1871 entry into the Confederation of Canada. Canadian Pacific's line was completed in November 1885, followed by Canadian Northern's transcontinental line (which would become Canadian National). Like their American counterparts, Canadians have also taken steps to preserve equipment and structures from that era- such as former Canadian National streamlined U-1-f 4-8-2 Mountain class built by the Montreal Locomotive works. #6060 (shown above) is such an example and is maintained by the Rocky Mountain Rail Society and frequently operated over the Alberta Prairie railroad in Stettler, AB (the Alberta Prairie has a smaller ex-US Army Steam engine of its own it will operate on a more regular basis).

This video from TLC also gives viewers an idea of what it's like to operate a train over the Canadian Rockies in more modern times (it starts about 40 seconds in):


So Happy Canada Day, our neighbors to the north! I'm not sure if you traditionally set off fireworks like we do on independence day, but raise a frosty pint of Alexander Keith's or Okanagan Spring to your underrated nation on this first of July!

Veteran's Day. November 11, 2009.

No updates today. As far as I'm concerned, November 11 is sacrosanct. No sports scores, no trains, no politics, no dysfunctional beauty pageant winners. Today is not the day....

To all the other Veterans of our armed forces, past and present and their loved ones- thank you for your service and sacrifice. To those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, may you at last find peace on the other side.

To our allies north of the border, here's a moving tribute to Canada's fallen from Don Cherry on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada.