The Big Book of Canadian Trivia

• Canada’s most disastrous tornado struck Regina, Saskatchewan, on June 30, 1912, when the Regina “Cyclone” left at least 28 dead and hundreds injured.

• On October 15, 1954, Hurricane Hazel swept across Toronto, dumping 178 millimetres of rain, killing 83 people, and destroying entire streets in the west part of the city. Hazel remains Canada’s worst inland storm.

Geo BITE!

In the summer, an average of one tornado every five days is reported in Canada, compared to five tornadoes every day in the United States.

• The highest humidex reading in Canada in recent history occurred in Carman, Manitoba, on July 25, 2007, when it hit 53.0°, surpassing the previous record of June 20, 1953, when it hit 52.1° C in Windsor, Ontario. Canada is the only country whose meteorologists use the humidex scale to reflect the combined heat of temperature and humidity.

• Though Hurricane Hazel is the best-known storm to hit Canada, others have been deadlier. A cyclone in August 1873 in the Maritimes destroyed 1,200 boats and 900 homes, while another that struck Newfoundland in September 1775 led to the drowning of several thousand British sailors.

They Said it!

“I am told that the Inuit have some sixty words for snow … for different kinds of snow. That doesn’t surprise me; they see a lot of it. I live considerably south of the treeline, but even i have 17 words for snow — none of them usable in public.”

— Arthur Black, author and humourist

• Landslides and snow avalanches have resulted in more than 600 deaths in Canada since 1850 and have caused billions of dollars of direct and indirect damage to Canada’s economic infrastructure.

• The sunshine capital of Canada is Medicine Hat, Alberta, with the greatest number of hours of sunshine per year: 2,512.9 hours, based on an 82-city survey by Environment Canada weather expert David Phillips.

• The driest place in Canada is Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, where annual precipitation is 267.40 millimetres per year.

• St. John’s, Newfoundland, is the foggiest city in Canada with 119 days every year with fog. It is also the windiest city, with an average annual wind speed of 23.8 kilometres per hour.

• Quebec is the coldest province in Canada with an average annual temperature of -2.57° C. Nova Scotia is the warmest, at 6.20° C.

They Said it!

“With the thermometer at thirty degrees below zero and the wind behind him, a man walking on Main Street, Winnipeg, knows which side of him is which.”

— Stephen B. Leacock, Canadian humourist

• The most expensive natural disaster in Canada was the 1998 ice storm. For six days in January of that year, freezing rain coated Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick with up to 11 centimetres of ice. Trees and hydro wires fell and utility poles and transmission towers came down causing massive power outages, some for as long as a month. According to Environment Canada, the storm directly affected more people than any other previous weather event in Canadian history.

1. 1949: Magnitude 8.1 on the Richter Scale. The epicentre was off the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia. It was Canada’s largest earthquake in the 20th century. The shaking was so severe on the islands that cows were knocked off their feet and people could not stand, but the value of the damage was not high because of the sparse population. The quake was felt over a wide area of western North America. There were no reported fatalities.

Weather BITE!

Damage Caused by the 1998 Ice Storm

• 945 people injured

• 28 people killed, most from hypothermia

• 600,000 people had to leave their homes

• 4 million people left without power, some for up to a month

• Estimated cost of the storm was $5,410,184,000.00

2. 1970: Magnitude 7.4. Offshore, south of the Queen Charlotte islands. The quake was widely felt but there was no damage reported.

3. 1933: Magnitude 7.3. Baffin Bay. Largest earthquake known to have occurred north of the Arctic Circle.

4. 1946: Magnitude 7.3. Central Vancouver Island. Canada’s largest on-land earthquake in the 20th century. Extensive property damage along the east coast of Vancouver Island; 75 percent of the chimneys were knocked down in the closest communities of Courtenay, Cumberland, and Union Bay. One person was drowned and one died of a heart attack. The earthquake was felt from Oregon to Alaska and east to the Rocky Mountains.

5. 1929: Magnitude 7.2. Atlantic Ocean, south of Newfoundland. Most serious loss of life in any recorded Canadian earthquake. Felt over a wide area of eastern North America, the earthquake caused a large underwater landslide which broke 12 trans-Atlantic telegraph cables and generated a tsunami (tidal wave). Twenty-seven people were drowned and much damage was caused by the five-metre-high wave along the Burin Peninsula. A two-storey house was swept out to sea in southern Newfoundland.

They Said it!

“I don’t trust any country that looks around a continent and says, ‘Hey, I’ll take the frozen part.’”

— Jon Stewart, TV star and satirist

6. 1918: Magnitude 7. Near the west coast of Vancouver Island. The earthquake occurred just after midnight on December 6 and awakened people all over Vancouver Island and in the greater Vancouver area. Damage was light due to the very sparse population in the epicentral area. Estevan lighthouse and a wharf in Ucluelet were damaged.

7. 1985: Magnitude 6.9. Nahanni region, Northwest Territories. Widely felt in the Northwest Territories, Alberta, and British Columbia. A smaller event (magnitude 6.60 that occurred in the same area two months earlier triggered an immense rock avalanche containing five to seven million cubic metres of rock.

8. 1925: Magnitude 6.2. Charlevoix-Kamouraska region, Quebec. Felt over most of Quebec, the Maritimes, southern Ontario, and parts of the United States. There was considerable damage in the epicentral region, and on both shores of the St. Lawrence River, with churches in Saint Urbain and Rivière-Ouelle severely damaged. Buildings were damaged in the lower-town area of Quebec City and also in Shawinigan, about 250 kilometres from the epicentre.

9. 1988: Magnitude 5.9. Saguenay region, Quebec. Felt to a 1,000-kilometre radius from the epicentre. The earthquake occurred in the Laurentian Fauna Reserve some 40 kilometres south of Chicoutimi. It caused several tens of millions of dollars damage, with damage reported as far away as the city hall in Montreal, about 350 kilometres from the epicentre.

10. 1944: Magnitude 5.8. Eastern Ontario-New York border. Widely felt. Although the earthquake was of relatively low magnitude, it caused considerable damage in Cornwall, Ontario and Massena, New York. Damage totalled $2 million.

List prepared by the National Earthquake Hazards Program, Geological Survey of Canada, National Resources Canada.

1. On October 23, 1958, North America’s deepest coalmine collapsed at Springhill, Nova Scotia, trapping 174 miners. Seventy-five died.

2. Canada’s first recorded marine disaster took place on August 29, 1583, when the Delight was wrecked off Sable Island, about 300 kilometres southeast of Halifax. Eighty-five lives were lost.

3. Fifty-five people died on May 26, 1896, when the Point Ellice Bridge between Victoria, British Columbia, and Esquimault collapsed, sending riders and pedestrians into the water below. It was the worst accident in Canadian transit history.

4. The worst avalanche in Canada took place in British Columbia in 1910 at Rogers Pass, derailing a train and killing 66 people.

5. A dust explosion at a coal mine in Hillcrest, Alberta, on June 19, 1914, killed 189 miners.

6. On December 6, 1917, the French munitions ship Mont Blanc collided with the Belgian relief ship Imo in Halifax Harbour, causing an explosion that killed more than 1,600 people and seriously injured 9,000 more. Six thousand people were left homeless, and damage was estimated at $50 million.

7. Between 1918 and 1925, an outbreak of Spanish Influenza affected all regions of the country, killing more than 50,000 Canadians.

8. A Mississauga, Ontario, train derailment in October 1979 forced the evacuation of 220,000 people after poisonous chemicals were spilled just west of Toronto. Fortunately, no one was killed.

9. A crash of an Arrow airplane on December 12, 1985, at Gander, Newfoundland, is the worst aviation disaster in Canadian airspace. The crash killed 256 people.

10. The Swissair Flight 111 crash near Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, on September 2, 1998, was the second worst aviation tragedy, killing 229.The Swissair crash took more than lives. Also lost were a painting by Pablo Picasso, a kilogram of diamonds, and 50 kilograms of banknotes.

One hundred and fifty Titanic victims are buried in Halifax. Of the 328 bodies recovered by Canadian vessels, 116 were buried at sea, usually because they were damaged or decomposed beyond preservation. It has been suggested that given the class attitudes of the times, most of these were third class passengers and crewmembers. Two hundred and nine were brought back to Halifax; 59 were claimed by relatives and shipped to their home communities. The remaining 150 victims are buried in three cemeteries: Fairview Lawn, Mount Olivet, and Baron de Hirsch, each open to the public.

Additional Titanic artifacts in Canada can be found at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic which has a large number of items in its Titanic Exhibit, most donated and some loaned by descendants of Nova Scotians who were involved in recovering Titanic bodies. These include:

• A pair of small, brown, leather shoes, worn by an unknown child, thought to be about two years old, who died in the disaster. The shoes are displayed next to the gloves of railway tycoon Charles Hays, which were also recovered after Titanic sunk.

“The shoes of a third class infant will sit beside the gloves of a millionaire … a reminder of the cross-section of humanity which perished in this shipwreck,” said Dan Conlin, curator of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.

The little boy’s body was brought home on the Mackay-Bennett and buried in Fairview Lawn Cemetery, where his gravestone has become one of Halifax’s most famous memorials.

• A deck chair that bears a carved five-pointed star, the emblem of the White Star Line. Made of mahogany and unidentified hardwood, it is one of the only intact chairs in the world that matches those seen in Titanic photographs.

• Lounge panelling that contains musical instruments and scroll in the Louis XV style used in the room. It comes from the arch over the forward entrance to the first-class lounge, the area where the Titanic broke in half just before plunging to the bottom.

• A newel post face from newel posts of either the forward or aft first-class staircase.

• Oak trim with a vegetable, fruit, and flower design. Made of quarter-cut English white oak, its image is easily spotted in photographs, paintings, and movie recreations of the Titanic’s grand first-class staircase.

• Ornamental oak from the sides of the balustrade of the forward first-class staircase. The S-shaped twist indicates it was from the portion of the staircase leading to the first-class reception room on D-Deck, where passengers gathered for meals in the nearby dining room.

• A cribbage board made by Minia’s ship’s carpenter, William Parker, from a piece of oak taken from the water after Titanic sunk. It is typical of the crib boards, picture frames, and other practical knick-knacks made of Titanic wood by Minia crew members.

The Newfoundland Museum in St. John’s is caretaker of the lifejacket James McGrady was wearing, which has been a popular artifact since the release of James Cameron’s epic movie Titanic.

Summer’s the season when Canadians love to revel in the warm weather, take up residence in a comfortable lawn chair, and sip a cool beverage next to a favourite lake.

If you’re a summer lover, try your luck at the questions below to test your knowledge of the season Canadians wait all year for. And best of all, you don’t even have to get out of that chair. Enjoy!

2. Strawberries, a tasty summer treat grown on farms across Canada, are a member of the rose family. True or false?

5. Which province was the site of the highest recorded temperature ever in Canada at 45 degrees Celsius?

6. The Great Lakes are a popular summer playground for campers and cottagers. Name the lakes in order of size from biggest to smallest.

10. In the summer of 1973, I fell from the sky at Cedoux, Saskatchewan, setting a record that has yet to be beaten. Unscramble the word below to figure out what I am.

11. If you operate a vehicle during your summer vacation with one tire under-inflated by eight pounds per square inch (56 kPa) how many kilometres will you shave off the life of that tire?

2. Before it was renamed Lake Louise in 1882, what was this beautiful body of water in Alberta called?

3. Which of the following bridges does not connect the Niagara Falls, Ontario, area to the United States?

6. I ’m a period of six or more hours with winds above 40 kilometres per hour, visibility reduced below one kilometre by blowing or drifting snow, and temperatures below -12° C. What am I?

1. True or false? The 10 highest mountains in Canada are all located in the Yukon.

4. Why is the historic Chateau Montebello hotel on the Ottawa River between Montreal and Ottawa referred to as “a seventh wonder of the world”?