Interior B.C.
Getting to Know Canadian Ice
Artists from as far away as Belgium, Italy and Russia recently gathered in Fort St. John, B.C., as the city played host to the B.C. Professional Ice Carving Championships.

“The ice, it’s much, much harder here,” Miguel Ringoet, a sculptor from Belgium, told the Peace Country Sun.

According to Ringoet, sculpting in ice has balance. “You can work it to very extreme limits before it breaks, especially when it s so hard like it is here. And when it s finished it s completely transparent. It s just magical.”

Excerpts from: Peace Country Sun

Alberta

Vote for Your Favourite Quarter
Albertans are invited to vote for their favorite quarter design to commemorate the province’s 2005 centennial. The Royal Canadian Mint has unveiled four designs: an oil rig and cowboy with Rocky Mountains in the background; an oil derrick with cattle grazing nearby; a Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep in front of a mountain scene; and a montage featuring the prairie grasslands, the rolling foothills and the mountains.

Vote at www.mint.ca

Excerpts from: The Cochrane Times

Saskatchewan

Wolf Population Thriving
Prince Albert National Park is both one of Saskatchewan’s holiday hot spots and one of the few remaining national parks in Canada to support a healthy wolf population.

A ground-breaking study by University of Saskatchewan wildlife biologist, Erin Urton, found the park’s wolf population is thriving, primarily because they are living in a diverse and healthy park ecosystem that is surrounded by forest and other genetically independent groups of wolves.

Urton estimates there are between 2,000 and 3,000 wolves in Saskatchewan, living exclusively in the forested north.

Excerpts from: The Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Manitoba

Cougar Resurgence?
Two dead female cougars near Riding Mountain National Park have provincial biologists hoping for a resurgence of the endangered species within the province. Cougars haven’t been seen in Manitoba since the 1970s.

Bill Watkins, a biologist with the Provincial Biodiversity Conservation section of the province’s wildlife and ecosystem protection branch, told the Winnipeg Free Press that the two animals suggest there may be a breeding population of cougars in Manitoba – something wildlife experts thought would never happen again.

Excerpts from: The Winnipeg Free Press

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