This week, Collected Wisdom scales the mountains of Western Canada in search of enlightenment on an explosive issue.
THE QUESTION: Vancouver's Christopher Walkey asked whether there any volcanoes in Canada.
THE ANSWER: Indeed there are, says Robert Nielsen of Stoney Creek, Ont., but none of them have erupted lately.
Mr. Nielsen was kind enough to send CW a copy of an article he wrote on Canada's volcanoes for the Canadian Children's Annual 1981. So, sit up, pay attention and no talking in the back row. Canada, he says, has an impressive history of volcanic activity, and “in the very dim and distant past, lava flows helped form the Canadian Shield.”
In more recent geological times, Western Canada, where there are 148 volcanoes, has been the centre of volcanic activity. Ninety per cent of these volcanoes are located in two “belts” that run north to south. “One of these is in southern British Columbia, near Vancouver, and the other stretches from northern B.C. into the Yukon Territory. A third minor belt bisects B.C. from east to west.”
He says these volcanoes were formed in the past million years or so. They are mainly “cinder cones formed by lava solidifying on their slopes and are the product of a single eruption.” But there are also 20 strato-volcanoes built from successive layers of volcanic materials.
He says the southern belt forms the northern end of the Cascade Range, which includes Mount St. Helens. “Mount Garibaldi is the most impressive Canadian volcano in the Cascades,” he writes, and it last erupted around 500 BC. The most recent eruption in Canada happened when the Aiyansh volcano in the northern chain blew its stack around 1775.
THE QUESTION: “I know what ears, wigs and earwigs are, but what is the connection?” wrote Bill Cunningham of Sackville, N.B.
THE ANSWER: “The term ‘earwig' comes from the Anglo-Saxon earwicga, which, as the word itself suggests, means ‘ear' and ‘insect' or ‘beetle' or something that wiggles,” writes Carla Hagstrom of Toronto. She says it was believed earwigs would penetrate the ear canal of sleeping humans.
They don't, of course, but “it isn't particularly pleasant when one plops down from nowhere on the book you're reading in bed and you have to get up and find a Kleenex and then find the earwig and put it outside, making sure the security system isn't turned on before you open the door, which you're fumbling with because you don't want the earwig to escape the confines of the Kleenex. Trust me on this.”
HELP WANTED
- Why are light switches in Canada and the United States switched on by pushing them up, whereas switches in Britain are turned on by pushing them down?
Brian Albinson
of North Vancouver wants to know. Susan Reid
of Toronto says she was recently having a lunch party in her backyard and, as soon as the food appeared, so did a bunch of wasps. “One friend asked if I had any clothes-dryer sheets. … We placed five dryer sheets on the table after crumpling them a bit and, sure enough, the wasps stopped bothering us. Why would that be?”
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