Category: Canada!

Beaver herds cattle: in Canada!

April 21, 2017 • 2:30 pm

Ed Kroc sent this curious video taken in Ituna Saskatchewan and reported by the Regina Leader Post:

Adrienne Ivey and her husband Aaron were out checking their 150 cattle near Ituna on Good Friday when they noticed something odd.

The cattle were gathered together and walking slowly behind a beaver, with some of the heifers lowering their heads to get a closer look at the furry cowboy with a funny-looking tail.

When the beaver stopped, the herd would stop, and then follow again when the rodent resumed its stroll.

Ivey says they are used to herding their cows with horses or quads, but nothing like this.

Indeed:

Now of course the beaver isn’t herding anything on purpose, and Adrienne’s explanation is probably the right one:

She says young cattle are naturally curious, while the beaver seemed to ignore all the attention.

“We knew that people would get a great chuckle out of it because you cannot get more Canadian than that,” said Ivey, who posted a video of the beaver-bovine cattle drive on Facebook.

“We talk about how awesome our Canadian beef is, but a beaver leading cattle around? It’s the most Canadian thing ever!”

Ivey said the beaver was probably looking around the pasture for a place to build a dam.

Go Canada

November 6, 2015 • 1:30 pm

Well, the new Trudeau government is off to a good start, and I’ll be brief:

  • Great news: according to Nature, Justin Trudeau just created a new cabinet-level post: Minister of Science:

“Kirsty Duncan, a medical geographer at the University of Toronto in Canada, will be the first to hold the job. Duncan, who contributed to the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has also written a book about her expedition to Norway to determine the cause of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic.

Her appointment marks a change from the government of former prime minister Stephen Harper. His administration placed oversight of science in the hands of a junior minister of state in the Industry Canada department.”

Clearly Trudeau is going to change the climate of secrecy around science, and the restrictions on government-employed scientists speaking, that the Harper government imposed.

“In their oaths of office, they each said: ‘I, (name), do solemnly and sincerely promise and swear/declare that I will truly and faithfully, and to the best of my skill and knowledge, execute the powers and trusts reposed in me as (cabinet title).’

Individuals had the choice of affirming their oaths, which allowed them to replace the word ‘swear’ with the word ‘declare’ and to omit the expression ‘So help me God.'”

  • Finally, Trudeau has created a cabinet with gender parity—half women—and also appointed two “aboriginal” (I’m not sure whether that means Inuit or non-Inuit First Nations people) members and three Sikhs. As the Guardian reports:

“It’s important to be here before you today to present to Canada a cabinet that looks like Canada,” Trudeau, 43, told reporters on Wednesday soon after he was officially sworn-in as the country’s 23rd prime minister – the second-youngest in its history.

Asked to explain his gender parity promise, he answered: “Because it’s 2015.”

Indeed.  As a Canadian reader wrote me, “It’s like a breath of fresh air up here.”

Here’s the new Cabinet:

cabinet_canada_pri_3492504b

But I can’t resist adding that another cabinet that looks like Canada is this one:

Leafs

 

Best of luck to Canada and its new liberal government.

h/t: Diana, Danish, and several other readers