Oh Canada!

July 1 is Canada Day in Canada [editor's note: duh!]. Seeing as I am in Churchill Manitoba, and it's the 150th anniversary, I thought I would see what the hubbub is all aboot, eh?

The morning started off with a bang! Three hours in the field with two Blackpoll Warbler researchers.

They set up a mist net, caught one of their study birds: weighed, measured, and drew blood from him.

This handsome fellow was hawking bugs while in hand. He kindly picked a mosquito off my finger. [editor's note: damn they have big mosquitoes there!]

As we were getting hungry too, we let him go and headed back to the Centre* for a quick lunch.

Then to town to meet the other staff and researchers for the Canada Day Hudson Bay relay race. (Yes, the guy, lower left, is in a beaver costume.)

People made teams of four, like this.

Of course this, eh? (Bigafy to see their black eyes!)

And this dream team!**

We lined up on the beach and listened to a man with a red bullhorn scream: "On your mark, Get set, GO!"

Into the water we ran,

swam to a rope line,

Came ashore

Tagged the hand of a teammate again and again, until ...

We briefly celebrated our accomplishment, before returning to the Centre for a hot shower.

but the fun didn't end there. It wouldn't be Canada Day with some nudity, eh?

Out in the fen, one of the bird researchers, Ken, ran 1K [editor's note: doesn't he know about those mosquitoes?]. Ken in the fen 2017.

This was followed by some rousing games of euchre (my partner and I won two outta three; not bad, eh?).

Sunset is late ~ 10:30.

So the fireworks did not begin until 11:30.

The sky is still light.

On our return, we stopped to see a downed plane called "Miss Piggy".

The sky is light all night long.

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* The Churchill Northern Studies Centre. Patty is spending a month volunteering there.

** The woman on the left is Kathleen, who is also volunteering at the Centre. She lives in Pittman, NJ. Pittman is 35 miles from where we live. Churchill is 1555 miles away. It gets better. Patty used to live in Philadelphia. So did Kathleen. They were six blocks from each other, less than a mile.

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Thanks to Patty Rehn for guest blogging. Most of the words and all of the images copyright Patty Rehn.