h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So, I was thinking it might be interesting to have anyone who is interested get involved in a little project to write entries on as many of our country's World Heritage Sites as we can and then shove them into Peer Review.

Here's the list of our sites with the years they were added to the list:


Cultural

* Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump (1981)
* Historic District of Old Québec (1985)
* L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site (1978)
* Old Town Lunenburg (1995)
* Rideau Canal (2007)
* SGang Gwaay (1981)

Natural

* Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks (1984)
* Dinosaur Provincial Park (1979)
* Gros Morne National Park (1987)
* Joggins Fossil Cliffs (2008)
* Kluane / Wrangell-St Elias / Glacier Bay / Tatshenshini-Alsek (1979)
* Miguasha National Park (1999)
* Nahanni National Park (1978)
* Waterton Glacier International Peace Park (1995)
* Wood Buffalo National Park (1983)

from here: http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/ca

There is also a list of sites not yet approved on that page.


The Edited/Approved Guide already has an entry on the original Unesco list A30652544 which includes brief notes on L'Anse aux Meadows and Nahanni. As well, there is already an Approved Entry on Head-Smashed-In A2654697 and one on the Cave and Basin A76774549 which has been accepted but hasn't hit the front page yet and one Approved about Bankhead which together cover a bunch of information about the Rocky Mountain Parks, but a dedicated entry would be a good thing.

In a search I've found no approved entries about any of the other sites -- Head-Smashed-In is the only site which has a dedicated entry.


So, if anyone is interested in researching and writing an entry on one or more of these World Heritage Sites, or on one from the
Tentative List at the above link, maybe post a little note on this thread so that the vast hoard of takers don't duplicate each others work.

I'll stick my oar in first and say that, since I've already done a bunch of the research, I'm close to them, and I've spent a good deal of time in a number of them, I could probably come up with something about the Rocky Mountain Parks http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/304

I'd be interested in doing something on two from the Tentative List: Grand-Pre and the Klondike

I guess since I'm in Alberta I should be prepared to be responsible for Wood Buffalo, Waterton, and Dinosaur Provincial Park


And I'd love to go to Quttinirpaaq and then write something about it, but I don't think that's in the cards at the moment.

And I'll stick my oar in second.

I'll likely get started on an entry on Dinosaur Provincial Park in the next day or two.





It's awfully quiet in here.

~j~

I want *you* to write one of these entries, ~jwf~.



I think you could do a great and very original job of it. I wish you'd try.


Actually, I'm pretty excited about doing Dinosaur Provincial Park. My neighbour is a poet and novelist who wrote a novel a few years ago about early fossil hunters in the Badlands of the Red Deer River Valley ( http://www.gaspereau.com/1554470358.shtml ) references to which I'm hoping to use as something of a thread running through the entry. And also a book written by one of those fossil hunters which I just ordered on line.





Please, ~jwf~, consider writing something.

There are three UN recognised sites in Nova Scotia.
Lunenberg - whose waterfront donned the Cdn $100 bill for decades.
Grand Pre - about which Longfellow has said all that needs to be said.
And Joggins - an area of Bay of Fundy coastline chalk full of dinosaur
bones and antique fishy things about which I know nadda. And quite honestly,
devolution, the process of imagining evolution backwards, gives me the willys.

So you see the uncomfortable impasse at which the devil waits to bargain.

~jwf~

So . . .

shall I mark you down for Old Town Lunenburg?

So a bunch of German protestants, many who had served in one of
King George armies, were granted land in the wilderness on the
outskirts of the port city of Halifax, far from the Fortress Citadel
and the commercial and waterfront areas.

They hung about in the area known today as Dutch Village Road
until someone with a grudge against Germans in general shipped
them all off down the south shore to what became Lunenberg.

A rocky desolate area on a sea-swept peninsula where it is
impossible to farm anything but cabbage and only the strongest
shaggy oxen could survive.

Unable to live entirely on cabbages and 2nd grade ox blood puddings
they discovered the ocean was full of fish and with stereotypical German
ingenuity they evolved fishing methods that actually worked in storm tossed
north atlantic waters. The dory and the schooner.

The Chevy dealer in Lunenberg (population 3000) sold more Corvettes
and Camaros than any dealer east of Montreal (pop.1millionplus)

The dory ends there.
The schooner is still on tap:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schooner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schooner_Lager


~jwf~

That looks like a good start!

Would you like me to collaborate?

You'd get top billing.

That's it.
I submit it as is, in full expectation that any Peer Review Process
will 'take it' from there. I hereby disavow any knowledge of any
version other than the above and make no copyright claims.

She's yers lad, I've done with her.

~jwf~

It may be the speaking, ~jwf~, but I think I may be breaking out the rum and taking you up on this one.


After Dinosaur Provincial Park.

anyone home?

Dinosaur Provincial Park World Heritage Site, Alberta, Canada A80760350

Reading...

"Every day fossil bones tumble out of the soft rock of the valley
walls, crumbling from the shafts of the eerie, hard-capped hoodoos."

"Most of the park has returned to the untouched, unpopulated
labyrinth of butte and hoodoo."

What's a hoodoo?


~jwf~

I've responded in the thread attached to the entry, ~jwf~

Just to give the hoard of researchers a heads up --

I've started preliminary work on entries for Grand Pre and Lunenburg. I'm hoping to work some of ~jwf~'s words about Lunenburg into that entry.

I don't have A numbers yet. Will post them when I get to that point.