What's so great about Canada? (Spoiler: Lots of things!)

on Mars. But you know what else, what's that? As we'll explain in a minute, this is not what we're gonna be focused on in today's episode, on some of the most fascinating places in Canada. So let's get started. Hey,

their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend man gues Ticketer and the man on the other side of the soundproof glass sporting a jersey which he claims is signed by every single member of the nineteen Edmonton Oilers championship team is our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. That's pretty impressive if it's true. We have to fact

check that. Now this is a show we've been planning to do for a little while now, because you know, a couple of months back, we made a comment about the average temperature in Canada and how cold it is there, and we heard from several Canadians about how it's not always cold and all of Canada, and you know, obviously it's a very big place, and and frankly, we've missed an opportunity to share some good facts about Canada. Now. We don't like the stereotype, at least I don't. I don't.

You don't like the stereotype for me either, But but I have to say one thing about all these messages from the Canadians. They were some of the most polite letters of criticism I have ever read. It's true, and and not one but two of the letters included invitations to come visit Canada so we could experience it for ourselves. But again, we're not gonna stereotype here. I'm sure there's

some real jerks in Canada. It's not any of them who wrote to us, you know, so, so in our replies we promised we would show Canada some love, and so that's what we're doing in today's episode. And do you want to tell them the exciting news yeah, I guess we should so. So, so this is just the first in a sixty five part series about Canada. Now we're not quite sure when the next sixty four parts

will be but but we're pretty excited about it. So for today we we obviously won't be able to cover every fascinating thing about Canada, but we decided to each pick a few categories. And I know there were a few strange and fascinating places you wanted to talk about, and I of course claimed the animal category. But before we get to the various categories, I think we should probably start by acknowledging just how big a country Canada is and how diverse its landscape is. You want to

give us a quick overview, Yeah, happy too. So so there were definitely some surprises for me in our research. But but just starting with the big facts, a couple of them that people may know, but just to make sure. So, Canada is the second largest country in the world in terms of land area. The biggest, of course, is Russia. It has the longest coastline of any country in the world,

and it's the largest country that borders only one other country. Now, it has more freshwater than any country with get this, millions of lakes. That's right, millions of lakes. I had no idea. Yeah, so so, and actually, I'm not even done putting their freshwater dominance in perspective. Are you sure they're not puddles? Uh? You know, maybe there's a little language barrier here. We might have to check on that, but but still, I mean, millions, even millions of puddles

is kind of impressive. But so but but this actually does put it in perspective. Here. It says one fifth of the world's freshwater is located in Canada. And and those millions of lakes, now we're talking maybe two to three million. That's more than all other countries lakes combined. So how do we not know this? Again, we're not stereotyping, but if we were, if we were going to just like dabble a little bit of stereotyping, we might say it's because they're too polite to brag about it. Yeah,

I mean, that's something I'd definitely be bragging about. But I would have thought if they were bragging about anything, it would be about trees. Yeah, and there's definitely a ton of those. Two So Canada is home to nine percent of the world's forest. And I'm not sure if you knew this, but that's almost ten percent. Actually, wait here, here is one source. This is from a Reader's Digest Canadian addition that claims they do have ten percent of

the world's forest. And this is definitely the Canadian addition because they spell favorite with a U in it, and they might be a little bit bias, but I'm going with it. Well, I support that, And didn't I read that the huge percentage of that forest land is actually publicly owned. Yeah, that's right, and in fact, almost all of it. It's something like of the forest landed Canada is owned by the government and and for that reason, it's often referred to as crown land, and that is

belonging to the monarch. Now, at some point in our sixty five part series, we'll talk about the relationship between the monarch and Canada. It's all kind of strange and confusing, but that's for another episode. But a decent number of these forests are part of national parks. And I'm gonna go back to this Reader's Digest Canada article because it's the one place I've seen the Canadian do some serious bragging.

And the guy that wrote his name is Daniel Reid, and he says Canada is so big that even our parks are bigger than countries. Well, I feel like they need a marketing campaign with Canada's so big jokes man, this would be the best, need a whole book of so. So read points out that Nahini National Park Reserve in the Northwest Territories is not only incredible because if its waterfalls, but it's actually so big. It's bigger than countries like Albania and Israel. And and this is a single national

park and it's not even the biggest. There's another one Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta and the Northwest Territories. It's even bigger. In fact, it's bigger than Denmark and Switzerland's incredible. That is incredible. So do you have anything else to show just how big Canada is? Yeah, I've actually got one more. And so so, Canada's home to about a quarter of the world's wetlands. And this is another one that that surprised me. So we're talking over

a million square kilometers of wetlands. And according to Canadian Geographic quote, these wetlands helped moderate river flows and cleans polluted water and support a complex web of species, from microscopic zill plankton to migratory sea birds to large mammals like moose and caribou. They also store massive amounts of carbon now, particularly the boreal peatlands, and at a minimum, the peatland store a hundred and forty seven billion tons

of carbons. This is the equivalent to seven hundred and thirty six years worth of Canada's industrial greenhouse gas emissions. So it's definitely in Canada's best interest to see those areas protected. Yeah, so, once again something I did not know. But speaking of all the interesting species, can I actually talk about one of the categories we mentioned earlier? Animals because it just seems like the right time. Yeah, it

definitely does, all right, go for it. Well, it's definitely no easy task to decide on which ones to talk about, because there are obviously a ton of interesting animals in Canada. And I don't know if you've heard, but Canada is a big place. I feel like I have heard that. But I decided to focus on three that I really want to go see at some point, and I'm going to start with another thing that Canada is the king of, and that's pull slar bears. Well this, I hope this

is impressive as my ten per cent of the world. Fact, actually, it's even better because two thirds of the world's polar bears are in Canada. No way, that's crazy. So we're talking about roughly sixteen thousand polar bears and Churchill, Manitoba is known as the polar bear capital of the world. It's a it's a pretty big claim. So why why is that? I mean, maybe that's a dumb question. I'm

guessing there are a bunch of polar bears there. Yeah, well, at least for part of the year, and that's because it's on the western shore of the Hudson Bay where they gather each year to hunt seals once the bay freezes, and you'll find thousands of tourists visiting Churchill each year to see these massive bears in their natural habitat. This is in a really remote town with no real roads going to it, and you can only get there by plane or the Winnipeg Churchill rail line. Only about people

actually live in the town. But you're talking about this town, so the polar bears actually come into the town itself. Yeah, it's actually becoming a little bit of a problem because of warming temperatures, which make it harder for polar bears to hunt seals, you know, due to less ice cover. More bears have been venturing in town in recent years, and about five of the bears are pretty close to the town. Wow, So is I mean, is there anything they can do about this? So obviously global warming and

roaming bears in your town aren't that funny. But I have to admit it's kind of funny to read about one of their solutions, and that's the fact that they have these polar bear jails there. Really. Yeah, so residents can call a twenty four hour hotline when they see a bear wandering around town, and any bear that they can't successfully scare off is then captured and taken to this polar bear holding facility. It's held there until it

can be airlifted north and return to the wild. And last year, fifty three bears spent some time in the Slammer. It's crazy. So there's a twenty four hour hot line about this that that that sounds almost as important as our twenty four hour hotline, I guess. Actually for the record, listeners, if you want to call and tell us about your bear sightings. In addition to some great facts, you can also leave us a message on our seven fact hot

line one eight four four pt genius. So so so that they built this jail for the bears originally, well it was originally this military aircraft hanger, but there was converted into this polar bear holding facility in n and since opening, it's actually held over two thousand polar bears. Wow, that does seem like a really cool thing to see. And and even the travel by train there, like you mentioned that that probably takes a while to get there,

but it seems like it makes the experience that much cooler. Alright, So, so what you got next? Alright, so that this one is very different. We're gonna go from the largest gathering of polar bears to possibly the largest gathering of snakes in the world. I'm talking about the snake dens in Manitoba, where tens of thousands of red gardeners snakes congregate to do their mating thing after spending all winter in their dens. This crazy ritual happens for a few weeks in late

April or early May, depending on the weather. The mails come out first and just wait on the females. And here's how it was described in an article by Joanna Klein in the New York Times last year. Quote, in this sea of snakes, a female isn't easy to find, even though she three or four times bigger. At times, the ratio of males to females is ten to one. Yeah, So a female secretes pheromones from her skin, luring dozens to hundreds of males that try to quarter by rubbing

their chins along her back and flicking their tongues. She ultimately decides when she's ready to mate by a mysterious mechanism called cryptic female choice, and the closest male wins and leaves a stinky plug insider that tells others to back off. She can wait a couple of days for the plug to dissolve and mate with another snake, or she can slither off into the swamps to feed and give live births to her babies. In August ten thousand to one. I mean, that is crazy, That is pretty intense.

But but I can imagine it'd be tough for a lot of people to watch this, even if people think they want to go watch this. But I don't know. I'm gonna act off and pretend that I'm not one of those people. So I want to go see this place. Okay, So I've got one more on the animal front, and this one's pretty simple. One of these days, I want to get up to the Wood Buffalo National Park that you mentioned earlier. It's in Alberta, and it's home to

the world's largest beaver dam, which is so big. It was first spotted by his satellite photos about a decade ago, and it's over eight hundred fifty meters long. That's huge. I do have to admit all this metric system talk is making me a little bit dizzy. But but I want to see this thing too. And and these are some awesome animals, Maga. So you've talked about polar bears, snakes, and the beaver dam. I want to see all of these things. Now I'm ready to jump with my own list.

But first let's take a quick break to Mango. Today, we've got an incredibly special guest on the program, asked for not Chris Hadfield. Now, now Chris has had so many incredible things on his resume that it's honestly kind of hard to know how to introduce him. He's taken three trips into space. He's the first Canadian to walk in space, first Canadian commander of the International Space Station.

And if you somehow missed his incredible YouTube videos from space, you definitely should pause this and go watch his ted talk about going blind in space and then everything else from there, because it's all so wonderful. But Chris, welcome to part time genius. It is my pleasure to be joining YouTube. Gents, thanks very much. So we know you've had a ton of incredible adventures, including things like escorting Soviet bombers out of Canadian airspace and living in a

research vessel in the bottom of the ocean. But as a kid growing up in Canada, knowing you wanted to get to space, how do you figure out that career roadmap to you know, get to space three times? Gosh? There there there was no roadmap at the time for

a Canadian um. We didn't have a space agency. We had one satellite up called Elouette, which was looking at the ionosphere in northern lights, but there were no Canadian I mean at the time, I chose the only astronauts in the world where the Soviets with Euryga garn and Alecta leon Us and then the Americans with John Glenn and Al Sheppard and company. So, you know, I said, do I become a Soviet? Do I become an American?

What you know, what do you do? And so I it's like a roadmap with no map and no roads. But I just reminded myself, even as a nine year old, that for Yuri Gagarin and and Neil Armstrong, astronauts didn't even exist when those guys were born, and yet somehow they had, they had turned themselves into somebody who could be trusted to fly a spaceship. And I figured, that's the map I'm going to follow. I'm gonna try and just change who I am into someone who someday may

hand me the keys to a spaceship. And and amazingly enough that happened, and as you say, I flew in space three times and ended up commanding the International Space Station. You know, one of my favorite parts of your videos was seeing you do these mundane things in space, like you know, brushing your teeth and how it really isn't that different, but but clipping your toenails is completely different. I mean, what do you think is the hardest common

thing to a just two when you're in space. Yeah, some of the mundane stuff is so hard up there, and some things that are hard on Earth just become dead easy. Like of course you can fly around, not even fly. You can move around the spaceship as if you had a superpower, as if you were I don't know, one of the X men. You can just magically move with no effort, and and that's different than being on Earth.

But we have to exercise to keep her body strong up there, and in order to use some of the exercise equipment, it's best to wear running shoes, like if you're if you're using the resistive exercise equipment, you want the foot support. Trying to put on a pair of running shoes is really hard without gravity. It doesn't seem like it would be, but if you think about it, none of you put your shoes on while balancing on

one foot. You always sort of plumped down, and then you have the stability of gravity holding your butt still. And then you have because you have two hands and one foot busy, well, if you're waitless, as soon as you tie up both hands and one foot, basically there's nothing to hold you in place anymore. You can't still with the toes of one foot, And every every single time I would, I would float one shoe next to me in weightlessness, and then I would get busy, sort

of gently tumbling around doing up the one shoe. But every single time, by the time I turned around, I had rotated to some whole new orientation and the other shoe was gone every time. So so so, yeah, it's the simple stuff becomes suddenly hard and some of the real hard things become easy. That's amazing. Um. So, one of the things I feel like I heard you say was that when you were traveling in the space, that

there were sunsets of sunrises every minutes. But I was curious, what's the most spectacular parts of Earth that you remember seeing from space? Yeah, you go around the world in ninety two minutes, so depending on the angle between you the Earth and the sun, um, it might be crisply every forty six minutes you get a sunrise, or or you may be on sort of the oblique and then you get along a longer, slower diagonal version of it.

But um, you know, one of the most beautiful things I ever saw was something that you can hardly ever see from Earth. And even hardly ever see from the spaceship, and that is these ethereal super high altitude clouds that are way up in the thermosphere where it's just very very few ice crystals, way way up above the Earth,

almost up to the altitude of the spaceship. And if you get your angle just right where the sun is still on the other side of the world, but the sunrise rays are just touching the upper part of the atmosphere, suddenly it looks like the Earth is encased in like like a ghost surf. There's this this blue rolling curves of waves way up around the world, and and it's unbelievable to look at. We call them not to loosen clouds,

not to loosen like glowing in the dark clouds. But I only saw them for a couple of minutes total in in my three space flights. And I grabbed the camera and I was thinking, no way, any of these pictures are going to turn out, but this is too rare to miss. And I took a whole bunch of pictures of them and just just staggered by the by

the transient, um delicate beauty of it. But um, the pictures did turn out and In fact, they're pretty scientifically interesting because it teaches us about the upper reaches of the atmosphere and also about the status of the climate itself because it's one more way to measure changes in in gaseous and water content and the atmosphere. So a beautiful thing but also kind of a technically interesting thing and something the only moment I've seen it in my

whole life. Wow. Now, now, now speaking of sight or or lack of you know, I know you talk about in your Ted talk going blind in space, but but could you just touch on that experience here. Sure, I've done two spacewalks where you put on the big white suits and go outside the spaceship and we call it a suit, like a space walking suit or an outfit. But but in truth, um, that space suit is really just a one person spaceship, is what it is. It's

a completely self contained little spaceship. It even has a jet pack on it. It's got its own thrust or system on it. And since it's uh, you know, the only thing you're attached to the space station with is like a little metal clothesline just to teach from floating away. So um, that system it has to purify its own air has to have an oxygen supply, power, cooling, radio, everything, and mine had some contamination in it that we weren't expecting.

And on the way the contamination, let let itself be known, was it got in my left eye. And you can't touch your face, of course, you're inside a big helmet. So I suddenly had some nasty, really aggravating UM stuff in my eye. And eye does what and E does you know? It's slam shut. It hurt and it started tearing up, and I couldn't do anything about it. But because there's no gravity, the tears don't go anywhere, they don't fall, they don't drain down your face like they're

supposed to. They just sit there as a ball of contaminated liquid getting slightly ever bigger on your eye. And the unfortunate consequence of that is, as soon as that ball of contaminated tear it's big enough, it crosses the bridge of your nose into your other eye, sort of against my my will and out of my control, And so then I was blinded in both eyes. And then

it's a matter of how do you react? You know, you're outside the spaceship holding on um whereas sight is really important for safety, and now suddenly you're struck blind, uh or at least as blind. Imagine if you were lying in your back and someone just kept dripping a really harsh shampoo into your eyes so that every you know, you just couldn't hold your eyes o, but everything was all blurred and your eyeballs hurt when you opened them.

That's what I felt like. So I talked to Houston and and I was outside with one other astronaut, a guy named Scott Parazynski, and we talked about it. Of course, we've practiced one of us being incapacitated. You know, it's not like something that could never happen. We even had procedures for incapacitated crew rescues. So we don't want to do that because that means the whole spacewalk is stopped, and you're not going to get to all the work done, and there's going to be all sorts of people are

going to be all excited about it. But m Fortunately, I had worked in mission control for twenty five Shuttle flights. I knew everybody there. They trusted me. We talked about it, and I just opened the valve on the side of my suit, a little purge valve up by my left ear that that allowed the contaminated atmosphere inside my suit to squirt out into space. And there's enough spare oxygen in a in a high pressure tank down by my kidneys that it it could feed the leak for a while.

And by doing that, and by continuing to tear up and cry and and have my tears evaporate, it diluted the contaminant enough so that eventually, sort of like when you rinse your eyes after they've been irritated by something, I could start to see again, and then I could get back to work and finish the whole spacewalk. But it was a pretty unusual half hour of my life to be blind during. Yeah, I can imagine more more

than a little terrifying. Wow, that's interesting. Did you have any profound realizations that you came away with from your travel to space or any changes in your perspective? Well,

profound is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. Uh. I think the twenty one years that I served as an astronaut and and worked and studied and supported other astronauts and took care of their families and took care of their families after the Columbia accidents and UH, and then my own years and years of preparation, and as you mentioned in the intro, doing survival training in the deserts and Arctic and mountains of the world, and then living and taking command of a crew of people living

at the bottom of the ocean. All of those things changed who I was to some degree and increased my ability to be successful as an astronaut. But I think also maybe changed my perspective on the world a little. When you combine that with the reality of going around the world sixteen times a day and seeing everywhere, so that you become intimately familiar with every place on the planet, and the and the immense age of the planet, and the transient shared nature of what it is to be

a human being alive on this planet. I think it just gave me a clearer and less filtered perspective on the world, allowed me to draw my own conclusions. And and whether that's profound or not, it's a perception that I've tried to share, you know, through writing books and playing music and um and speaking all around the world, and threw all of those things to try and let people see a little bit of that new perspective that

our technology and in mentiveness has given us. M H. Now, Chris, I can't remember if we told you before the interview that the name of the studio we actually record in is Bowie and it, uh, you know, made me think that the Space Oddity video you did was just amazing. And I'm curious if you know if Bowie ever got to see your cover. Bowie described that cover as the most poignant version of the song ever done. Oh wow. Yeah, he had to give us permission in order to do it.

You can't just cover somebody else's song and release it, of course. And um, and he wrote that song when he was nineteen, you know, just turning twenty and and he he always dreamed of flying in space. It was a constant undercurrent, so many of the personas that he adopted, and so much of his artistic creation with Starman and

Mars and all the rest of it. And so uh for him to see that creation of his when he was just a late adolescent performed in a place he always dreamed of going, was to some degree like a dream come true for him. He loved it. And I play with his bands sometimes now that we do the celebrating Bowie tour. I played with him in New York earlier this year, and I'll probably play their touring again this year. The guys that loved him and toured with

him over the decades. Um. So, yeah, I have huge respect for Bowie and and I'm delighted that that's something that I did on Orbit. Um, you know, put a smile on his face in the last couple of years of his life. That's incredible. And since the episode we're doing is on Canada, could you just tell us one place in Canada that's maybe secret or a little less known, that you think is beautiful and you think everyone should

know about. Yeah, just a little over year ago, I was on an icebreaker um way up in Canada's north and of course most of Canada is north, and a large part of it is just so sparsely inhabited by people. And on board this icebreaker, we were If you take a globe of the world and you look at that long archipelago of Canada that goes almost right to the very north pole, the northern part of that is elsbre Island, and it's full of life, just not people, full of

of uh. Rabbits and fox and wolves and musk ox and a bunch of different types of birds and polar bears and seals, and it's it's thriving and teeming with life and ancients and patient and silent and beautiful, and it defines a large part of Canada, and it's something that even most Canadians never get a chance to see.

So I brought a team of of social media people with me, about ten or eleven that that could share the experience, and I think we should there with the talies like twenty million people that got to have a good look at that part of the world but otherwise might never even realize just how it exists and what it looks like. And to me, that huge part of our planet, so much of which is within Canada, which is so important to the health and and uh an ecology of the planet. To me, that's maybe the most

secret but important part of the country. Wow, we'll definitely have to add that to the tour we're putting together here now. For all of our listeners, I hope you'll pick up a copy of Chris's best selling book, An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth and check out his incredible YouTube channel. You definitely won't be disappointed. But Chris Hatfield, thanks so much for joining us on Part Time Genius. Thanks very much. It's a pleasure pleasure to h to

talk with you both. It's an amazing planet and I'm constantly looking for ways to understand it better and then share my version of understanding with as many people as possible. Welcome back to Part Time Genius. Now, before the break, Mango is telling us about his plans to see polar bears and snakes and beavers all on his next trip to Canada. That's right, I can't wait. But now that you're trying to talk about a few places, I think you're gonna tell us about some of the unusual spots

you'd like to check out. Yeah, So from my first spot, I'm going to head way up north, and in fact, it's the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world. It's a place called Alert and it's a Canadian Forces station that opened a little more than sixty years ago and only about eighty people live there now, though you know as many as three hundred or so lived there during the Cold War. So what exactly is it? Well, it's

it's a place that serves several purposes. It's it's been a signals intelligence listening post, that's been a weather station, a place to monitor climate change, and a base for other polar research. But it's a pretty strange place. And it's actually so close to the North Pole that it's unable to connect with communications satellites. And the motto of Alert is beyond the Inuit land. But I'm guessing that

makes for some pretty dark winners. Yeah, and some well lit summers, But in fact, about four months out of the year, Alert is in complete darkness. There was a story in the National Post that put it this way. The seventy nine Canadians who inhabit the northernmost community on Earth last saw daylight on October fourteenth at twelve thirty pm. The sun will next crest the horizon here at ten forty one am on February. So I think I might

hold off visiting since they've just entered that period of darkness. Yeah, And like I said, wait wait until the summer months and you'll get about four months of twenty four seven daylight. But there's actually a pretty funny story about Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau when he made his first visit to Alert as a kid. This was when his father, Pierre was Prime Minister, and Trudeau shared this story at the memorial

service for his dad, and here's what he said. I was about six years old when I went on my first official trip. I was going with my father to the North Pole. One day, we were in Alert, Canada's northernmost point. I figured I was finally going to be let into the reason for the existence of this high security Arctic base. I was exactly right. We drove slowly through and passed the buildings, all of them very gray and windy, and we rounded a corner and came upon

a red one. So we stopped. I got out of the jeep and started to crunch across the snow bank, boosted up to the window, rubbed my sleeve across the frosty glass to see inside, and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw a figure hunched over one of the many work tables that seemed very cluttered. He was wearing a red suit with a furry white trump And that's when I understood just how powerful and wonderful my father was. By the way, that that was Santa

he was talking about. In case you didn't understand that. So, you know, so while Alert has primarily been this spot for the Canadian military to try and keep a US in on what Putin and his government are up to, it's also apparently a place where Santa may hang out sometime. And in fact, Trudeau and others have pointed out, you can tell Santa is Canadian because he wears red and white,

or he could be Japanese. But where's your next Alright, So so we're gonna come way south of Alert to a farm near Whitby, Ontario, and we're gonna go back in time a little bit for this visit. But we're talking about World War two in that time frame. There was a special training school for intelligence agents that was

developed there. It was officially called STS one oh three, and the STS stands for Special Training School, but it was usually just referred to as Camp X. Now, this was not just the school for Canadian intelligence agents from the Office of Strategic Services in the US who would go on to found the CIA trained their spies from

the British Intelligence Service learned there. Several others were training in this spot, and so that this all happened on a farm, it was just the strange piece of farmland and in a pretty sparsely populated area near the Lake Ontario shore, and a report from Radio Canada International explained, quote it was a good place to practice a variety of skills such as blowing up railway lines, firearms, parachute drops, hand to hand combat and so on, all away from

prying eyes and ears. And it goes on to explain during the war it trained about five hundred agents, approximately half of which were sent behind enemy lines in Europe and Asia to cause damage and disruption and or spread disinformation while gathering information useful to the Allied war effort.

That's pretty fascinating. So how long did this last? Well, it only lasted a few years, despite the fact that so many were trained there, and after fewer Americans were sent to train, their CAMPEX started getting recruits from Central and South America. And these people were going there because they worked for British owned companies and they were there to learn counter sabotage techniques to protect against Nazi subversion. Then there were other European immigrants who went there to train,

but eventually the school was closed. I think it was in the nineteen so I know you have one more place on your strange list, what you got for us? All right? So this one is very different. It's actually a haunted prison hotel. Yeah, that definitely sounds different. It is. And and so this prison, originally called the Carlton County Jail, was open in the eighteen sixties and it was a really brutal prison. So several of Ottawa's most notorious criminals

ended up there, and the conditions were pretty terrible. There were multiple executions carried out there, and and the jail was closed in the early seventies really because of just how bad the conditions were there. But eventually it was purchased by Hostling International because what else to do with this old rundown and horrible jail then turn it into a hostel, and it was reopened as the Ottawa Jail Hostile Wait says, you just stay inside the old prison. Yeah, actually,

I'm I'm pulling this off right now. And and it's it's fine to go to the website and see Welcome to the Ottawa Jail Hostile Book Your stay. Yeah, it doesn't make you want to stay there, and the pictures look really creepy, but know, for a one night experience it would definitely be memorable at the very least, and you can take a ghost tour, go to the top floor where you can see where death Row was and all of this before you retire to yourself for the night.

I mean, that is so morbid, and I think it would be interesting to visit, but I'm not quite sure i'd want to spend the night. Yeah. In fact, I think this is a good time for me to transition back to the world of nature and finish our tour with three more natural locations. I think that's a pretty good idea, all right, So so what do you got first? Well, you know how we talked about the millions of lakes in Canada. One of them happens to be Canada's own

Dead Sea. You mean, like the dead sea, dead sea, like the one where you can float so easily in exactly. So, if you're in North America, why travel so many thousands of miles to get to the Dead Sea when you could just head up to Saskatchewan. Actually that's my philosophy. I say that about every day. Why go to New York when you could just go to Saskatchewan. I think that's right. But what's amazing about it is the crazy high salinity of this lake, which is called Little Manitou Lake.

The water of the lake is three to four times saltier than the ocean. I mean, the idea of kicking back and relaxing and floating and reading a book in the water, it all sounds pretty great to me, especially after thinking about spending a night in that old prison. Yeah. So, so Saskatchewan is the province that this is the one just above Montana and North Dakota. Right, Yeah, that's it. So it's interesting how even many Canadians are unaware of this dead sea equivalent. I mean, it does seem like

a really interesting place to visit. Yeah, and it's a beautiful area and there are also a lot of hot springs there, so that's a bonus definitely. All right, So, um, I think you have another spot. So what's next? Well, sticking with the water theme, I I know you're a big fan of waterfalls, so it's probably worth a visit to what some call the City of Waterfalls in Hamilton, Ontario, where they're over a hundred thirty falls in the area and they're all part of the Niagara Escarpment. Hundred and

thirty falls. But wait a minute, first, of all, what the heck is an escarpment? And second, so you said niagaras and Niagara Falls. Yeah, so, and escarpment is pretty much a geological ridge that's separates two areas of different elevations. And the Niagara Escarpment, which is in fact named for Niagara Falls, is near the eastern end it. It runs a little over six hundred miles from I believe, like Rochester,

through the Great Lakes and then into Illinois. I thought we're talking about Canada here, man, you're naming place to us, and we are because along the way it travels through part of Ontario, and specifically Hamilton, Ontario, where where those hundred thirty falls are located. There's so many beautiful falls. They're like ones with heavy rushing waters, ones with big drops, and ones that just kind of roll across a series of falls. That sounds awesome. I really want to visit

this place as much as any place we've talked about today. Yeah, And of course none of the individual falls in Hamiltons are nearly as big as Niagara, but just seeing that many falls in such a small area is pretty incredible. And there's several more falls and towns around the area. It's definitely worth a visit. Yeah, I'm pretty serious about getting there at some point. All right, So you've got I think one more natural area, is that right? So I'm going to finish with going to this region of

Canada where there's less gravity, less gray What does that mean? Yeah, So for several decades, scientists have been trying to find out why gravity seems to be missing in the Hudson Bay region and actually in several areas of Canada, but it's more significant in the Hudson Bay area. What does that mean? It's missing gravity? And how did they figure this out? Well, then they gotta figured it out because there are a couple of contributing factors. But before explaining that,

I should know a couple of things. So the first is just a refresher on what creates gravity. As you may remember from science class, gravity is directly proportional to mass, So the greater the mass, the greater the gravity, and vice versa. And the second thing is that gravity is not equal everywhere on Earth. I have to admit I

did not know that. It's because we think of the Earth as being this ball, and the mass of the Earth is not equally distributed like the Earth bulges near the quitter and then flattens out, you know, as you move towards the polls. All right, that makes sense, got it? So let me go to the theories. The first has to do with the process of convection in the Earth's mantle,

which is that layer of magma and is extremely hot. Well, magma's in constant motion, and it actually pulls the continental plates down and in doing so, it decreases the mass in that area. And then the second theory has to do with this massive ice sheet that used to cover much of present day Canada, but one of its thickest

areas was over Hudson Bay. This was a really heavy ice sheet and in these thicker areas, basically it left this big indentation in the Earth and the result was similar to the first theory, and that it decreased the mass in that area. And so do do scientists think one of these is accurate? Now? Well, they actually believe that both are accurate and both contributed to the missing gravity. All right, So if you were to go visit this, would you would you feel this difference in gravity? No?

Not unless you're capable of noticing. What do we feel like to like lose a tenth of an ounce off a hundred fifty pound frame. I don't know. I'm a pretty sensitive person, Magna, but maybe you're right on this and it would still be a really cool place to is it. And yeah, I feel like we've talked about some pretty amazing places today and for those we've missed, we know we've still got sixty four more episodes in this sixty five part series, you know, to come at

some point in the future. But I bet we've still got a few more to talk about because you know what time it is? Time for the PTG fact off. All right, I'll kick us off. So did you know that Canada's home to the world's first UFO landing pad? Went in nineteen sixty seven, the town of St. Paul and Alberta built this landing pad, and Canada's National Defense minister even showed up to cut the ribbon at the

opening ceremony. I mean, it turns out it might have been a little bit more of a move to attract tourists as much as it was for Martians, but it's still pretty fun. I also be like, that's how welcoming Canadians are kidding. So I've got a weird one too. Did you know what Canada's universal health care system an actor key for Sutherland having common I don't, but I

was actually just wondering that this morning. Well, Tommy Douglas, who was the Premier of Saskatchewan, initiated the universal healthcare idea in a big way when his province said an example for the federal government. That's because he instituted public hospital insurance. But almost as big as this accomplishment, Douglas is also the grandfather of key for Sutherland. Oh wow,

you really bury the lead there. That's an important fact. Okay, alright, So the red and white Canadian flag, you know, this is the one with the big maple leaf on it. It was adopted in nineteen six, only seventy years after it was first suggested that Canada should have a national flag with a big maple leaf. So until the adoption in the sixties, Canada actually didn't have a national flag. That's crazy. So one of my favorite things to do when I travel is to try some of the favorite

local drinks. But there is one drink that I cannot imagine trying, and this is in Dawson City's downtown hotel bar in Yukon, it's called the s our Toe cocktail, which is a glass of local bourbon with a mummified human toe dropped into it. Almost seventy people have had the drink and with this toe in it, but one customer almost ruined it for everyone. He actually swallowed the toe intentionally, but not to worry that they had another one ready to go. And and apparently there's now a

fine for anyone who swallows the toe. Who's capable of swallowing a toe. That is all right, well, this is not that crazy of a fact. But actually I realized there was something that I forgot to mention earlier, and that's the fact that of the Canadian population lives within a hundred miles of the US border. So as huge as the country is, land wise, there are so few people per square mile once you get beyond that hundred miles. So Canada may not be called everywhere, but it is

home North America's only cold sauna. It's called Sparkling Hill and it's this resort in British Columbia. It doesn't sound pleasant, but apparently flash freezing your self is good for things like arthritis and muscle pain, and several other elements, and while you're inside, you spend three minutes in a room at negative a hundred sixty six degrees fahrenheit, But just a few more minutes of that and the temperature could actually kill you. I mean, that doesn't sound like anything

i'd want to try. And you know, everything else we've talked about today, I think I would at least like to visit, but but not this one. But I'm impressed you managed to bring the conversation back to freezing in Canada. So I think I'm going to give you this week's trophy. And remember, listeners, if there are facts you think we should know, email us at part Time Genius at how stuff Works dot com or call us on our seven fact hotline one eight four four pt Genius. We can't

wait to hear from all our Canadian listeners. And just before we go, I just want to say a special thanks to Chris Hadfield. He's such a hero to us, and and please go check out his new Rare Earth series on YouTube. Thanks so much, thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme

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