Happy Anniversaries, Parks Canada

Canada's equivalent of the US National Park Service celebrates its 125th this year. But wait! There's more!

Happy Anniversaries -- plural "anniversaries" with an S is correct, as Parks Canada (and also Parcs Canada in our officially bilingual neighbor to the north) -- celebrates and celebrates and celebrates. Currently, the agency is responsible for 42 national parks, 167 historic sites, nine historic canals and three national historic conservation areas. Like trivia? Point Pelee National Park, between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario is the smallest and also the farthest south -- farther south, in fact, than New York City. The farthest north is Sirmilik National Park on northern Baffin Island, also the area where the earliest signs of human habitation have been found. Parks Canada/Parcs Canada certainly has a lot to celebrate.

2010 - 125th anniversary of the year (1885) that Cave Basin was established as a natural reserve to protect Banff Hot Springs. Two years later, it became the nucleus Banff National Park, Canada's first national park.

2011 - 100th anniversary of the creation of the agency now called Parks Canada/Parcs Canada

2012 - 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, commemorated and documented at numerous National Historic Sites close to the Canada-US border.

2013 - 300th anniversary ot the Fortress of Louisbourg, a faith reconstruction of a fortress built in 1713 to protect French poessesions in what is now referred to as Atlantic Canada.