Posts tagged "CANADA"

Western Canada Wildfires Infopost

vwcarmats:

Haven’t seen a big info post for the large amount of wildfires currently active in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, especially as to what people can do. So here it is:

Keeping Informed:

Each province has their own website pages dedicated to wildfire information. If you are in an area currently affected by a wildfire, they can be of help as they have maps of fire activity and smoke distribution as well as air advisories. They also have information about wildfire management and prevention if you’re curious/aren’t up to date on that. There have been no reports yet as to whether any of these wildfires were started by human error but always obey Fire Bans, and be careful of open fires even if you’re on private property near brush or woods. These pages also have contact information for reporting a fire you don’t see on their reports and maps. If you are active on Twitter, consider following your province’s emergency info/alert agency.

Saskatchewan - Map of Active Fires >100ha (pdf), Fire Ban info, Air Quality Readings (doesn’t seem to be working for me atm), SaskAlert
Alberta - Wildfire Status Map (pdf), Fire Ban info, Air Quality Health Index (mobile friendly view), Alberta Emergency Alert
British Columbia - Active Wildfires Map (Google Maps), Fire Ban info, Air Quality Health Index (please note Metro Vancouver is currently at 9-12, see Advisory [pdf]), Emergency Info BC
All - Smoke Forecasts (epilepsy warning: maps may flash white between frames)

Keeping Safe:

People in all smoke affected areas: please read the Lung Association of Saskatchewan’s Forest Fires and Lung Health Sheet. It has symptom info for smoke inhalation and very importantly, warning signs for Asthma and COPD attacks. Here are some general precautions to take:

  • Stay cool and hydrated.
  • Avoid strenuous exercise.
  • Remain indoors if possible.
  • When driving, keep windows and vents closed, use air conditioning with the recirculation setting to avoid introducing outside smoke.
  • If you use an air conditioner in your home, follow advice as above.
  • If you have a room air cleaner in your home, use it. Make sure filters, which can be especially helpful (such as HEPA filters), have been replaced if necessary. Consider purchasing one if you or anyone in your home appears to be sensitive to the effects of the smoke.
  • Pay special attention to children, the elderly, and those with pre-existing medical conditions.
  • Take shelter in large air conditioned buildings.

How to Help:

On the front line, firefighting services are provided by the Forestry Service and they do not accept donations. The best way to help them is to follow fire bans, be cautious, and be prepared for evacuation by having supplies and plans ready if you are in a wildfire risk area and to pay attention to any evacuation warnings and orders.

Evacuation services are generally provided by the Canadian Red Cross, a Non-Governmental Organization. They are who to call if you have been separated from family due to evacuation orders. They do accept monetary donations, and you may specify where you wish for your donation to go, such as to Canadian disaster relief. If you are not in an area where evacuees are being sheltered, this is probably the most effective way to help. There is also an independent GoFundMe started to help families of Northern Saskatchewan.

If you are in an area where evacuees are currently being sheltered, local organizations likely take over as the Red Cross volunteers already have their hands full at evacuation centres. In Saskatchewan, the Salvation Army is accepting summer clothing and footwear for evacuees, which can be dropped off at their thrift stores. However, efforts are largely decentralized, so please do local research for where you can volunteer or donate, or even connect with evacuees needing shelter if you have (or can make) space in your home. There is a Facebook page called Sask Evacuations - Helping One Another you may want to check out.

Finally, spread the word. The more informed we all are, the better.

(via potentialforart)

idiosyncraticoma:

allthecanadianpolitics:

B.C. Woman Organizes Care Packages To Fight The Northern Food Crisis

Nobody should have to pay $28 for a head of lettuce anywhere — let alone in Canada.

That’s the belief that drives Jennifer Gwilliam, who spends her days organizing food care packages for people she’s never met. But she’s not even sending aid to a Third World country; she’s sending it to Canada’s remote north.

The high prices of groceries in Nunavut, for example —$47 for a box of laundry detergent or $105 for a case of water— have drawn increasing outcry from Canadians over the last few years.

“It was just shocking to see the prices they were paying for a head of cabbage or a flat of water,” Gwilliam told The Huffington Post B.C. “I was just appalled. It’s hard enough to make ends meet down here, let alone with those sort of prices. So I wanted to do something.”

After doing some digging, Gwilliam came across the Facebook group Feeding My Family, designed to raise awareness about the northern crisis and advocate for change. But she wanted to turn outrage into action, so she started her own Facebook group, Helping Our Northern Neighbours, last summer.

Gwilliam’s group matches people who want to donate packages of food and other necessities with those in the north who need it most.

People can either donate one box once, or choose to sponsor a family, meaning they regularly send care packages. There are no restrictions on what people can give, although many cater their boxes to the family they’ve been matched with.

[…]

There are over 400 names on Gwilliam’s list of people seeking assistance; just under half have received help in some way so far. She said many of donors (from across Canada) are living paycheque to paycheque themselves, but that doesn’t stop them from giving back. And everyone seems truly grateful for the help.

Candy Ivalutanar, who lives in Repulse Bay, Nunavut with her husband and two daughters under 10, said she cried the first time she received a care package.

“I told my husband, ‘I thought I wasn’t going to get anything. I thought nobody would want to ever help us.’ It touched me so much,” Ivalutanar told HuffPost B.C. She frequently tells her sponsor, who has sent a few boxes already, that she loves her.

“I love her for helping me so much,” she said. “Even if it’s just a little, I don’t care — that’s a lot for me.”

Continue Reading.

THIS IS IMPORTANT THIS IS SO IMPORTANT
PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINKS AND DONATE IF YOU CAN OR WOW IF YOU ARE ABLE TO WHY NOT SPONSOR A FAMILY??

PLEASE THERE ARE BABIES WITH EMPTY BELLIES IN OUR DISTANT BACK YARD PLS HELP THEM

(via brandb)

coelasquid:
“ dirtybrian:
“ thewitchylibrarian:
“ dirtybrian:
“ mattachinereview:
“  biyuti:
“  girljanitor:
“  dumbthingswhitepplsay:
“  popca:
“  dolgematki:
“  nativevoice:
“  “Stop sending expired food” ”fried chicken 64.99”
IQALUIT, Nunavut — A...

coelasquid:

dirtybrian:

thewitchylibrarian:

dirtybrian:

mattachinereview:

biyuti:

girljanitor:

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

popca:

dolgematki:

nativevoice:

“Stop sending expired food”….”fried chicken 64.99” 

IQALUIT, Nunavut — A head of cabbage for $20. Fifteen bucks for a small bag of apples.

A case of ginger ale: $82.

Fed up and frustrated by sky-high food prices and concerned over widespread hunger in their communities, thousands of Inuit have spent weeks posting pictures and price tags from their local grocery stores to a Facebook site called Feed My Family.

Holy hell.

WHAT IN THE FUCK? This shit is not okay.

ughhslfkajsdlf gross gross gross

64.99?????


These people are starving for a reason.

Conservationists

have been starving

these people

to death for years.

Reblogging for the extra articles. 

Also… I might show up to this protest and support them. 

Pay attention to this stuff, please, followers who haven’t heard about this!  This kind of thing is completely erased in news media.

This is really fucking important.

This is why I don’t respect anyone who blindly supports the anti-sealing protestors. Because for a lot of people, it’s the only affordable option.

It’s not just Iqaluit. In Nain, Labrador this problem has been going on for ages and nobody does anything about it. $47 for a ham and $17 for a block of cheese. In Rigolet, Labrador, a loaf of bread costs $7. Here’s another picture of an Iqaluit food price changing before your very eyes.

The NNCP is starving people, reducing their food choices, and keeping people on EI poor. This is so, so wrong.

How can we help? I joined the group and checked out the website, but I didn’t see anything that can be actively done (other than raising awareness, which, of course, is great).

Excellent question! If you read through the group (which is here, for anyone who missed it), there are people talking about some ways to help.

  • Look at the latest news on the Feeding My Family website to see what the priorities are and how you might be able to help.
  • If you’re Canadian, call your local MP and ask to discuss this issue and express your concern.
  • Look up ways to support putting pressure onto airlines to charge fair rates (a $1000 plane ticket should be from one coast to the other, not a few hundred miles).
  • Research and learn what you can about food sustainability. For a start, how about learning square foot/metre (French intensive) gardening or container gardening and starting to practice it yourself? Share these techniques with friends and family. Get good at it so you can teach them to others who have poor food security in your own area.
  • For the love of God, stop signing “anti-sealing”/”anti-hunting” petitions and supporting Greenpeace’s actions without understanding the complicated, nuanced situation in the North.
  • Watch the FB group, because people there mention direct donations and ways to help the organizations actually on the ground there.
  • For example, one person is starting up a donation project/fundraiser.
  • Look at what organizations like FoodShare are doing and support them.

There is so much to be done. Sharing news articles and stories, lists of resources, donation and fundraising pages, and knowledge about food security is critical, but there’s a lot more work of all sorts.

Things that (usually white) folks who consider themselves fair and educated and liberal in big southern cities say about hunting under the impression that they understand the situation in the North that never fail to make me bristle;

  • “I’m against seal hunting but it’s okay if they’re Inuit” Inuit are not the only Native group in Canada that traditionally hunts seals and to suggest only people registered with the government as Inuit should be able to hunt them is terribly racist and exclusionary to other nations that overlap many of the same territories, such as Dene (who have had a history of being excluded from legislation written to benefit Inuit, this was a big discussion that happened when Nunavut was formed) and some Cree bands, among others. That aside, even just suggesting that only native people with government treaty status should be allowed to hunt raises issues dating back to several decades ago when Canada had terribly racist and sexist laws on the books that stripped native women who married white men of their treaty status and banned their children from having their status recognized, as well as force natives who wanted to vote in federal elections to renounce their status. These laws were not amended until 1985 and people were allowed to reapply for treaty status, but the paperwork is a nightmare and many people didn’t bother. As a result, the North is full of people without treaty status who have just as much native heritage and were raised with as much of the culture as people who do, but nothing can really be done about it. As one of my friends put it “I’ve got the skin colour I just don’t have the number to go with it.” It’s a very complicated issue.
  • “Inuit who make seal clothing for themselves are okay, the problem is non-natives who buy seal products” Inuit and other native people are modern human beings with modern human interests and hobbies, they often sell goods to people outside of their communities to earn money for purchasing things they would like to own. The romantic idea people in cities get of Northerners living off the land to fulfill their every need is, frankly, false and patronizing as all get out. Yes, it’s true their priority is feeding and clothing their families, but in some communities selling goods to companies who deal in distributing authentic northern crafts is one of the only forms of infrastructure available, and dissuading the purchase of those goods by non-natives is harmful to their business. Just this whole “seal = bad” idea conservationists have pushed so hard has done irreparable damage to people’s livelihoods without really doing all that much good for the environment. At the very least, selling furs can allow hunters to break even on their hunting trips and raise the funds to continue hunting for food without losing money. It’s important to know where your skins are coming from and in many cases you can ask the retailer, but suggesting natives should not be able to sell merchandise outside of their communities is not the answer.
  • “If it’s so bad why don’t they just move somewhere with more jobs and cheaper produce” There are so many things wrong with this line of reasoning you could write a university thesis on how ignorant it is and if someone honestly asks this you basically know you can stop talking to them.

(via butttsoup)

zachafalse:
“ macklefloor:
“ 4gifs:
“ Meanwhile in Canada
”
i find it hilarious how this has gotten 10,000 notes here on tumblr because to me (and most people from montreal) this is an every day occurrence and I often wake up to this outside my...

zachafalse:

macklefloor:

4gifs:

Meanwhile in Canada

i find it hilarious how this has gotten 10,000 notes here on tumblr because to me (and most people from montreal) this is an every day occurrence and I often wake up to this outside my window and it amazes me in no way whatsoever

ITS LIKE A LITTLE SNAKE SPITTING OUT THE SNOW AND WHEN THE TRUCK LEAVES ITS LIKE OH NO BUT THEN THE OTHER ONE COMES AND ITS LIKE YEAAH

(via c-bloodmilk)

tealin:
“ It’s not a complete BC Ferries experience until you’ve seen a seagull trying to eat a starfish.
”

tealin:

It’s not a complete BC Ferries experience until you’ve seen a seagull trying to eat a starfish.

(via tealin)

turntechgaybutt:
“ fuckyeahashes:
“ fivetail:
“ This is completely accurate.
One time I was at a bus stop downtown and someone had spraypainted “I love my mother” onto the wall.
Beneath it, in tiny letters, was “she loves you too” in sharpie.
”
oh my...

turntechgaybutt:

fuckyeahashes:

fivetail:

This is completely accurate.

One time I was at a bus stop downtown and someone had spraypainted “I love my mother” onto the wall.

Beneath it, in tiny letters, was “she loves you too” in sharpie.

oh my god

God bless Canada

(via cupboardgods)

trapeze-swinger:

The lovely Sarah (Modmad) came to visit me! We went on all kinds of excellent Canadian adventures! I took her to some beautiful places on Vancouver Island, driving through some pretty hills, and to get poutine! 

Naturally it was the most fabulous two days of all.

So this was what I was doing

also poutine is disturbingly delicious when it has absolutely no right to be

I was confused

in a delighted way.

Also putting this in my art tag because Fiona is a masterpiece deal with it.

Just so you know

trapeze-swinger:

it is illegal to pretend to be a witch according to section 365 of the Canadian Criminal Code.

“Every one who fraudulently

(a) pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration,

(b) undertakes, for a consideration, to tell fortunes, or

© pretends from his skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have been stolen or lost may be found,

is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.”


Gosh darn those crafty science pretenders.

Just as well I’m legit.