150 Little Known Canada Facts #5

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25. An American may have invented the clam-infused tomato juice cocktail, but a Canadian perfected it and called it the “caesar.” Walter Chell took months to perfect this Canadian cocktail to celebrate the Calgary Inn’s (now Westin Calgary) new restaurant “Marco’s Italian.” He was inspired by his favourite dish called spaghetti vongole. Soon after the caesar was created, Mott’s Beverage Company started to market their Clamato beverage, and now over 350 million caesars are consumed in Canada each year. According to Michael Platt of the Calgary Sun, there was a clam juice cocktail recipe in a 1900 edition of Modern American Drinks, not to mention a 1951 edition of Betty Crocker Cookbook has a version of the tomato-clam drink.

26. According to Natural Resources Canada and Canadian Geographic, there have been approximately 49 volcanic eruptions in the past 10,000 years in BC and the Yukon, three of which have been explosive eruptions. Mount Meager located in southwestern BC erupted 2350 years ago, and its ash fallout can still be found as far as Alberta; the Tseax Cone, found in the Nass Valley in BC, erupted in the late 18^th century and is considered one of two catastrophic natural disasters in Canada. When it erupted it killed an estimated 2,000 people, destroyed two villages and left behind a 12 metre high lava bed, which remains a burial ground for those who died in the eruption. Most of Canada’s volcanic activity is underwater along the BC and Yukon coasts.

27. The Royal Canadian Mint is the world leader in coin making technology. It first opened in January of 1908, and Governor General Earl Grey started the machine to strike the Dominion’s first domestic currency—a fifty-cent piece. Up until that point, all currency was shipped over from England. Its manufacturing plant is in Winnipeg and it’s the most modern and innovative currency making plant in the world. In 2004, Canada was the first country to have a coloured coin in circulation (the poppy coin), and it befuddled American defense contractors; they believed that the protective coating on the coin hid a tiny surveillance camera. The Mint produces more than 52 billion coins for over 60 countries, and Barbados has the longest continuous contract.

28.Canada and the United States share the longest international border in the world, as well as the straightest international border in the world. From Vancouver in the west to Manitoba’s Lake of the Woods in the east, the Canadian-American border stretches in a straight line along the 49^th parallel. Except that it’s not actually straight. The maps show it as a straight line, but due to the primitive nature of surveying equipment at the time it was created, the border is actually more of a zigzag.

29.Only two countries in the world can list ice hockey as their most popular sport: Canada and Finland. Since hockey became an Olympic sport in 1920, Team Canada has won 13 gold medals, 5 silver and just 1 bronze. During the 1970s, Canada refused to participate in Olympic hockey games, as new international rules prohibited professional players from competing, which barred all our best players from the games.

30.The settlement of Alert, Nunavut was founded in the 1950s to act as a scientific research base, a military station and a way for Canada to prove its sovereignty over the extreme northern regions of North America. The average daily temperature of Alert during the summer months is only 3 degrees Celsius. In the winter, the daily high hovers around negative 32 degrees Celsius.