Well, what do you know. Tall ships just ended, and here we have another reason to celebrate: it’s Canada Day!

Refreshing on my history here, Canada was officially formed in 1867, 141 years ago. The country initially consisted of a handful of provinces in eastern Canada. Over the years, the remaining provinces, and the territories, were added to the list. The most recent being the splitting off of Nunavut from Northwest Territories to become its own territory. This was in 1999.

Oh, the country has had its ups and downs. But that it has made it to this point says something, I dare say! :)

As today is a national holiday, there was much activity happening downtown. Public performances, walking tours, guided tours of heritage buildings, fireworks (!), etc.

I spent a few hours downtown today, enjoying the great weather and seeing what there was to see. Armed with my camera as usual, I got some pics of various happenings around town, shown below. Items of interest included a magic show at Centennial Square, street performers on seemingly every other block, children’s activities, and public performances at the legislature.

Parliament Lawn - West
Children's Chalk It Up
One of the Magicians

Good Turnout at Centennial Square
The Chikoro Marimba Band
Marimba Band's Crowd

Parliament Lawn - East
The inner harbour at mid-afternoon
The crowd and stage, at dusk

Fireworks
More Fireworks

Yes the dusk photos are lousy. I don’t have much practice at nighttime photos, something I should work on. And it was the first time I had shot fireworks, so those photos were kinda-sorta all right.

The harbour panorama is distorted in that the sidewalk at both ends actually forms a straight line. The photomerge feature of Photoshop CS3 had to distort the images (5 of them) a bit to get them together.

Well Canada, you’re looking good. Here’s to many more years for you yet!