Nature’s Way to Celebrate Canada Day

Canada Day is here! It’s time to celebrate by dressing in red and white, flying the flag from homes and balconies, and getting together (safely) with friends. In addition to all these traditions, let’s mark Canada Day with a twist by celebrating some of the wonders of Nature that call Canada home.

Canada is a vast, wild, rugged land with more than 7,000 species of native plants, animals, and fish. Spanning more than 4,500 km from the far north to the southern border, Canada takes up more than half the Northern Hemisphere. From its western Pacific to the eastern Atlantic shores, it’s 5,500 km wide—that’s six whole time zones. 

Ours is a country packed with peaks. Most of our mountains are in the western provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. Miles of trails and prime ski slopes make these ranges a must-see destination year-round. One of our most famous ski resorts is Whistler Blackcomb, and on Blloomigo Baby’s Hello Canada swaddle, you can see the two peaks, connected by the red gondola between them, not far from the western shores of BC.

Canada’s vast forests, remote ranges and beautiful seashores are home to some of Nature’s most impressive animals, including moose, caribou, elk, bald eagles, wolverines, beaver and Atlantic puffins. Many of these animals are dedicated parents. Over 25,000 grizzly bears call Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon home, with 15,000 of them alone in BC’s mountains and alpine meadows. Grizzly bears give birth to cubs (often two, sometimes as many as three or four) in the depths of their hibernation and nurture their cubs for as long as two to three years. Bald eagles mate for life and cooperate to raise eaglets in the same nest every year. And orca and other whales often live in multigenerational pods where relationships develop between animals over years and many miles of ocean migration.

Canada is also a land of freshwater lakes. The Atlas of Canada estimates that there are more than 31,000 lakes in Canada larger than three square kilometers. Of course, some of these lakes are very large, like the Great Lakes. Three of the five Great Lakes form a portion of the Canada-US border—these are Lake Superior, Lake Huron, and Lake Ontario. The spectacular Niagara and Horseshoe Falls are also landmark waters on the border. Canada is bordered by oceans to the north (Arctic), west (Pacific) and east (Atlantic and Labrador Sea). Within our borders lies Hudson Bay, the second-largest bay in the world after the Bay of Bengal, and the largest measured by shoreline miles alone.

Canadian waters are home to the largest percentage of the world population of the narwhal. Often called the “unicorn of the sea,” the single-tusked narwhal doesn’t migrate but instead lives in the icy waters north of Canada, Greenland, Russia and Norway. Many of them hibernate (for up to five months annually) in the ice underneath the Baffin Bay-Davis Strait area in northeastern Canada.

Canada’s Arctic is a special place. It’s one of the extremes of the world, with 24 hours of sunlight in the summer and 24 hours of darkness in the fall. It’s also prime viewing territory for the Northern Lights (which you can see on the swaddle in the far northwest). These displays of the aurora borealis light the sky in shades of blue, green, and other colors. They are the result of interactions between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field and they can be more intense after storm activity on the sun. Much of the land in this frozen north is tundra and pack ice, which breaks up for a short period of time each year. Looking northeast on the swaddle, you can see an impressive iceberg, which can form from pack ice drifting to open water or can be calved from one of Canada’s glaciers where it meets the sea.

Nature gives Canada one of our most recognizable symbols: the maple leaf. The symbol on our flag is a red maple leaf, one of 10 different species of maple trees that grow within Canadian borders. It has been a symbol of Canada since the 1700s. It’s also the source of one of Nature’s sweetest gifts, maple syrup. Made from sugar maple, red maple or black maple sap, Canadian maple syrup ends up on tables across the world: our country exports over 70% of the world’s maple products.

Though Canada is home to so much of Nature’s beauty, it’s also a place of human culture and civilization. From the Haida Gwaii archipelago in the Pacific northwest to the Inuksuk stone towers of the Nunavut territory to the Toronto Tower, Canada is marked by the signs of its human inhabitants through the ages.

Are you welcoming a new Canadian to the world? Our Hello Canada baby swaddle is a sweet way to celebrate all the heritage and natural wonders of Canada.

Here’s wishing you and yours a happy Canada Day!