The friendship we share with the United States is the most important item that we do share. It is given freely and without cost. We are their friends now and forever. You can not live next door to a country and not be their friend. It doesn't work. It has not been tested in all the years that Canada has existed (other than the Fenian Raids into Canada in the 1880s) as a Country starting on that wonderful day on the 1st of July 1867. Four provinces came together to create the Dominion of Canada with their capital city at Ottawa which lies on the Ontario side of the Ottawa River north of Montreal (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Ontario although Prince Edward Island attended all the meetings they did not come into Confederation until 1873). Canada bought Rupert's Land from the the Hudson's Bay Company in 1870 for 1.5 million dollars. Rupert's Land is approximately 1/3 of Canada and was a huge real estate acquisition by a country just three years old. A small portion of it was below the 49th parallel which is the border between Canada and the United States from Lake of the Woods, Ontario to the Strait of Georgia in British Columbia. The Great Lakes form another shared boundary between the United States and Canada with Superior, Huron, Erie and Ontario being the shared lakes and Michigan is solely American. Fifty percent of Canadians live south of 45 degrees 42 minutes north with (principally southwestern Ontario and along Lake Ontario, Quebec south of the St Lawrence River, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). Canada is a huge country and a very wealthy country in terms of natural resources. We face three oceans - Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic. We share a border with Alaska (an American state) to the north west above British Columbia). Our friendship is important to us; personally I think it is more important than trade. We need to trade west to east and back again in Canada and restart some of our lost industries as we have become complacent letting ownership of so many industries go south during NAFTA. It is a good working relationship though and it was not to be expected that American manufacturers would ship their production off shore - that is really the crucial part in all of this. One has to maintain construction in one's own area and not always be looking to make the highest profits. What is more important is maintaining the working ability of your country.
Yesterday I completed the cleaning with a little left for today that gets extra special treatment. I will do that this morning. In the afternoon I worked away on the matches whilst the dogs slept on my bed. They like to be with me and that began when I spent a year or so living part time with them not long after I was widowed. It was a sharing of house time that worked to help my youngest grandson with his need for speech therapy in the city whilst they lived in the north.
Today more work on the matches and some cleaning but gradually I am extracting them. Generally in the past I would extract new matches every month and it is nearly five years now since I had time to do that. Work on the Siderfin book took up two years plus and I just didn't think about the matches. I came out of that fog in December 2023 and went to collect 23 and Me matches and discovered all that had happened to them in that time frame. I still have perhaps 50 matches for 23 and Me not yet worked into the Database! But the new matches I can just enjoy looking at them and who they match but I must admit with all the matches that I currently have I can tell more or less in many cases just where I (and my three siblings also tested there) match them.
It is minus 13 degrees celsius and there is a lunar eclipse coming up which shall be enjoyed. Probably not with the telescope in the middle of the night at these temperatures but visually with binoculars through the window. My days of being out in those cold temperatures are in the past likely. Sun and cloud are promised for today.
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