Youtube video

Check out a short video about the first week of the Brigade. It is linked to Youtube from the Brigade website:
www.2008ThompsonBrigade.com

From the David Thompson Brigade website you can also look at a map to see our progress. Our canoe is Paddle Canada 2, probably identified as #8 and zoom in if the #8 icon is hard to locate.
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Press coverage

Here is a link to an article written by the Calgary Herald writer who was on our canoe for three days:
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=ec070319-e060-4cb0-8f01-1b9fa7c601f2&p=4

In theory there should also be some photos and video as well on that site. And the front cover photo on the Edmonton paper yesterday showed our canoe on the left along with several others.
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The Crew, plus a few

In Duvernay and Elk Point Alberta we again had communities serve the entire Brigade a supper meal and breakfast. Tonight will be the first time after nine days of paddling that we will cook our own supper. Today we paddle a short distance, just 30 kilometers or so.

In Duvernay the sunset was coloured by the smoke of a bush and grass fire that wiped with the assistance of strong winds we had enjoyed using to sail down the river. It burned for two days until the winds settled down yesterday.

Both towns had fireworks and Ukrainian dancers and fiddle players. Many Brigade members including Richard from our crew showed their dancing talent. The PC2 crew is pictured with Robbie and David Bates of Paddle Canada #1. Today David Colpitts joins the crew as the Bow Waters crew depart.
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Sailing to Duvernay

It is another ideal day - spring leaves are turning, windy, sunny & warm, no bugs, the current pushes us at 5km/hr even when we stop for a snack. We covered about 75 km today, the last 10km we sailed along at over 10km/hr with the Shanagan crew

You can also check out the blog of Paddle Canada 1 by Eric Williams:
www.paddlecanada1..blogspot.com

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Leaving Ft. Saskatchewan

Today was the sixth day of our journey; we were up at 5 and away at 6:30. It is also the first day when the six people who will paddle the full distance were paddling together. The photo of us on shore shows, from stern to bow: Chris, Richard, Michel, Daryl, Steve and me.



The shores of the North Saskatchewan River from Rocky Mountain House were lined with four feet thick ice but before long we were dwarfed by tall sandstone cliffs. The fur traders of two hundred years ago might have stopped to take some of the beavers we saw along the way.



Yesterday we paddled through Edmonton - Google David Thompson Brigade and Edmonton and you will likely see a newspaper article - we made the front cover. We ended the day with yet another community celebration at Ft. Saskatchewan.



This morning we passed a few large industrial processing plants and at least four gas pipelines. The river lost some of it's character from further south but the wind was strong enough to allow the crew to sale the last few hours today.



The photo where we are stopped mid-river for a snack shows, from back to front: Chris, Richard, Michel, Daryl & Steve.



By the end of tomorrow we will have covered 500 km in just seven days.

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Day 3 crew change

Along the North Saskatchewa the brigade does a crew change.
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Spring Snow

Rocky Mountain House is blanketed with six inches of wet snow. We will start paddling Saturday morning no matter what the weather conditions and we are all sure there will be lots of challenges ahead.
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Snakes

Here I am at the Narcisse snake dens in Manitoba. - the home of tens of thousands of red-sided garter snakes, the largest concentration of snakes in the world. Dozens of male snakes wind themselves around a physically larger remale creating a rolling and twisting mass. There were easily a few hundred in total, but a picture of a hundred snakes isn't as cool as a video clip - maybe I will post that when I get home.

Earlier in the day I had a great time at the Ducks Unlimited HQ at Oak Hammock Marsh. There were hundreds of ducks around - many of them species I had never seen before.
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Hacking the grid

Read this article about some security consultants who used a little phishing email to take over SCADA control of an un-named electricity utility. The problem is said to be pervasive with in the power industry. Great.

Acceleration

Isn't it strange that we live in an era that has seen such a spectacular use of information and communication technology and yet it all sits on top of a comparatively archaic system of extracting and cracking hydrocarbon molecules? What do you think it is going to take to move away from the hydrocarbon economy?

Global hydrocarbon-released CO2 grew 3.1 percent per year between 2000 and 2006, more than twice the 1990's rate. I predict equal or greater growth for another 10-15 years. After that I imagine we will experience some unbelievable polar ice events. The industrialized world will have a collective "holly crap!" moment that will even produce a massive shift in U.S. and Canadian policy to drive solar, geothermal and other non-carbon-based power production and a renewed power distribution infrastructure. And then over an agonizingly slow period of 10-20 years, carbon consuming technologies (power plants and transportation systems) will be forced out of operation. I predict Canadian governments will fail to help companies develop core technologies and we will buy virtually everything from abroad and further hollow out the economy.

The Earth Policy Institute newsletters have periodic reports on this stuff worth reading. But it may scare the crap out of you. If it does, write a short letter (or an email if you are only somewhat alarmed) to every politician you can think of and tell them to show some leadership and backbone and to steer our society towards a consumption model that is sustainable for a century from now, not just another decade or two. If you have kids, do you think they will want to have kids?