Canada’s National Parks: Grandeur on Display

By Gorgo - Photo taken by author, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=334627 — Valley of the Ten Peaks and Moraine Lake, Banff National Park, Canada (Photo by Gorgo via Wikimedia Commons)

On this date in 1911, the world’s first national parks service was founded in Canada.

Here are some things you may not have known about national parks, especially those in Canada.

While the Canadians were the first to create a national parks service, the world’s first national park was Yellowstone, located mostly in the U.S. state of Wyoming. The U.S. created almost 40 national parks and monuments before creating an agency to oversee them in 1916.

The second national park created was Australia’s Royal National Park, which was founded south of Sydney in 1879.

The first national park in Canada was Banff, which was started as Rocky Mountain National Park in 1885. In the next 30 years, Canada established seven more national parks, only one of which, Ontario’s Thousand Islands, is located outside of British Columbia and Alberta.

The Canadian parks service was created in 1911 as the Dominion Parks Branch and was part of the Department of the Interior. It has since changed its name to the National Parks Branch, Parks Canada, Canadian Parks Service and then back to Parks Canada.

The agency is responsible for the management of 46 national parks, four marine conservation areas, 168 historic sites and one national landmark.

Our question: Where is the world’s largest national park located?

Today is Mother’s Day in Kyrgyzstan and Hepatitis Testing Day in the United States.

It’s unofficially Hummus Day, National Devil’s Food Cake Day and National Frog Jumping Jubilee Day.

It’s the birthday of civil rights leader Malcolm X, who was born in 1925; playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who was born in 1930 and professional wrestler Andre The Giant, who was born in 1945.

Because our topic happened before 1960, we’ll spin the wheel to pick a year at random.

This week in 1970, the top song in the U.S. was “American Woman” by The Guess Who.

The No. 1 movie was “Airport,” while the novel “Love Story” by Erich Segal topped the New York Times Bestsellers list.