Showing posts with label Canada. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canada. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Toronto Eaton Centre Canada

Toronto Eaton Centre Canada - Toronto Eaton Centre is a shopping center and office complex that was built with a spectacular gallery of glass high-rise located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Inside are more than 230 retailers, restaurants and services. Toronto Eaton Centre is located in the heart of the city. This place is not like shopping in general. You will get a pleasant shopping experience. Toronto Eaton Centre provides a variety of merchandise, ranging from household goods, jewelry, fashion, sporting goods, and much more.

If you visit Canada, you must visit this place. Not to complete it, if you have not visited the Toronto Eaton Centre. This place is a major shopping destination in Canada that provides a classy shopping experience. Toronto Eaton Centrem a shopping center occupied by international retailers unrivaled by other shopping venues in downtown Toronto. Toronto Eaton Centre into a unique destination that offers urban spirit, so that the main attraction for the visitors.

Toronto Eaton Centre Canada

Toronto Eaton Centre is located in the city center bounded by Yonge Streeton east, Queen Street West to the south, Dundas Street West to the north, and on the west by James Street and Trinity Square. The interior also form part of a network of underground pedestrian PATH Toronto, and the center is served by two subway stations Toronto: Queen Dundasand. The complex also contains three office buildings (at 20 Queen Street West, 250 Yonge Street and 1 Dundas Street West) and the Ryerson University Ted Rogers School of Management. In addition, the Eaton Centre Marriott hotel is connected to a 17-floor, and the biggest store in Canada, the main location of the Bay department store chain.

Eaton Centre on Boxing Day, showing the fibreglass sculpture Flight Stop by artist Michael Snow. Despite the controversy and criticisms, the centre was an immediate success, spawning many different shopping centres across Canada bearing the same brand name of Eaton. The mall's profits were said to be so lucrative that it has often been credited with keeping the troubled Eaton's chain afloat for another two decades before it finally succumbed to bankruptcy in 1999. Today, the Eaton Centre is one of North America's top shopping destinations, and is Toronto's most popular tourist attraction.

One of the most prominent sights in the shopping mall is the group of fibreglass Canada Geese hanging from the ceiling. This sculpture, named Flight Stop, is the work of artist Michael Snow. It was also the subject of an important intellectual property court ruling. One year, the management of the centre decided to decorate the geese with red ribbons for Christmas, without consulting Snow. Snow sued, arguing that the ribbons made his naturalistic work "ridiculous" and harmed his reputation as an artist, and in Snow v. The Eaton Centre Ltd., the court ruled that even though the Centre owned the sculpture, the ribbons had infringed Snow's moral rights. The ribbons were ordered removed.

The mall contains a wide selection of 230 stores and restaurants. The mall is served by two subway stations, Queenand Dundas, located at its southernmost and northernmost points respectively. With the demise of the Eaton's chain, the department store space at the north end of the mall is now occupied by Sears Canada, which is the chain's largest store in the world at about 817,850 square feet (75,981 m2), though they have converted the uppermost floors to corporate offices and the lowest floor was converted to mall space. Shortly after Sears' acquisition of Eaton's, the Timothy Eaton statue was moved from the Dundas Street entrance to the Royal Ontario Museum. The complex retains the Eaton Centre name, representing an ongoing tribute to Timothy Eatonand the small shop he once opened at this location.

In June 2010, a would-be shopper was filmed shouting at the locked doors of an entrance to the Eaton Centre, which was in the process of entering lockdown as the G-20 Summit street protests loomed nearby. The video quickly became an Internet meme, but was removed by the original poster shortly thereafter. However, the video has been re-uploaded hundreds of times by other users. Renovations, begun in 2010, helped attract new retailers to the mall, including Victoria's Secret, Juicy Couture, Mercatto, and Michael by Michael Kors.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Dinosaur Provincial Park Alberta Canada


Dinosaur Provincial Park Alberta Canada - This unique tourist destination which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Alberta, Canada. The park is renowned as one of the largest dinosaur fossil beds in the world, more than 350,000 tourists each year. Thirty-nine species of dinosaurs have been found in the park and more than 500 specimens were removed and exhibited in museums around the world.
Brief Description

In addition to its particularly beautiful scenery, Dinosaur Provincial Park – located at the heart of the province of Alberta's badlands – contains some of the most important fossil discoveries ever made from the 'Age of Reptiles', in particular about 35 species of dinosaur, dating back some 75 million years.
Dinosaur Provincial Park

Statement of Significance

Dinosaur Provincial Park contains some of the most important fossil specimens discovered from the "Age of Dinosaurs" period of Earth's history.  The property is unmatched in terms of the number and variety of high quality specimens, over 60 of which represent more than 45 genera and 14 families of dinosaurs, which date back 75-77 million years.  The park contains exceptional riparian habitat features as well as "badlands" of outstanding aesthetic value.

Criteria

Dinosaur Provincial Park is an outstanding example of major geological processes and fluvial erosion patterns in semi-arid steppes.  These "badlands" stretch along 24 kilometers of high quality and virtually undisturbed riparian habitat, presenting a landscape of stark, but exceptional natural beauty.

The property is outstanding in the number and variety of high quality specimens representing every known group of Cretaceous dinosaurs.  The diversity affords excellent opportunities for paleontology that is both comparative and chronological.  Over 300 specimens from the Oldman Formation in the park including more than 150 complete skeletons now reside in more than 30 major museums.

Long Description

Dinosaur Provincial Park - located at the heart of Alberta's badlands - contains some of the most important fossil discoveries ever made from the 'Age of Reptiles', in particular about 35 species of dinosaur, dating back some 75 million years. Dinosaur Provincial Park is located in the Dry Mixedgrass Subregion of the Grassland Natural Region. This is the warmest and driest subregion in Alberta. Permanent streams are relatively rare, although the ones that do exist are deeply carved into the bedrock in some places. This as exposed Cretaceous shales and sandstones, creating extensive badlands, the largest in Canada.

Great rivers that flowed here 75 million years ago left sand and mud deposits that make up the valley walls, hills and hoodoos of modern-day Dinosaur Provincial Park. About 15,000 years ago this area was flat and covered by an ice sheet some 600 m thick. During this ice age, glacial melt water carved steep-sided channels; ice crystals, wind and flowing water continued to shape the badlands. Today, water from prairie creeks and run-off continues to sculpt the landscape and expose bedrock.
During the late Cretaceous period, 75 million years ago, the landscape was very different. The climate was subtropical, with lush forests covering a coastal plain. Rivers flowed east, across the plain into the Bearpaw warm inland sea. The low swampy country was home to a variety of animals, including dinosaurs. The conditions were also perfect for the preservation of their bones as fossils. Between 1979 and 1991, a total of 23,347 fossil specimens were collected, including 300 dinosaur skeletons.

Geological strata of the Judith River formation have yielded many of the dinosaur remains for which the park is renowned. Some 35 species of over 34 genera of 12 families of dinosaurs have been found in the park, including specimens from every known group of dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period. The families Hadrasauridae, Ornithomimidae, Tyrannosauridae, Nodosauridae, Pachycephalosauridae and Ceratopsidae are best represented. Other fossil remains include fish, turtles, marsupials and amphibians.

About 6% of the park is occupied by significant and, for the most part, undisturbed riparian habitat shaped by the meandering channel of the Red Deer River and characterized by point bars, wide terraces, fans and cut banks.

The river terraces support lush and diverse vegetation in various successional stages, ranging from pioneer willow stands to structurally complex plains, cottonwood forest, tall shrub thickets, ephemeral wetlands and dense sagebrush flats. Plains cottonwood riparian communities are among the most threatened habitats in semi-arid regions. The 'badlands' provide habitat for a number of ecologically specialized plant species and are characterized by open vegetation dominated by plants of the genus Artemisia and the family Chenopodiaceae. Remnant and recently created grasslands occur on buttes and large pediments.

The mild winter microclimate, coupled with an abundant food supply, provides critical winter range for native ungulates such as pronghorn, mule deer and white-tailed deer. The relative richness and abundance of breeding avifauna is noteworthy. Over 150 species of bird have been recorded. The area supports a number of species locally threatened or at their biogeographic limits, including golden eagle, prairie falcon, ferruginous hawk, loggerhead shrike, merlin, sparrow and grasshopper sparrow. Plains spade-foot toad also occurs.

Source: UNESCO/CLT/WHC