Residents of Alberta and British Columbia were getting an early taste of summer yesterday, and for some it was the warmest May 5th they've had in nearly 70 years.

Southwestern British Columbia saw the highest temperatures overall, with Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Pemberton and Port Alberni (on Vancouver Island) all topping 30 degrees C, and Pemberton the highest at 32.5°. These were the warmest May 5th temperatures seen in Abbotsford and Chilliwack in 60 years. Other records were broken in White Rock, Whistler, Victoria and Nanaimo, and even the lowest of the record-breaking temperatures, 24.9° at Tofino, stands out because that's the warmest it's been on that day since 1944.

In Alberta, there were only two temperatures recorded that actually broke records — 28.0 degrees in Grande Prairie, beating 27.8° from 1990, and 26.1 degrees in Rocky Mountain House, topping the 1992 record of 25.7°. However, several other areas came very close, including Edmonton, which was only a degree and a half

Read More »from Sunny Sunday shatters temperature records in B.C. and Alberta

I woke up this morning and turned on my computer to see what the Canadian political world was talking about: Israeli attacks on Syria? Ontario's budget? The B.C. election?

Nope. They were talking about Justin Trudeau's cargo shorts.

On Monday morning, the new Liberal leader made an important announcement, via YouTube, about his party's impressive fundraising numbers. Oddly, everyone seems to be paying attention to his choice of clothing.

The National Post's headline was: "Justin Trudeau dons his best T-shirt and cargo shorts to announce Liberals easily pass $1-million in donations."

On his website, Liberal insider and Sun News political analyst Warren Kinsella wrote this:

Dude, yellow shorts? Seriously?

Sigh. If nothing else, I predict the 2015 election campaign will hang more on visuals more than any other in our nation’s proud history.

(Oh, and advisors? Advise. Don’t enable.)

Blogger BigCityLib's wife offered this — very good — analysis:

You want to counter the whole idea that Justin is the

Read More »from Justin Trudeau’s cargo shorts overshadow Liberal Party success story

May 6th is Music Monday 2013, and this year's celebration was out of this world as the Coalition for Music Education received some help from Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, aboard the International Space Station.

The theme for Music Monday, this time around, was ‘Filling the Skies with Music’, and starting at 12 noon, EDT, the Coalition had a live webcast — the first "Earth to Orbit Music Monday" — which linked up with Chris Hadfield aboard the ISS, so that he could lead hundreds of thousands of school children (and many more other people) in singing ISS — Is Someone Singing.

[ Related: Canadian space robots honoured on new $5 bill ]

The event was held simultaneously across the country — at 9 a.m. Pacific Time, 10 a.m. Mountain Time, 11 a.m. Central Time, 12 p.m. Eastern Time, 1 p.m. Atlantic Time and 1:30 p.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador.

If you missed it, or couldn't manage to tune in at the time, NASA has you covered, with this video they recorded:

[ More Geekquinox: NASA sees

Read More »from Music Monday: Chris Hadfield to sing along from space with Canadian schools

It appears that the First Nations Idle No More protests that dominated our headlines for months are finally over.

Has the conflict in fact ended or are we just in a period of lull?

The Macdonald-Laurier Institute — an Ottawa-based public policy think tank — has delved into that question with two excellent reports about the future of Aboriginal relations in Canada.

Th two reports, released last week, offer two very different scenarios

Scenario one includes federal and provincial governments collaborating with First Nation communities whereby the natural resource economy provides "the basis for shared prosperity." The authors — Brian Lee Crowley and Ken Coates — cite revenue-sharing agreements in British Columbia as a model for "Aboriginal empowerment."

The second report, by Queen's University professor Douglas Bland, is a little more alarming: Bland suggests that Canada faces the possibility of a "catastrophic" uprising by a new generation of Aboriginals frustrated, in part, by their

Read More »from The future of First Nations relations: peace or strife?

Halley's Comet always puts on an impressive show whenever it flies by the Earth. However, even though we have to wait 75 years between visits, it always gives us a yearly reminder in the form of the Eta Aquarid meteor shower, which peaks this weekend.

The Eta Aquarids occur every year, for about a month between April 19 and May 20, as Earth passes through the trail of debris left behind as Halley swings through the inner solar system. The tiny bits of ice, dust and rock that lie along its path hit our atmosphere and light up the night as they leave burning streaks across the sky.

[ More Geekquinox: NASA sees incredible twister explode from the Sun ]

The shower gets its name because the meteors appears to radiate out from a point near the star Eta Aquarii, which is one of the four stars that form the 'water jar' of the constellation Aquarius. The best time to watch the shower is around 3 a.m. local time and when the Sun comes up.

If you're in a good location, away from large cities and

Read More »from Halley’s Comet meteor shower peaks tonight

What is it about Canadians and big shiny new hockey rinks?

The sturm und drang over plans for a new arena complex in downtown Edmonton highlights our obsession with fancy sports palaces to house our national winter pastime.

According to the Edmonton Journal, the future of the $460-million project — more than $600 million when all the bells and whistles are included — is in doubt because of skepticism over funding.

A new report recommends city council green-light the project next week and deal later with an estimated $69-million shortfall in financing from other levels of government.

“It will be an unfortunate thing to do, but it might come to that, that we might not be able to proceed with the downtown arena,” Edmonton Coun. Amarjeet Sohi told the Journal.

“Not getting a commitment from the province at this time, up to the writing of the report, I don’t see how we will proceed with it.”

Edmonton needed $100 million from the Alberta government, the Journal reported. It got $55 million. It

Read More »from Proposed Edmonton arena still facing financial stumbling blocks

The Boeing X-51A 'Waverider'The Boeing X-51A, an experimental 'scramjet' missile for the U.S. Military, broke hypersonic speed records this week as it flew at Mach 5.1 for three and a half minutes.

The X-51A is nicknamed The Waverider, due to riding the shockwave of compressed air that it creates as it flies. Its scramjet engine is similar to a jet engine, but it can work at much high altitudes and much faster speeds. Jet engines are limited by altitude and speed because the air gets too thin and it's moving too quickly to properly ignite it. However, the scramjet is able to both slow the air down and compress it, so that it can concentrate and ignite the oxygen in the air, but then still force the air out the back of the engine at hypersonic speeds.

[ More Geekquinox: May the Fourth be with you! ]

The X-51A test took place on May 1, when the Waverider took just over six minutes to fly 230 nautical miles (425 kilometres), reaching speeds of over five times the speed of sound.

Although this test was conducted by the

Read More »from U.S. Military ‘scramjet’ breaks hypersonic speed record

Just two days after NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught an immense coronal mass ejection blast away from the Sun on Wednesday, it captured another spectacular event — an incredible solar eruption that looks like a twister on the surface of the Sun.

Unlike a twister on Earth, that forms from the clouds down, this formed from the surface up, with the intense plasma curling around on itself as it was thrown off by the powerful explosion. Astronomer Phil Plait, of the Bad Astronomy blog, gives a great explanation of the event.

[ More Geekquinox: Happy Star Wars Day! May the 4th be with you! ]

With the Sun possibly approaching a second peak in its 11-year cycle, we could be seeing many more events like this in the months to come, and it's great that we have the Solar Dynamics Observatory in orbit so that we don't miss the show.

(Video courtesy: Phil Plait/Bad Astronomer)

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Read More »from NASA satellite sees incredible twister explode from the Sun