The Second Canadian (Re)Bus Tour Quiz

Answer: Saskatoon

Rebus solution: SAS + cat + a + toon = Saskatoon

Saskatoon, the second largest city in Saskatchewan, takes its name from the Cree word for a sweet red berry that grows wild in the prairie provinces - Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Nowadays, many market gardeners also cultivate the bushes, because Canadians have very sweet teeth and the red berries make delicious jams and jellies, pie fillings, and can be added to muffins and trail mix, too. The indigenous people used saskatoons in making pemmican, a mixture of suet, meat paste (the meat could be bison, antelope, rabbit, whatever) and saskatoons (or blueberries). The stuff would last for months and staved off hunger for both native people and fur traders.

The SAS (Special Air Service) is an elite British regiment first formed in 1941, disbanded in 1945, and re-established in 1946. The SAS was the model for all the other special forces in countries around the globe.

Roger Rabbit was a toon, of course, as was his luscious wife Jessica ("I'm not bad. Im just drawn that way.")

Answer: Burnaby

Rebus solution: Burn + abbey = Burnaby

Named for Robert Burnaby, surveyor and secretary to Sir Richard Moody, B.C.'s first land commissioner, Burnaby is an incorporated city that is part of the Greater Vancouver area on the lower mainland in British Columbia. It is home to almost one-quarter of a million people, a large number of whom work in Vancouver proper, which means that morning and evening rush hours are horrendous!

Answer: Edmonton

Rebus solution: Ed (Sullivan) + mon + ton = Edmonton.

Edmonton was named by John Peter Pruden, the Hudson's Bay Company factor from 1800-1837. John Peter hailed from Edmonton in Middlesex, England. The city is now home to 782,439 people and is the capital of Alberta.

The Beatles made their North American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show (CBS) on February 9, 1964. One could barely hear them singing over the screams of the pubescent females crammed into the auditorium!

Answer: Dawson City

Rebus solution: Daw + son + sit + E = Dawson City

Dawson City lies at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers in Yukon Territory. For centuries it was home to the Tr'ondex Hwech'in people, and then in 1896 gold was discovered on Bonanza Creek, resulting in the Klondike Gold Rush. Within a few months, the First Nations campsite was transformed into a bustling makeshift city with a population of 40,000. Dawson City was the capital of Yukon until 1952, when Whitehorse became the territorial capital. Famous names associated with Dawson City are writers Jack London and Pierre Berton (Berton's book 'Klondike' is the definitive history of the Gold Rush days), poet Robert Service ('The Cremation of Sam McGee')and Alexander Pantages, the man who opened a theatre in Dawson City at the height of the Gold Rush and went on to build a theatrical and movie empire across North America. By 1899 the gold rush was over. The present population of Dawson City is just over 1,000 and tourism is the economic mainstay of the region.

Trivia note: The permafrost on which Dawson City is built is melting and this is causing havoc with the city's infrastructure. You won't find too many Global Warming deniers in Yukon or anywhere else in the Canadian Arctic!

SETI is the acronym for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and the group has been seeking (in vain) to establish contact with other life forms in the universe for over fifty years.

Answer: St. John's

Rebus solution: St.+ John's = St. John's.

The capital of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's is the oldest English-speaking settlement in North America to hold city status. There are those who claim that the city got its name because John Cabot dropped anchor in St. John's harbour on the feast of St. John the Baptist, June 24, 1497. However, there's more fiction than fact in that because no one knows for sure precisely where John Cabot made landfall.

The nice thing about St. John's from the tourist's point of view is that when one is tired of walking around this picturesque city with its colourful buildings, one can just lean back against it since the city is practically perpendicular! If you visit St. John's, wear comfortable shoes and carry an English/Newfoundland dictionary since the Newfoundland accent is difficult to understand unless you've been listening to it for several years.

Since the collapse of the cod fishery. St. John's has bounced back and is now the centre of the oil and gas industry in Eastern Canada, with the vast Hibernia Field lying off-shore. It also boasts a thriving cultural life, and I swear that every other Canadian comedian and singing group hails from The Rock!

It was in St. John's in December 1901 that Guglielmo Marconi received the first transAtlantic wireless signal from his wireless station in Poldhu, Cornwall, and the city was also the take-off point for the first non-stop transAtlantic flight when John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown headed east on June 14, 1919 and landed 15 hours and 57 minutes later in a Connemara bog in Ireland.

Answer: Brandon

Rebus solution: Brand + on = Brandon.

Brandon is Manitoba's second largest city, and a major agricultural city (its nickname is the Wheat City). The Brandon Winter Fair is one of the foremost ag. exhibitions in Canada. Its university is renowned for its Faculty of Music.

Set in the rolling hills that rise on either side of the Assiniboine River, Brandon is a quiet city that gives the lie to the concept that the prairies are totally flat!

Answer: Whitehorse

Rebus solution: White + horse = Whitehorse

Whitehorse is the capital of Yukon, one of the three northern territories (the other two are the Northwest Territory and Nunavut). A mining and energy centre and the territorial capital, Whitehorse boasts a population of over 22,000 which makes it the largest city in the Arctic.

Whitehorse gets its name from the White Horse Rapids on the Yukon River (evidently the white foam of the rapids made people think of white horses, but that must have been people of European descent since there weren't many horses around when Whitehorse was one of the campsites used by the Takhini and K'wanlin Dun indigenous people, and its unlikely there are too many horses nowadays since the summers are so short and a snowmobile makes for easier transportation the rest of the year!) The rapids were covered over by the Schwatka Dam back in 1958.

The airport in Whitehorse is named for Erik Nielsen, brother of actor Leslie Nielsen. Erik was the MP for the Territory and a former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada. The Nielsen boys spent part of their growing-up years in Yukon Territory, where their father, an RCMP officer, was stationed.

Answer: New Westminster

Rebus solution: New + west + minster = New Westminster

Originally named Queensborough when it was founded in 1859, it was renamed New Westminster by Queen Victoria (don't ask me why she didn't like the name Queensborough). New West, as it is generally known by its inhabitants, is now part of the Greater Vancouver Area and is essentially a suburb of the larger city. It lies on the banks of the Fraser River and it was the first city in BC to be incorporated and to have an elected city council. During the Yukon Gold Rush, New Westminster was the jumping-off point for those sailing up the west coast to Alaska, intent on crossing the Chilkoot Pass in search of gold.

Answer: Fredericton

Rebus solution: Fred + a rick + tun = Fredericton

Fredericton is the capital of New Brunswick, one of the four Atlantic Provinces of Canada. The city stands on both banks of the St. John River, on land that was once farmed by the indigenous people, the Mi'kmaq and the Malaseet. Originally a French colony named Fort Naswaak, Fredericton fell into British hands in 1759. In 1783, Fredericton became a haven for United Empire Loyalists who fled there from the newly-formed United States. Today, the Loyalist cemetery on the south bank of the St. John River is a mecca for genealogists, hitorians, and tourists alike.

The Brits renamed Fort Nashwaak Frederick's Town, in honour of the second son of George III, Prince Frederick Augustus, the Duke of York. In 1785, the cumbersome Frederick's Town was shortened to Fredericton and has remained so ever since.

Answer: Iqaluit

Rebus solution: IQ + A + Lou (Costello) + IT = Iqaluit

We end our (Re)bus tour of Canada in the country's newest capital. Iqaluit (the name means 'place of many fish' in Inuktituk, one of the three official languages of Nunavut) is the capital of Nunavut (which means 'Our Land'), Canada's newest Territory.

Iqaluit is located on Baffin Island, at the head of Frobisher Bay. It has a population of 6,184 according to the 2006 census. Iqaluit was originally called Frobisher Bay, and Frobisher Bay was named for Sir Martin Frobisher who arrived there in 1576, believing it to be China!

Nunavut is rich in mineral resources, including gold and diamonds, and is also significant in underscoring Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic.