Darth Hopper the Service Animal: Giant ducks and other things

Last Saturday was Canada's 150th birthday, that's really really old. The city had all sorts of events happening, but me and daddy stayed home. But that was okay, because the party went on until Monday. The first place we went to was to see a big boat, daddy says the type of boat is called a frigate, and is part of the Canadian Navy, it's also referred to as a ship... although I'm not sure what the difference is, they both float. The ships name was HMCS (Her Majesties Canadian Ship) Toronto. We couldn't get on board to see what was on deck, they had a rather tall set of stairs to get up there, so we stayed on the land and just took a couple of pictures, plus the lineup was very long.

The bow of the HMCS Toronto

While we were at the location where the Navy ship was, we got to watch a lumberjack show, it was kinda funny to watch.

Red Vs Green, we were on the red side.

After the lumberjack show we got in line to take a shuttle bus across to the other location where the rest of the festival was being held. It took nearly 45 minutes to go between the two places, it should have only taken 10 minutes.

Our tour guide/MC/ride supervisor started asking trivia questions to pass the time, I'll put a few of them in.
1) What is the largest city in Canada by population?
2) What is the largest province?
3) What is the national animal?
Daddy could see that the guy was running out of questions, so he pulled out some of his useless Canadian facts to help out.
1) What is the furthest northern permanent settlement in Canada?
2) What is that settlement used for?
3) What is the furthest non-military settlement in Canada? (that's a hint to our question 1).
4) What kind of plane do the RCAF Snowbirds fly?
5) Where was the AVRO Lancaster (a WW2 bomber) built?
6) Who was in command of the Canadian forces during the early years of the war of 1812?

I am happy to say we stumped almost everyone on most of those questions (I'll include the answers at the bottom of this blog).

Now, once we got to the other location for this festival, daddy had to go get money out of the bank so we could buy stuff (we didn't actually buy anything). This is the part where the giant duck comes in, the organizers decided to bring a big attraction to the harbourfront, it was in the form of a very big, very yellow, rubber duck. Daddy isn't sure of the exact measurements, but he figures it must have stood at least 4 or 5 stories tall. And of course daddy had to make dad jokes about it, like calling it Duckzilla, making references to movies, like "I think we're gonna need a bigger bathtub" (Jaws), or "Ducknado: the quackening" (Sharknado). I just wanted to hide after that first joke.

Yellow head could only be a giant rubber duck.

This is where daddy started with the duck jokes

Okay, now for the answers to those questions.

1) What is the largest city in Canada by population? A: Toronto
2) What is the largest province? A: Quebec
3) What is the national animal? A: The Beaver
4) What is the furthest northern permanent settlement in Canada? A: Alert
5) What is that settlement used for? A: The Dewline, an early warning RADAR station
6) What is the furthest non-military settlement in Canada? (that's a hint to our question 1). A: Tuktoyaktuk, NWT
7) What kind of plane do the RCAF Snowbirds fly? A: CT-114 Tutor jets made by Canadair
8) Where was the AVRO Lancaster (a WW2 bomber) built? AV ROE (later the E was dropped) the factory was at the Northeast corner of what is now Toronto Pearson International Airport.
9) Who was in command of the Canadian forces during the early years of the war of 1812? A: General Sir Issac Brock.

We also got some more Star Wars stuff.