New Day for Black Bay: When you consider that Lake Superior holds 10 percent of the world’s fresh surface water, you know that it is water rich. But did you also know the Big Lake is wetlands poor, with the critical filtering areas covering less than 1 percent of its surface? “They are vastly more important than their apparent size, generating much of the energy fueling the system’s food web,” Sharon Moen of Minnesota Sea Grant wrote about the Lake’s rare wetlands. Today Nature Conservancy Canada and the Canadian government announced the conservancy’s largest conservation project to date on the Big Lake’s shore – purchase and protection of some 7,835 acres (3,170 hectares) along Black Bay. “The protected area includes more than 1,300 hectares (about 3,200 acres) of coastal wetlands and almost 1,900 hectares (about 4,700 acres) of coastal forest on both the Black Bay and the Nipigon Bay sides of the Black Bay Peninsula,” the NCC announced in a press release. In Thunder Bay this morning, John Lounds, president and CEO of the Nature Conservancy of Canada, joined with Patricia A. Hajdu, the Canadian minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour, and Eliza Mitchell and Camilla Dalglish, co-directors of the W. Garfield Weston Foundation, to announce the purchase of the new conservation area. They represent the three investment partners on the land purchase, the selling price of which is being kept private at the request of the two sellers, according to the NCC. The Environment and Climate Change Canada did kicked in $3 million for the land and to begin stewardship activities, biological inventories, assessing all the species and habitats on the properties, determining the health of them, including whether there are any invasive species that need to be removed, and developing an overall management plan for helping care for it. Besides the critical wetlands themselves, the areas are habitat for some intriguing species, according to the NCC. “These rich forests and wetlands support a variety of species, including olive-sided flycatcher (federally listed as threatened under Species at Risk Act), bald eagle, palm warbler, LeConte's sparrow, sandhill crane and American white pelican.” Black Bay also is home to one of the province’s rarest orchids – the bog adder’s-mouth. You can find some beautiful photos of the area by Costal Productions of Thunder Bay, plus an aerial video, online.
Turn on Your Yooperlite: A Bay Mills, Michigan, man with a black light on an Upper Peninsula beach made an enlightening discovery one June night – a
glowing rock on the Lake Superior shores. Then Erik Rinktamaki found more and more and sold them online. Soon he got a call from Michigan State University, which bought some of the rocks to study. MSU and the University of Saskatchewan both researched the rocks and agreed Erik had discovered a new rock species. He calls it "Yooperlite." Michigan State went with "syenite clasts containing flourescent sodalite." (You can guess which we prefer.) The discovery was made public in May this year, according to a CBS News report by Caitlin O'Kane. Erik has been giving Yooperlite tours (at $50 per person for 8 hours, they're booked through 2019) and continues to sell "Michigan's Newest Minerals" at Yooperlites.com.
Vote for Steve!: Boots, booze and bikes are among the competitors against Steve Christensen's amazing metal artwork, but the Superior artist/entrepreneur takes hope in the more than 3,300 views his artwork generated so far in the "Coolest Thing Made in Wisconsin" contest. We're encouraging you to vote for Steve because his metal Lake Superior and Compass Rose are among the featured works in our newly released gift guide. And because he's just a nice local guy who started his business back in 2011 after, as he says, he worked "a 100 jobs," from handyman to marketing. He currently is a part-time data base administrator for the University of Wisconsin-Superior, but his metal art business, Superior IRON-ARTz, has exploded. So now it's up to us: click here and then vote for Superior IRON-ARTz LCC - Great Lakes Metal Wall Art. You can vote every 24 hours through Sunday (Sept. 16) for this finalist round. The 16 top vote getters move on to the Manufacturing Madness round. We'd like to see Lake Superior as metal art in there duking it out. If you'd like to see our selection of Steve's large and small Lakes and compass roses, browse our Lake Superior Collection.
Uncovering History in the Backyard: When Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, resident Monique Carroll searched her new property to see how her dog escaped through the fence, she stumbled onto a memorial plaque that set her on a search to uncover the lives of two strangers, as reported by James Hopkin for SooToday. Monique's detective work eventually uncovered the story of Jan and Anna Czerwinski. Jan was a guard at the Polish prison camp at the beginning of World War II where Anna, a Seventh Day Adventist, was detained. "Slowly they would get to know each other," Monique eventually wrote in her retelling of the story. "During their time there Anna would teach Jan about God, and everything she knew. It wasn’t accepted but it happened, and before you knew it, and maybe as fate would have it, Jan would fall in love with Anna, and, too, become a follower of God." Monique found out even more, the full story as told on SooToday. The couple's ashes, as it turns out, likely are buried beneath the plaque, and the city's manager of cemeteries is investigating what to do next. For Monique, the discoveries of the Czerwinskis' lives and how they came to this country has been an intriguing project. “It’s been amazing finding out their journey, and the kind of life that they lived.”
In the Trenches: A replica of a World War I battle trench is quickly taking shape on U.S. 41 near Michigan Tech's Wadsworth Hall, and will officially open to the public Sept. 24, according to a story by Cyndi Perkins of Michigan Technological University in Houghton. The campus football team and others have been helping to building the trench. It’s part of a program to commemorate World War I, the Copper Country’s involvement and the centennial of the armistice, which ended the war Nov. 11, 1918. “We started planning two years ago, and the first thing I said was ‘I want to build a trench.’ I talked to the insurance people, building and grounds, and facilities, and we got the go-ahead,” says Sue Collins, professor of Humanities at Michigan Tech, who is quoted in a story by the Daily Mining Gazette’s Graham Jaehnig . The trench will remain open until Sunday, Nov. 11, Armistice Day, when there will be a closing ceremony.
A Moose, Live from Agate Beach: A video posted Monday by Beek Brothers Photography up in Grand Marais, Michigan, shows a moose strolling on Agate Beach (rock hunting?). The moose apparently swam across the harbor and didn't hang out long before heading up a river. This moose got shared nearly 3,000 shares since it was posted.
Photo & graphic credits: Nature Conservancy of Canada; Yooperlite; Konnie LeMay; SooToday; Michigan Tech; Beek Brothers Photography
Around the Circle This Week editor: Konnie LeMay