size

Allan, Cody and I drove up to Forks of the Credit provincial park, for a hike and supposedly to see foliage - but all the tree were completely bare! According to this post from the same park, almost exactly one year ago, there were plenty of colours this time last year. A function of the warmer autumn, perhaps? Fortunately, there are plenty of beautiful colours here in Port Credit.

We had a nice hike, though, and I'm (again) reminded that this is something I want to do more of. There are many reasons we haven't - we were in Peru in the spring, we hide from the heat in the summer, I've been exploring Toronto, writing deadlines - but I want this to be more than an annual tradition.

On the way up Highway 10, I was looking at the map of Ontario, noting how completely huge it is. (Cross-ref Arrogant Worms, I know. Although I can't find the lyrics with the famous phrase anywhere.) I was wondering about the relative sizes of the larger US states compared with the large Canadian provinces. If all the provinces and states were ranked by size, where would Ontario fit in? What about Texas, supposedly so huge? Would Alaska - which clearly should be part of Canada - seem as completely gigantic as it does now?

So here we are, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Wyoming - 253,348 square kilometres / 97,818 square miles
California - 410,000 / 158,402
Saskatchewan - 651,900 / 251,700
Alberta - 661,848 / 255,287
Texas - 695,622 / 268,581
Ontario - 1,076,395 / 415,598
Alaska - 1,717,854 / 570,380

Having visited Alaska - where you drive for an entire day and cover no distance at all on the map, where you visit the largest National Park in the U.S., which seems immense, but represents a fraction of nothing relative to the entire state - I fully appreciate its enormity. Alaska is two and a half times the size of Texas, and a full 20% of the size of the lower 48. If Alaska was the separate nation many Alaskans believe it to be, it would be the 19th largest country in the world.

But look! Ontario is not that much smaller. You could say Ontario is about a California smaller than Alaska.