Quebec City Walls

 Canada lacks castles in general. This is a fact we can all agree on. However, Quebec City does do a very fine job indeed of creating the feel of Europe with its stone wall around the Oldtown. While not truly a castle, it is still studded with towers and covered in cannons so I think it should be given a pass all the same.

 Believe it or not, there was a debate in the 50s about removing the wall, but luckily that idea fell to the wayside and since the 70s there has been a resurgence of pride in its maintenance. This section of the wall close to the parliament buildings was particularly striking in its evening lighting display.

 Given that the entirety of the Quebec City Oldtown is a UNESCO Heritage Site and that the few buildings that aren't historically fascinating are also jam-packed with delicious creperies, I more got the feeling that the wall was holding in the greatness and culture of the old city rather than its earlier purposes of keeping out the brits or the yanks.

Truly an incredible place to visit and highly recommended to one and all.

The Sunshine Coast on Horseback

 Although we've hardly talked about it yet, we spent a great week on the Sunshine Coast earlier this summer with my parents. We'd not had a chance to get up there ourselves before, so it was a great chance to explore a bit more of our own province. Kathryn is always keen to get on a horse anytime they are available in the country and we made a point of researching some stables in advance.

 We had a very pleasant and leisurely trail ride in some very fine sunshine up the side of a mountain and along a ridge. Despite one trail being a little thicker and unfriendly for horses and my horse bucking a bit at one point, we had a great ride without any mishaps.

 The view at the end of the ride was pretty spectacular, looking out over the rolling mountains and valleys of the west coast. Not too shabby at all given its only a few hours from Vancouver.

Telegraph Cove Highlight Reel

We've finished the basic cut of our Telegraph Cove highlights and rather than sit on it and noodle stabilization for another month or two I thought I'd get it uploaded and see how everyone likes it.

A few quick notes about it. The intro staccato shots were meant to be part of a more lengthy and fluid time lapse, but our trailcam was an unruly machine and this was the best we got out of it. We've since upgraded the firmware and its working properly, but if anyone is interested in getting one themselves, drop me a line and I'll help you avoid some of pitfalls we found with the damn things.

Also some of our shots are still a little shakier than I'd like, but given they were mostly shot through long telephoto lenses with shakey hands from the pitching deck of a boat and looking into ever-changing water, I will call any result a success :P

Sea Birds

 We've spent a few posts covering the mammals we saw in Telegraph Cove, but there was a nice little selection of sea birds to be enjoyed out there as well. They are typically rather skittish and much smaller than whales, so they can be trickier to get photos of, and while I certainly didn't get any for prints on the wall, there's a couple worth sharing. Starting off with this rhinoceros auklet, which gets its name in part from a little bump on the bill like a horn which isn't very prominent in this individual.

 We also saw a goodly number of common murres, which we had seen in the past when they weren't doing too well at all. These ones were quite healthy and active in the area. We have also seen these in England where they are known as common guillemots.

 And rounding out our set we have red-necked phalaropes which were standing and feeding on the kelp beds far out at sea. It felt very odd seeing little shorebirds walking around on the water several kilometers from shore, but they seemed to be doing quite well for themselves so clearly its a system that works.

Not quite as exciting as breaching whales, but all very nice in their own ways and easier to spot than a feeding humpback at the bottom of the sea.

East Coast Whales

 Rounding out our little Whale Week here, we quickly pop back to the Saint Lawrence for a few quick pictures of the whales we saw on the East Coast this summer. Starting off with biggest of the lot, Fin Whales are the second largest animals in the world (just shy of the Blue Whale which we were too early to see). They aren't as flashy as orcas or as acrobatic as humpbacks, but they are enormous and breathtaking to see in real life. The little picture below really doesn't do them justice.

 Measuring in at a smaller 7m compared to the 20m of the Fin, the Minke Whale is another baleen whale common to the Saint Lawrence. They were often found in company of the Fins, and on our first morning out there was a sizeable mixed pod of both species feeding on plankton and small fish. Though they look similar in photos without context for scale, the Minke tends to hunch its back up more as seen below, compared to the submarine-style breaths of the fin.

 The most troublesome and elusive of the Tadoussac whales was certainly the Beluga. While we did see them on both of our outings, they were very shy and hard to predict. Though Kathryn got a few shakey video clips of them, I was totally unable to get anything useable. We've have constant access to them at the aquarium anyways, so of the three it was most acceptable to miss out on them, but it would have been nice to have a closer encouter given some stories I have heard of them in the region.

All in all, the whales of the east were just not as showy as the displays we had on the West Coast and we were certainly spoiled more by the kindness of our friends in Telegraph Cove than the more brusque guides we had in the Tadoussac area.

Humpback Whales

 Telegraph Cove is most famous for its Orcas, but truth be told I was more excited about the potential for Humpback Whales, having seen Orcas several times before. We had seen Humpbacks once at Ucluelet, but not very closely or carrying out very interesting behaviour. In our weekend out we saw Humpbacks every day split between 8 or more distinct individuals. The most common encounter is a simple breath, often accompanied by a fluke like the one below. This one passed right under our boat seconds after this dive.

 We also saw a few instances of lunge feeding, which occurs when the whale finds a sizeable ball of bait fish or something similar and charges at it with its mouth gaping in an effort to swallow as much as it can. This is pretty incredible and happens very fast for an animal of that size. In one instance we are still unsure if the whale in question accidentally swallowed a gull that had been attracted by the fish.

 Rounding out our humpback behaviour checklist, this particular animal was very active early in the morning and breached perhaps a dozen times with acrobatics varying from a full 360 degree turn in the air to a series of impressive leaps. We were both spoiled for camera opportunities here and got lots of pictures and video to round out our collection. The same animal was fin slapping the water afterwards and we could hear other splashes in the distant fog, so a few individuals could have been communicating or simply having fun.

All in all it was a spectacular series of sightings with one of the most impressive and acrobatic marine mammals we have ever had the pleasure to see.

Orcas

There were two types of whales in the Telegraph Cove area when we were up there. One was the Orca or Killer Whale (although they are technically dolphins and not whales, though the particulars of such categorization are somewhat lost to me) which we saw quite a few of on our first day out.

 The orcas are divided into 3 groups: transients which move around a lot and hunt marine mammals, residents which are more local and eat fish, and offshore which are the least understood and believed to eat sharks. Of the three, most of the animals we saw were residents although there were some transients in the area. This particular female was `porpoising` her way along, breaching repeatedly and in a hurry to get places. She was tricky to predict so while she was spectacular to see leaping, this was the best picture I was able to get.

 We did manage to get ridiculously close to them though as a pair passed directly under our boat while we were watching some other groups and spouted immediately after passing the boat. The shot below is actually not cropped in any way as I had a fairly telephoto lens on my camera and this one was perhaps 5 feet away from us.

We`ve seen orcas before and had some particularly incredible encouters already, but this was an incredible set of sightings to rival all the others we`ve had.

All Aboard the Gizmo

 This labor day long weekend we made our annual pilgrimage to Telegraph Cove to visit some friends from our 2010 safari. Rogers boat, the 'Gizmo,' has been completed since we were last there and he was a most gracious host to let us stay onboard and take us out on the water every day. As a co-owner of the Stubbs Island Whale Watching, he's very active in marine mammal education and research who leaps at any chance to get people out looking at whales.

 To say that the Gizmo is a fantastic boat is a gross understatement. Its got all the bells and whistles as Kathryn can show while grinning and relaxing in the spare bedroom. We were able to have adventures, cook meals and sleep incredibly comfortably for the whole weekend without really setting foot on shore.

 Gizmo can be controlled both in the cabin and from the observation deck on the roof. Here's Roger and Kathryn scouring the horizon for cetaceans from the top deck. Behind them is Gadjet, a small zodiac-style craft which can be lowered off the back via crane. There's also a few kayaks on the back for when you feel like kayaking. Did we mention this boat has a bit of everything?

Huge thanks once again to Roger for being such a great and patient host :)

Hybride

 For anyone that has never visited a vfx facility, they are typically identical to any other tedious desk-based workplace. Most of them are unremarkable buildings in semi-industrial areas with nondescript interiors and rows of computers in dark windowless rooms. Hybride in Piedmont kicked things off a little differently by being in a giant house. Since the town itself only has a few thousand inhabitants, the downtown and industrial areas are different from what you'd get in a bigger city, so they've grown in a single building, expanding as they needed.

 As a result of expansions over time, the interior was pretty neat too, with a veritable labyrinth of stairways and walkways running around a few large open atriums. In typical vfx house style the walls are covered with movie posters from past projects, the ratio of quality shows to shameful shows at most places seems to be around 1:3.

 And whats this? A dull windowless room full of computers? Well 2 out of 3 isn't bad I guess... While the rest of the facility from the kitchen to the grounds felt a little different from most other companies, at the end of the day it was nearly the same work environment as anywhere else.