I have read that 90% of the population of Canada lives within 100 miles of the U S border. It’s not that anywhere further north is uninhabitable. We are about 150 miles north of the border. I don’t know who would have been compiling those statistics about droughts, lakes and rivers drying up, species dying off, and the general uninhabitable nature of our climate, in the 17th and 18th century. But all in all, we’re reasonably well off.
It was trappers and fur company traders and mapping expeditions into the wild. Just giving an idea how things can change for better or worse.
The worst weather conditions ever recorded in North America were in the 17th and 18th centuries and things were far worse than that in precolonial times. Droughts, floods, storms, you name it, we've had it pretty good for the last couple of centuries.
The 17th century was 1601 to 1700. The 18th century was 1701 to 1800. My question is valid. In what was to become Canada later on, who would have been around compiling such statistics? Trappers, fur traders, mapping expeditions? Not a lot of that kind of activity by anyone who might be amassing statistics, that early. I doubt Champlain made it out of Lower Canada (as the area was called at that time). And, um, what does this all have to do with the current weather.
Buffalo disappeared because of lakes and rivers drying up? Sorry. The original name for Regina, Saskatchewan (or Assiniboia as it was known then) was “Pile o’ Bones”. Buffalo were used by the indigenous for food and shelter. They took what they needed to survive. Records exist of buffalo herds requiring days to pass any given point, when they migrated. Then came the white man and the railroads. Buffalo were slaughtered by the millions, carcasses left to rot hides shipped away. Here is a picture taken at Pile o’ Bones during those days. Buffalo died out because of environmental factors? Hardly! This thread is no longer about “the weather in your area today”, so this will be my last comment on this particular matter.
