April 1, 1999, marked the birth of a brand new Canadian territory - Nunavut. This is the first big change to our country's map since Newfoundland became part of Canada back in 1949.

To learn more, please visit the following site about Nunavut.

The tundra
The tundra is found throughout the world's circumpolar region north of the treeline (the northern limit of forests), where the ground is most often frozen for much of the year. This frozen ground is called permafrost. Tundra regions only get as much rainfall as most deserts (very little!). The fact that there is very little evaporation (it seldom gets warm enough) means that the soils stay wet through the summer. Then, when winter arrives, the water that seeped into the thin, thawed, top layer of the soil freezes again!

Pingos
Pingos are ice mountains - they are formed by ice "growing" upwards in the ground through expansion. They are often formed in the bottoms of lakes that have drained away. Pingos are found in the permafrost (land where the ground remains frozen year round) areas of the Arctic.

To see more examples of geographical terms check this School Net site at Natural Resources Canada.

The aurora borealis
The aurora borealis, or as it is more commonly known, the Northern Lights, is nature's very own fireworks display. Auroras are formed when excess energy from the sun hits our atmosphere. This collision of the atmosphere with the "solar wind" is transformed into light. Since the energy hitting our atmosphere is not constant, the light sent out by the aurora is not either. This explains why the aurora appears to move and dance all over the sky! The lights can be seen mostly on summer nights. You just have to keep looking northward each evening and hope to catch a glimpse. There is also an aurora in the southern hemisphere called the aurora australis. It is visible in the southern hemisphere during their summer, which is our northern winter.

For more information on the Northern Lights, refer to an article in Way North Magazine at the Tromso Museum site, or The Aurora Page, a site with information on everything concerning the Earth's atmosphere (and some amazing photos by Jane Curtis...such as the one shown here).