Provincial electoral district in Yukon, Canada
Faro was an electoral district that returned a member (known as an MLA) to the Legislative Assembly of the Yukon Territory in Canada between 1978 and 2002.[1] It was created out of the riding of Pelly River and encompassed the community of Faro. It was situated on the traditional territory of the Ross River Dena Council of the Kaska Dena.
The riding was dissolved in 2002 and amalgamated into the new riding of Pelly-Nisutlin, which includes the communities of Faro, Teslin, Ross River, and Little Salmon.
Faro is the former seat of Yukon Liberal leader Jim McLachlan and New Democrat Trevor Harding, who briefly served as interim leader of the Yukon New Democratic Party and interim Leader of the Official Opposition after his party's defeat in the 2000 territorial election.
YouTube Encyclopedic
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Canada & The United States (Bizarre Borders Part 2)
Canada and the United States share the longest,
straightest, possibly boringest border in
the world. But, look closer, and there's plenty
of bizarreness to be found.
While these sister nations get along fairly
well, they both want to make it really clear
whose side of the continent is whose. And
they've done this by carving a 20-foot wide
space along the border. All five and a half
thousand miles of it.
With the exception of the rare New England
town that predates national borders or the
odd airport that needed extending, this space
is the no-touching-zone between the countries
and they're super serious about keeping it
clear. It matters not if the no-touching-zone
runs through hundreds of miles of virtually
uninhabited Alaskan / Yukon wilderness. Those
border trees, will not stand.
Which might make you think this must be the
longest, straightest deforested place in the
world, but it isn't. Deforested: yes, but
straight? Not at all.
Sure it looks straight and on a map, and the
treaties establishing the line *say* it's
straight... but in the real world the official
border is 900 lines that zig-zags from the
horizontal by as much as several hundred feet.
How did this happen? Well, imagine you're
back in North America in the 1800s -- The
49th parallel (one of those horizontal lines
you see on a globe) has just been set as the
national boundary and it's your job to make
it real. You're handed a compass and a ball
of string and told to carefully mark off the
next 2/3rds of a continent. Don't mind that
uncharted wilderness in the way: just keep
the line straight.
Yeah.
Good luck.
With that.
The men who surveyed the land did the best
they could and built over 900 monuments. They're
in about as straight as you could expect a
pre-GPS civilization to make, but it's not
the kind of spherical / planar intersection
that would bring a mathematician joy.
Nonetheless these monuments define the border
and the no-touching-zone plays connect-the-dots
with them.
Oh, and while there are about 900 markers
along this section of the border, there are
about 8,000 in total that define the shape
of the nations.
Despite this massive project Canada and the
United States still have disputed territory.
There is a series of islands in the Atlantic
that the United States claims are part of
Maine and Canada claims are part of New Brunswick.
Canada, assuming the islands are hers built
a lighthouse on one of them, and the United
States, assuming the islands are hers pretends
the lighthouse doesn't exist.
It's not a huge problem as the argument is
mostly over tourists who want to see puffins
and fishermen who want to catch lobsters,
but let's hope the disagreement gets resolved
before someone finds oil under that lighthouse.
Even the non-disputed territory has a few
notably weird spots: such as this tick of
the border upward into Canada. Zoom in and
it gets stranger as the border isn't over
solid land but runs through a lake to cut
off a bit of Canada before diving back down
to the US.
This spot is home to about 100 Americans and
is a perfect example of how border irregularities
are born:
Back in 1783 when the victorious Americans
were negotiating with the British who controlled
what would one day be Canada, they needed
a map, and this map was the best available
at the time. While the East Coast looks pretty
good, the wester it goes the sparser it gets.
Under negotiation was the edge of what would
one day be Minnesota and Manitoba. But unfortunately,
that area was hidden underneath an inset on
the map, so the Americans and British were
bordering blind. Seriously.
They guessed that the border should start
from the northwestern part of this lake and
go in a horizontal line until it crossed the
Mississippi... somewhere.
But somewhere, turned out to be nowhere as
the mighty Mississippi stops short of that
line, which left the border vague until 35
years later when a second round of negotiations
established the aforementioned 49th parallel.
But there was still a problem as the lake
mentioned earlier was both higher, and less
circular than first though, putting its northwesterly
point here so the existing border had to jump
up to meet it and then drop straight down
to the 49th, awkwardly cutting off a bit of
Canada, before heading west across the remainder
of the continent.
Turns out you just can't draw a straight(-ish)
line for hundreds of miles without causing
a few more problems.
One of which was luckily spotted in advance:
Vancouver Island, which the 49th would have
sliced through, but both sides agreed that
would be dumb so the border swoops around
the island.
However, next door to Vancouver Island is
Point Roberts which went unnoticed as so today
the border blithey cuts across. It's a nice
little town, home to over 1,000 Americans,
but has only a primary school so its older
kids have to cross international borders four
times a day to go to school in their own state.
In a pleasing symetry, the East cost has the
exact opposite situation with a Canadian Island
whose only land route is a bridge to the United
States.
And these two aren't the only places where
each country contains a bit of the other:
there are several more, easily spotted in
sattelite photos by the no-touching zone.
Regardless of if the land in question is just
an uninhabited strip, in the middle of a lake,
in the middle of nowhere, the border between
these sister nations must remain clearly marked.
History
When partisan politics were first introduced to the Yukon, Faro was one of the territory's nine rural seats. Originally bordered by the ridings of Tatchun and Campbell, at the time of its dissolution it was bordered by the ridings of Mayo-Tatchun and Ross River-Southern Lakes.
Faro is the home of the Faro Mine, at one point the largest open pit lead–zinc mine in the world as well as a significant producer of silver and other natural resource ventures. At its peak in 1982, the community was home to 2,100 residents, but at the time of the riding's dissolution, the community of Faro was home to just 400 people. When the Faro Mine's operators announced the indefinite closure of the operation, the effect devastated the territorial economy, as it represented approximately 40% of territorial GDP.[2] Several corporations sought to restart the Faro Mine, but the final attempt, that of Anvil Range Mining Corporation, ceased in January 1998, followed by the bankruptcy of Anvil Range.
Faro continued to shrink in population as a community as the successive mining operations went under. In 2002, the Yukon Electoral District Boundaries Commission ruled that Faro's population had fallen far below acceptable levels to merit its own riding.[3] The riding of Faro was dissolved and the community of Faro joined the communities of Teslin, Ross River, and Little Salmon to form the new riding of Pelly-Nisutlin.
MLAs
Electoral results
2000 by-election
2000
1996
1992
1989
1985
1982
1978
References
- ^ Yukon Territory (1986). Revised Statutes of the Yukon, 1986: A Revision and Consolidation of the Statutes of the Legislature of the Yukon Territory : Proclaimed and Published Under Authority of the Revised Statutes Act. Vol. 1. Queen's Printer for the Yukon Territory. p. 75. Retrieved 2013-08-05.
- ^ Down and out in the Yukon Territory, New York Times, July 28, 1985. Retrieved 2017-01-05 frepubli
- ^ Final Report, 2002 Electoral District Boundaries Commission. Elections Yukon, 2002. Retrieved January 24, 2017.
- ^ Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of the Yukon on a By-election in Faro - November 27, 2000 Elections Yukon, 2000. Retrieved January 24, 2017
- ^ Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Yukon on the 2000 General Election Elections Yukon, 2000. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
- ^ Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Yukon on the 1996 General Election Elections Yukon, 1996. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
- ^ Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Yukon on the 1992 General Election Elections Yukon, 1992. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
- ^ Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Yukon on the 1989 General Election Elections Yukon, 1989. Retrieved January 21, 2017
- ^ Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Yukon on the 1985 General Election Elections Yukon, 1985. Retrieved January 21, 2017
- ^ Yukon Elections Board Report on the 1982 Election Elections Yukon, 1982. Retrieved January 21, 2017
- ^ Yukon Elections Board Report on the 1978 Election Elections Yukon, 1978. Retrieved January 21, 2017
External links
This page was last edited on 23 February 2024, at 17:02