The Daily Feather — Canada’s Slippery Labor Slope

Mapping the boundary between the Canadian Icefields Parkway each year, mostly during the summer months to access the natural wonders, Arthur Oliver Wheeler represented British Columbia on the commission to mark the boundary with Alberta between 1913 and 1925. Using high-elevation photographs, his party surveyed and mapped the 1000 km-long mountain section. During the Great Depression, the Government of Canada transformed what was then known as the “Wonder Trail” into a single-track road. In 1931, construction began for the Icefields Parkway: a new road that would make the famous mountain path accessible to all. It took 600 men and nearly 10 years to complete the project. With only one tractor per crew, most of the work was completed by hand and with teams of horses. Since its completion in 1940, the Icefields Parkway has welcomed tourists, explorers, artists, mountaineers, allied armies and movie stars. Today, more than one million people travel the Icefields Parkway each year, mostly during the summer months, to experience one of the most accessible natural wonders, the Athabasca Glacier.

Glaciers aren’t the slipperiest of slopes in Canada these days. The Canadian unemployment cycle has reached an important inflection point. In October and November, the composition of the out-of-work tipped toward bad, and away from good, unemployment.