Vancouver Rocks

Posted by
Filed in City
June 10, 2007

Got you. This ain't no post about how awesome our music scene is, although with Music Waste this weekend and Girl Talk last night, it can be argued that it does, in fact rock. Nope, it is actually about, well, rocks. You see, it all started about 4.5 billion years ago, that was when I was in highschool taking Geology 12. My teacher Mr. Milross, well he rocked, and ever since I've been fascinated with th physical environment. So the other day I was walking down near my house along Great Northern Way when I noticed a strange little outcropping of rock that looked quite out of place; it looked like basalt. So I went home and searched the series of tubes known as The Internets and this is what I found. It appears as though the outcrop is a volcanic intrusion known as a dyke. Siwash Rock in Stanley Park and Queen Elizabeth Park are both the result of these basaltic intrusions. Come to think of it, that kind of sounds like the name of a rock band. Ladies and Gentlemen, its the Basaltic Intrusions!

If you're a total nerd like me, you'll want to explore the site a bit. You'll find a high resolution GeoMap and a section called Geoscape Vancouver, which includes chapters on Living in the shadow of volcanoes, Sea to sky, The Fraser River delta, Earthquakes, Earth resources, Mountain corridors, Water underground, Mountain water, and When the Fraser floods, which is exactly what it is doing now.

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Where'd you go to high school? I also know of a science teacher named Mr Milross, and he also rocked. Btw, I love your blog!

Posted by: alex at June 10, 2007 8:14 PM | Quote Comment

That's pretty cool.

I took biology so never got Mr Milross although I hear his field trips to Crater Lake were lovely.

Posted by: Rebecca at June 10, 2007 9:26 PM | Quote Comment

Queen Elizabeth, and thanks. Oh, and a funny thing about Crater Lake: In grade 11 I was busted for smoking weed on a field trip to the Planetarium. Then a few weeks later Mr. Milross broke up a fight btwn me and some other student in the drafting class. So, when grade 12 geology came around he wasn't stoked on me, and b/c you had to sign up for the field trip early on, he said I couldn't go. But then the first unit test came and I got 100% on it, and he was all like, 'um, maybe you should go to Crater Lake, I think you'll get a lot out of it" and I was all like, "nah". So i never went.

Posted by: Sean Orr at June 10, 2007 11:42 PM | Quote Comment

that's awesome Sean! my dad's a geologist so whenever we drove past something like this as kids, we'd get the 20 minute explanation of what had happened in the last 20 million years. road trips were killer, but I didn't get to hear too much about Vancouver...

Posted by: degan at June 11, 2007 9:05 AM | Quote Comment

I am also a geography nerd, and I love it when it applies to my own neighbourhood... this is amazing! Thanks!
And, by the way, I had the most contagiously enthusiastic geography professor in first-year Geography, which was full of people who didn't want to be there... Dr Bovis. Amazing man. He'd be stoked on this too.

Posted by: Ezza at June 15, 2007 10:32 PM | Quote Comment