Strange happenings in Canada

The weather is still warm here with the nights even staying pleasantly mild.  More importantly my garage door opener is working which is more than Canadians living within 25 miles of the US Embassy could say earlier in November.  This story from CBC Ottawa provides the details.

Hundreds of automatic garage doors in the Ottawa area have suddenly and strangely stopped working, due to a powerful radio signal that appears to be interfering with their remote controls.

Angolan Ambassador Miguel Puna couldn't close the embassy's iron gates using his remote control Thursday.

Angolan Ambassador Miguel Puna couldn't close the embassy's iron gates using his remote control Thursday.

The phenomenon began suddenly last weekend, J.P. Cleroux of Ram Overhead Door Systems said, adding that a strong signal was blocking garage door openers.

"It's affects a 25-mile radius. That's huge," said Cleroux.

It turns out that the signal is on a frequency that is only used by the US Military and garage door openers.  Perhaps it is a new strategy for urban warfare or taking over Canada finally.  We'll jam their garage doors open and they'll freeze to death in the harsh Canadian winter or at least their cars won't be able to start.  They'll have to start using their block heaters and that will overload the power grid which is already pretty shaky.  The good news also reported by CBC Ottawa is that the signal stopped as quickly as it started.

The powerful radio signal causing the problem stopped transmitting on Thursday afternoon, around the time CBC News contacted the U.S. Embassy to ask if it knew anything about it.

The embassy categorically denies that it had anything to do with it.

The signal was being transmitted at 390 megahertz, a U.S. military frequency used by the Pentagon's new Land Mobile Radio System. The same frequency is used by garage doors openers, which started to malfunction around the city about almost two weeks ago. A similar problem has popped up around military bases in the States.

I sure the Canadians believe the protestations of innocence from the US Embassy.  I  certainly hope this isn't the sign of another secret prison.   In other more recent Canadian news, artist Robert Bateman recently took part in the Toxic Nation project whose goal was to measure "volunteers for 88 harmful toxic chemicals, such as stain repellants, flame retardants, PCBs, lead, mercury and pesticides."

The article "I am Canadian and I am polluted" in today's Toronto Star goes on to say the following.

On average, 44 chemicals were found in each volunteer. Forty-eight toxic chemicals were found in my body, including 32 associated with cancer. The fact Toxic Nation found so many chemicals in all the volunteers should concern every Canadian, because it means that we're all polluted.

Pollution knows no boundaries, and overcomes even the greatest distances. The highest levels of mercury were found in one test volunteer — a First Nations Chief — from a remote village on the shores of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec.

I can't imagine the results would be less frightening if done on American volunteers.  According to Bateman, who did one of the first real prints that we ever purchased, he feels like a guinea pig.

Test results tell me I'm a guinea pig in a large-scale chemical experiment — only no one is monitoring the results and it is out of control. Many chemicals found in me persist for decades in the environment so I can only assume that my grandchildren will carry increasing levels of toxins.

I don't suppose anyone in Washington would be interested in these results.

 

Comments

[Sonia]

What a wonderful and breathtakingly view!

[garage door insulation]

Just wanted to take a moment to thank the author for their post, excellent info!

I had the same problem with my garage door in my old house. Hopefully I never need to do that again, what a PITA to fix it had been! But as bad as it had been to fix, it was worse not having a functioning garage door, I've never had to repair one prior to but it turns out that it is relatively straightforward to fix. And the components are readily available at most hardware shops or you are able to pick them up cheaply on the internet as well. It took less than two hours from begin to finish to get everything squared away and working again, and hey presto! functioning garage door!