On Monday, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced a plan to protect a huge swath of boreal forest in the province’s north... I checked every online story of the event but I couldn’t find a single map of the area being considered. Very strange: Surely they would make this available with the press release.

I knew CTV had captured some video footage of McGuinty’s announcement which did show some maps as backdrops, so I managed to screen-capture them from a replay thereof on CTV’s website that featured the story. There were two maps: The first, entitled Protecting Ontario’s Boreal Forest, showed an area in dark green that I assume is supposed to represent Ontario’s boreal forest, except for the fact that actual maps of boreal forests extend them much further south. The second map was called Protected Boreal Forest, in light green — almost identical to the first, but not quite...

One difference lies in a section of dark-green directly underneath James Bay (on the eastern border with Quebec) that is not part of the light-green protected area. Another difference is that Akimiski Island in James Bay is shown as part of the protected area. That very interesting, if only because the island is not part of Ontario, but rather (like all islands in Hudson Bay) a part of the territory of Nunavut.