Isn’t it wonderful! I mean after a world-wide contest to name the Seven Modern Wonders of the World, they’re now having a contest to name the Seven Natural Wonders of the World and you can enter too.

But before I explain about that and let you in on my own vote, let’s review the history leading up to all this.

The Ancient Seven Wonders of the World go back to the Greek historians Herodotus and Callimachus, who named the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Maussollos, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

Of these Seven Great Ancient Wonders, only the Pyramid complex at Giza, just outside Cario, remains. Sad.

So when they held a contest recently to name the Seven Modern Wonders of the World, the whole planet, so to speak, held its breath and this is what they came up with: the Christ the Redeemer Statue overlooking Rio dc Janerio, Brazil, the Colosseum in Rome, the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Taj Mahal at Agra, India, the Chichen Itza Temple (pyramid) in Yucatan, Mexico and the Giza Pramids at Cairo.

Oops, you must have noticed there are eight listed above because they decided to give the Egyptian pyramids “special status.”

Believe it or not, there is actually a very tenuous Cranbrook connection to all this. How tenuous? Well, it was in the way they chose the wonders, namely by voting and they allowed people to vote as often as they liked. (Good-bye Hockeyville) This caused quite a bit of controversy because in some cases national governments got in the act setting up special computerized voting stations (sound familiar) for people to vote 24/7. In other cases, tourist boards and local chambers of commerce did the same thing.

Be that as it may, we’re now into our new “wonder” contest which is to name the Seven Greatest Wonders of Nature or the natural world.Once again, it’s a world-wide contest with wide-open voting and not meant to be taken over-seriously. From thousands of entries a short list of 28 was eventually decided upon and that list has since been whittled down to seven with more than 100 million votes cast.

I’m not going to list all 28 here, but I’ll list just a few to give you a flavour of the natural wonders making the list: the Amazon Rainforest, the Great Barrier Reef, the Dead Sea, Table Mountain in South Africa, Angel Falls in Venezuela, the Matterhorn in Switzerland, Milford Sound in New Zealand, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the Grand Canyon and – we even made it – the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.

Now this got me to thinking; what would be my nomination for the greatest natural wonder of Canada. I’m sure the great tides in the Bay of Fundy are impressive, but are they more impressive than the Rocky Mountains? Or the Purcells or the Selkirks for that matter? What about Lake Louise only a few hours from Cranbrook or the Great Lakes on the Mighty St. Lawrence River?

Then I thought some more and decided to widen the parameters of the contest a bit and came up with my own nomination -- The Columbia River system, which of course includes the Kootenay River, before the #@!!&%!!#! dams were built. Scoff if you will, but even today the Columbia is the fourth biggest river in North America in volume of water and produces more hydro power than any river in the world and irrigates thousands of acres of fertile farmland in the U.S. and still has huge salmon runs — once the biggest in the world — but tragically not in the East Kootenay anymore because of the dams downstream.

When I was a kid growing up in Kinnaird, B.C. I used to watch the annual spring runoff with awe. If it got warm in late May or June, the Columbia would rise two feet-a-day for two weeks and that water never changed from a glacial blue no matter how much came down as it dragged huge trees and driftwood that made the golden, sand beaches of the Arrow Lakes look like an ocean coastline.

It was a wonder to me then, and it’s a wonder to me now, which is why I nominate it. But I can’t help but wonder — no pun intended — if any of you have nominations of your own for Canadian natural wonders. If you do, email them to me (gerry@dailytownsman.com) with an explanation if you like and I might publish them in this space. Perhaps we could make up our own Canadian Natural Wonders list.