I was born in New Brunswick and educated in Ontario where I still live. Two of our three sons live in Ontario; our third lives in British Columbia. My husband and I have traversed most of this bountiful land from east to west, but not yet north although it urgently beckons before it’s too late.
The two extreme sides of Canada, Haida Gwaii in the Pacific Ocean, and Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, are also high on our radar screen to explore.
On Prince Edward Island, the home of Anne of Green Gables, we ate a fresh lobster dinner on wooden picnic tables in a large dining hall with a crowd of bib-wearing customers, all digging into the mouth-watering crustacean dressed with melted butter.
In the Gaspé Peninsula we dined on French Canadian pea soup. You know, the divine version simmered with a ham bone. In Québec’s largest city, we searched far and wide to find the perfect mountain of thinly-sliced, mustard-laced Montreal smoked meat piled high on rye -- and we did.
I remember skating on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, not realizing then this ice would evolve into the longest skating rink in the world. As a student in our capital city, my friends and I would occasionally wander into the House of Commons in session, never dreaming that democratic right would be jeopardized in the future. I attended Lisgar Collegiate on The Driveway in Ottawa where famous alumni like actor Lorne Greene, former Governor General Adrienne (Poy) Clarkson, impersonator Rich Little and other illustrious Canadians walked these same halls.
The two extreme sides of Canada, Haida Gwaii in the Pacific Ocean, and Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, are also high on our radar screen to explore.
On Prince Edward Island, the home of Anne of Green Gables, we ate a fresh lobster dinner on wooden picnic tables in a large dining hall with a crowd of bib-wearing customers, all digging into the mouth-watering crustacean dressed with melted butter.
In the Gaspé Peninsula we dined on French Canadian pea soup. You know, the divine version simmered with a ham bone. In Québec’s largest city, we searched far and wide to find the perfect mountain of thinly-sliced, mustard-laced Montreal smoked meat piled high on rye -- and we did.
I remember skating on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, not realizing then this ice would evolve into the longest skating rink in the world. As a student in our capital city, my friends and I would occasionally wander into the House of Commons in session, never dreaming that democratic right would be jeopardized in the future. I attended Lisgar Collegiate on The Driveway in Ottawa where famous alumni like actor Lorne Greene, former Governor General Adrienne (Poy) Clarkson, impersonator Rich Little and other illustrious Canadians walked these same halls.
During an icy winter night in Jasper we watched silent caribou, their magnificent antlers coated in frost, stealthily glide along slippery streets like ghosts in a dark dream.
On the west coast we dined on Pacific wild salmon and kayaked around the gulf islands. In the interior town of Smithers, we saw a mother black bear with her cubs, resembling popular plush toys, amble into the bush on the side of the Hudson Bay Mountain range.
On a drive across the Canadian Prairies, we experienced a haunted hotel and old saloon near Wayne, Alberta, where we believed a ghostly outline in an oldtimer’s photo was real.
Although we travel extensively in foreign lands and enjoy wonderful and sometimes hair-raising adventures, I know I belong to this imperfect land: this country that needs ongoing repairs and healing from terrible wounds….
I am proudly Canadian.
I am proudly Canadian.
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