Ghost horizons. Sunsets over impossible landscapes, the northern lights painting snow laden passages of the Trans-Canada green in Ontario’s vast western wilderness, that small town in Saskatchewan seemingly lost in time that the bus rolled into on that warm summer’s night, an old burger joint waiting to feed us, the residents wandering out on to their porches to take in the commotion.
Canada is all of these things to me and much more. It is Montreal’s proof that our national diversity is feasible, the old world beauty that saturates every pore when standing in awe of Quebec City’s cultural timelessness, the green-blue lakes of the interior that like glowing road signs represent the proximity of home. It is the light on the Prairies stretching forever at 11 o’clock at night in the middle of July, the mesmerizing hazes of Halifax, the ferocious hospitality of St. Johns, the quiet slow streets of Thunder Bay, the wind off the ocean in Victoria.
I have seen all of these things, and much more, countless times in my life. Coast to coast, mountain to field, from the Golden Horseshoe to the small towns littering South Western Ontario, from PEI to Prince George.
I will see them again. Perhaps you will become, or continue to be, a part of the story – the reason that I have spent my life traversing the enormity of this nation.
It is burned into my mind like nothing else ever will be. And when I am long gone perhaps a small part of me will remain in those fields and mountains, along those rivers and lakes, breathing slow and contemplative where the breakers crash at the gateways of oceans. Perhaps my spirit will rise and fall in the wind and you will smile in remembrance of what we together shared. And in doing so will look out over that which commands your view and realize that that is all that it ever took to find home.
February 8, 2009 49 Comments