I am Canadian

I recently bought the book  O Canada by Chicken Soup for the Soul. I found a few writers whom I know, members of The Word Guild, Canadian writers who are Christian.

Canadian writers identify what makes Canada their home and what they most value about their country. Heidi McLaughlin writes about her husband’s passion for basketball and about hosting the Junior Men’s Basketball Team while living in Edmonton. Elaine Ingalls Hogg, weary from conference days and just wanting to get home, learns from an immigrant how he looks f orward to calling Canada home. Rose McCormick Brandon, also a fellow writer, shares her experiences growing up on Manitoulin Island, and Judi Peers writes about The Rookie Card.

There’s more to read between these pages and I intend to read this book cover to cover, a little at a time. Maybe it will help me identify what I like best about Canada. What I know is that whenever I have been out of the country for a vacation, I enjoy the trip, and I’m also glad to get back home. Home, where some land is still wild and free, where we experience 4 seasons, and where we can still live, vote, and worship in relative freedom.

Michael Buble, a fellow Canadian who travels to perform, sings:

Another winter day has come
And gone away
In even Paris and Rome
And I wanna go home
Let me go home

Canada’s land stretches from sea to sea, “from Bonavista to Vancouver Island, from the Arctic Circle to the Great Lake waters“— a wide expanse of land, some of which I have travelled either by plane or by car. My grandparents, after they retired from the farm, took a train trip on the Canadian National Railway, subject of a poem in my book, Once Upon a Sandbox, as I imagined what they saw.

…chin on the window ledge

I watch curly-horned sheep whiz by

they dine on pastures bigger than any I’ve seen

– do they wonder at the monster that rushes by?

lakes nestle between folds of land

and mountains wear white hats even in summer…

Canada is home to  classical guitarist Liona Boyd; folksinger Gordon Lightfoot;  singer Michael Buble;  singer/songwriterAli Matthews; and yes, Justin Bieber, plus a host of others.  It boasts artist Emily Carr; poetess, E. Pauline Johnson; and prolific writer Pierre Berton. Many who have sung, written about, or painted Canada’s features or people.

What do you like best about Canada? I look forward to hearing from you.