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Ray was grew up in Richmond (near Vancouver) and I lived all over Saskatchewan in my first eleven years. This means we
have life experiences which, while parallel, are quintisentially different.
For
example, he was very young, visiting his grandparents in the Okanagan, when he almost killed himself by leaping out of a tree
more or less on his head. This was the first time he realized that, some places in the world, the ground is not soft peat
and little boys don't bounce or stick in when they hit the ground from 20 or 30 feet up.
Meanwhile,
back in Saskatchewan, I was learning that gumbo (mud) is serious stuff. Kids who will survive learn to treat it carefully.
The careless but lucky get pulled out of waist deep gunk by a team of adults with a rope. Or one adult and a pickup truck. This
may sound like fun, but it isn't.
The careless and unlucky? Who knows
what happens to THEM. Thus, some of us learn to respect the ground we walk on.
This photo is by Calypso Orchid at www.flickr.com. It happens to be of where my father grew up but looks just like where
Ray's mother grew up, hundreds of miles away. And it's not very different from where my mother grew up except she had trees.
Believe it or not, Saskatchwan is a beautiful place as are all the rest of the provinces. Manitoba may be the plain jane but
there are no doubt many who would dispute that. Alberta is much the same except for a strip of mountains which is pretty much
all you see in photos of Alberta.
BC is nice if you are attracted to vertical surfaces, Ontario and Quebec are proud of their seniority and see themselves
as the (somewhat dysfunctional and semi-divorced) parents of the younger provinces. The Maritimes are lovely but feel left
out. The north is cold and the people who live there are trying, with considerable success, to avoid the rest of us. That's
my view -- Canada, in a nutshell.
Like most people, I am am inclined to think Canada is one of the best places on earth to live but then I'm used to it. Can
Canada be fairly described as America Lite? Perhaps, but only if you've never been here.
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