Kana’ta Day 2022

June First. Canada Day. Or, as we are calling it Halifax this year, “Kana’ta Day” to acknowledge the discoverers of this country whose descendants made it their home for millennia before Europeans mastered ocean navigation and gunpowder. “Kana’ta” is an indigenous work for “village”, which European arrivals mistakenly thought was the name of the entire country. Still, when you stop to think about it, that seems appropriate on many levels. Despite its many imperfections and inequalities, this half-continent village of ours is relatively one of the freest, safest and most affluent places in the world to live, notwithstanding the carping and tantrums of the trumpkins among us who persist on using that freedom to take their “fifteen minutes of fame” in spite of inconveniencing everyone else.

But enough of the negative.  It’s summer and a time for rest and rejuvenation. This marks the start of my usual annual sabbatical. Four years and forty-five stories is a good time to pause and reflect. See you in September.

(Header image: The Canadian flag flies from the stern of the Uchuck 111 as it traverses Esperanza Inlet, British Columbia, Canada. (Ron Watts/All Canada Photos/Corbis) courtesy of Macleans online, 2016)