kate chapman

Dear Canada, I know my fortune. I know it in the morning when I step outside on Little Bay Islands and the whole harbour is still dark, with only a thin seam of light opening beyond the tickle. I know it when the cold comes off Notre Dame Bay and finds my face, and I can stand there in silence with a cup in my hand, looking out over a country so wide and various that no single life can ever take the full measure of it. I know it because I am free. That is the first and deepest thing. Before the mountains and forests, before the lakes and rivers, before the old saltbox houses and the cities lit up along the dark shore, there is that. I am free to live here. I am free to leave. I am free to stay. I am free to speak my mind, to keep my own counsel, to believe, to doubt, to vote, to work, to rest, to build a small life at the edge of the sea and not have to explain it to anyone. There are people in this world who wake each morning under fear. They measure their words before they speak them. They look over their shoulders. They carry history like a stone in the chest. They know what it means for the knock on the door to be a danger. They know what it means for the state to be larger than the soul. I do not live that way. I live in a country where a man can grow older and still become more himself. That may be the greatest freedom of all. Not just the freedom to move about, or to own things, or to say things, but the freedom to shape an honest life. The freedom to choose quiet over noise. The freedom to choose the margins over the center. The freedom to sit on a rock above the water and feel no need to hurry back to the world. Canada has given me that. It has given me the stone and spruce of Newfoundland, the long blue sweep of the Atlantic, the smell of woodsmoke in winter, and the sound of waves working all night against the shore. It has given others wheat fields under a huge prairie sky, Pacific rain on cedar, northern rivers running cold and clean, Quebec streets shining after snow, and lakes so large they look like inland seas. It has given us distances that humble us. It has given us weather that teaches patience. It has given us beauty that does not flatter, but steadies. And still, it has given us something more important than beauty. It has given us peace enough to notice beauty. That is no small inheritance. A person cannot fully admire a sunrise when he is afraid for his children. A person cannot stand in wonder before a mountain when hunger is at the door. A person cannot write, think, love, forgive, or begin again when every day is only survival. Canada is not perfect, and it would be childish to pretend it is. There are old wrongs here. There is loneliness here. There are people left out, people unheard, people still waiting for the promise of this country to reach them in full. But there is also room here to keep trying. That matters. A country worth loving is not a country without flaws. It is a country where the truth can still be spoken aloud. It is a country where mercy can still be argued for. It is a country where decency has not become an antique thing. It is a country where a neighbour can still knock on a door in a storm, where a stranger can still be treated as human, where a person can still believe tomorrow might be made better by the work of ordinary hands. I love Canada for its vastness, but I am most grateful for its room. Room to breathe. Room to grieve. Room to begin again. Room for the fisherman, the nurse, the teacher, the newcomer, the old woman in the small town, the child in the northern dark, the family starting over with two suitcases and a tired hope. Room for the one who wants the city, and room for the one who wants an empty harbour at first light. I have lived long enough to know that nothing good should be taken for granted. Not peace. Not freedom. Not clean water. Not a safe home. Not the right to speak. Not the privilege of standing in one’s own country and feeling that one belongs to it, and that it belongs, in some quiet way, to you. So, dear Canada, thank you. Thank you for the hard winters and the soft mornings. Thank you for the space between people and the kindness that crosses it. Thank you for the law, the languages, the land, the stubborn hope, and the imperfect mercy of a country still becoming itself. Out beyond my window, the first light has reached the water now. And I am grateful to be here. To be Canadian.