Metchosin,

I live in Hinton, just 90 km from Jasper. Banff and Jasper are there for the tourist dollars, and what you say about the tourist areas is true.

Canada is vast. Vaster than even Canadians can understand. We have still got places where no one has gone--I don't mean areas measured in square miles, I mean areas measured in hundreds of square miles. People who leave the 'beaten paths' can likely and literally be assured that they have gone where no one has gone before.

How to explain . . . . Near Tall Cree Reserve there is a pelican nesting ground--imagine, pelicans in north central Alberta. Our country touches three oceans. We have areas that reach 120 F, and others that reach -60 F. We have desert, tundra, mountains of such beauty there are no words. Trees: yeah, we got lots. Ice, snow, yeah, we got lots. This place is home to about 20% of the world's fresh water. Travel the Mackenzie with its silt and rapids on its seemingly-endless journey to the Arctic Ocean. Try the Fraser--but watch for its ability to swat humans. We know so little about that kind of power.

Every year Canadians watch geese--millions of them--forming their vees for their annual migrations. Occasionally, a swan will get into the vee and go along with them. And every year we look at their departure as the real sing that winter is coming. We have a sneaking suspicion that the weather bureau does that, too. We have lakes that have swallowed big boats and their crews. Tides in the Bay of Fundy are over 25 feet. The Bay is where one of the largest Great Whites was netted. We have Greenland sharks in the Saguenay River near LaBaie, Quebec.

I have been to lakes in many provinces that are home to Northern pike--what most of us call jackfish. Lotsa bones, but one will feed a family of six, no problem. Canada is home to some remarkable creatures: polar bears that think little of a two-hundred mile swim; cougars that have to kill often during winter because their dentition is such that they cannot eat food after is freezes--they have no way to tear it. Wolverines--one of God's neater creatures. Mean as your ex and twice as nasty, but beautiful to see.

The Arctic ptarmigan (don't pronounce the p) that makes a good meal, but really is too beautiful to kill for less than survival purposes. Grouse that do a 'chicken dance', a dance that is imitated skillfully by First Nations people at pow-wows and other special events. The 'horse' with horns--moose--is the largest member of the deer family. One will give you enough meat to live for a half year. Other than rutting season during which the bulls become very unpredictable--well, maybe that's the wrong term. If a bull moose falls 'in love' with your Volkswagen, you have major problems. Get away from you car and let him have his way with it. There was a moose in Newfoundland that had to be tranquilized and hauled away because he had his eye on a certain moo-moo cow in a fellow's field. The bull would not leave. Eventually the people in the area took pity on him--fearing he would starve to death rather than desert his 'object of desire' and shot him with a tranquilizer dart and got him back into the bush.

The Laurentians are a mountain range that at one time were connected to the hills of Scotland. They are an old, weatherd range, but to see them in the fall when the various leaves on trees turn red, orange, yellow--it really gives meaning to the words of Jesse Winchester in his song, "Yankee Lady." ("I often walked down a country road, with a million flaming trees . . . ") He was talking about Vermont, but someone from there would see no difference were they to wake up in that part of Quebec and determine their location based on the fauna/flora that surrounded them.

I have often derided Saskatchewan because if you stand on a chair, you'll be able to see for at least a thousand miles. That is exaggeration of course. But, not a big exaggeration, as long as it's a normal-sized chair.

Mount Royal, around which the city of Montreal grew, is a dormant volcano. The Canadian Shield is miles and miles of--right--miles and miles. But it was such landscape that entranced the Group of Seven (and Tom Thompson); it inspired them to create a new form of painting that is distinctly Canadian. No one from northern Quebec, Ontario or Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta or British Columbia coud look at their paintings and not say, "Hey, I have been there."

The Maritimes in the east of Canada: WOW! Boys from parts of Burin Bay Arm (Placentia Bay) will think nothing of making a run to get the French stuff. Small boats, open ocean. Cheaper in St Pierre-Miquelon than on The Rock. The same people will tell you about the fellow whose body got caught under a bridge, and the divers who went to untangle his body had to get the eels out of him before they could rise him to the surface. They hate eels to this day. Those people introduced me to cod's head soup, cod cheeks, cod tongue, cracker berries, and even one fellow told me to ignore his friend who was pointing out schooners, trawlers, punts, dingie, etc., to a mainlander who knew little about the ships on the ocean or the ways of the sea. He put his arm across my shoulder and said, "Bruce, ignore that asshole. Them's boats." We all laughed. Fact is, them's people. And they are wonderful.

The watchman behind the Schooner Beer factory in Halifax found me sitting on the bow of the Bluenose II. He politely told me I shouldn't be there. I apologized and explained that I hadn't known it was a NO TRESPASSING area. He and I talked there for over half an hour, and he told me stories of Halifax and the Bluenose.

Unless you have seen a sunrise in Calgary--well, Kodac or Fuji don't make a film to capture all the colours.

This place is worth getting to know. I have been trying to for most of my life, and God willing, I will yet get to see Nahanni Falls, canoe from Fort Chipewyan to Winnipeg, walk the shores of Vancouver Island, and spend a day in Yukon--where a day can last for months. I am in love with this country and its people, proud of its attempts to make peace where it can.

The people tend not to brag of their exploits--and maybe that's part of the national character. Read sometime of the paratroopers who jumped into a blizzard in minus forty degree to rescue people whose plane had crashed in the Arctic. They all volunteered. When they arrived, the pilot had frozen to death. He had given his coat to a passenger who was injured. Two days before they were brought out. It made the papers for a short while and faded into history.

Indeed, as Metchosin says, get out of the car. I don't think you will be sorry you did. I know you won't be sorry you did.

Bruce M