Field Notes: Quiet Gratitude for Canada

Prefer to listen?
This Field Note was recorded on les Plaines d’Abraham in Québec City. You can listen below.

It’s been a while since I’ve written about Canada.

Perhaps that’s because the loudest stories have been happening elsewhere. Wars. Political upheaval. Families forced from their homes. Heat waves breaking records. Every day the headlines remind us that, for millions of people, stability is not something they can take for granted.

And then I look around.

This past week we complained about the heat. Here in Québec it reached thirty degrees and people searched for shade and air conditioning. At almost the same time, parts of Europe were enduring temperatures well into the forties. It reminded me that perspective matters. What feels difficult to us is often something someone else would gladly trade for.

Canada isn’t perfect. We have housing challenges. We argue about taxes, public policy, infrastructure, and projects like ALTO. We debate governments, elections, and the direction of the country. We should. Democracies are meant to have those conversations.

But underneath all of that, there is something remarkably steady.

If I become seriously ill, I can walk into a hospital knowing that my first concern will be my health, not whether I can afford the bill. Education remains within reach for ordinary families. I can write what I think. I can disagree with my government. I can vote. I can walk Buddy through my neighbourhood in the evening and feel safe.

These things become almost invisible when you’ve always had them.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t written about Canada in a while. Stability rarely demands our attention. It doesn’t shout. It simply allows us to live our lives. It gives us the freedom to worry about our gardens, our art projects, our families, our work, and what we might do next weekend. That kind of ordinary life is, in many parts of the world, an extraordinary privilege.

There is another reason I’ve been thinking about Canada lately.

Over the years I’ve crossed this country by train, by bus, by car, and by plane. I’ve watched the landscape change from rocky coastlines to prairie skies, from mountain passes to northern forests, from bustling cities to villages where people still wave as you pass. Every journey has reminded me how astonishingly beautiful this country is—not only because of its geography, but because of the people who call it home.

That, more than anything, is what Land & Lives is about.

It isn’t a project about monuments or famous places. It’s about ordinary Canadians. The farmer whose family has worked the same land for generations. The artist trying to keep a community connected. The café owner who knows everyone’s order. The newcomer building a new life. The retired teacher. The fisherman. The nurse. The musician. The volunteer.

Their stories are different, yet somehow they weave together into something larger than themselves.

A tapestry is made from thousands of individual threads. On their own they may seem fragile, but woven together they become remarkably strong.

Canada often feels like that to me.

We’re not always in agreement. We never have been. Today people talk about Alberta. Years ago the conversations centred on Québec. Every generation seems to have its own tensions and its own debates about identity and belonging. Yet somehow we keep stitching the edges back together. We keep talking. We keep negotiating what it means to share this enormous country.

I don’t think what holds Canada together is that we all think alike.

I think it’s that, beneath our disagreements, most of us still believe in certain common values: that people deserve dignity, that differences don’t have to become divisions, that public institutions matter, that neighbours should help one another, and that tomorrow can be a little better than today.

Perhaps patriotism isn’t believing your country is flawless.

Perhaps it’s recognizing both its shortcomings and its strengths, while choosing to care enough to help make it better.

That’s the Canada I recognize as I travel. Not a perfect country, but a patient one. A country still being built, conversation by conversation, community by community, generation by generation. A place where people, despite their disagreements, keep showing up for one another more often than not.

Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to telling these stories.

Every conversation I have, every portrait I make, every kilometre I travel is another thread in that tapestry. Land & Livesisn’t really about documenting Canada. It’s about paying attention to the people who quietly hold it together.

Today, that’s how I feel.

Not triumphant. Not blind to our problems. Just quietly grateful to live in a country where peace is ordinary enough that I can spend a summer afternoon writing, making photographs, or taking Buddy for a walk.

There are many places in the world where that ordinary day would feel like an impossible luxury.

Sometimes the greatest privilege isn’t living in a perfect country.

It’s living in one where there is still enough peace, enough freedom, and enough hope to imagine how it might become even better.