Ep. 9: Happy Canada Day / To James Bay and the Arctic Ocean

Welcome to episode 9 for the week of June 29th, or better known as the week of Canada Day.

This is my 24th Canada Day as a Canadian citizen, 33rd since I came to the rocky shores of Newfoundland, and the 8th since I moved to Finland for work.

People often ask me where "home" is. As I have expressed elsewhere, I tend to respond that home and I have a complicated relationship. But in truth, where home is can be explained simply if I look at it purely from a country and geography perspective. If places were women, then Newfoundland would be my first true love, and with it, the country of Canada.

33 years later, I have a semblance of an answer as to why I chose Newfoundland and Canada became home so easily. When I came to Newfoundland, I was desperate for a home and a place of peace from an unsettled childhood. And despite finding that peace, my unsettled need to explore everything around me matches the very nature of Canada and Newfoundland. It is no wonder then that I feel most at home when I am staring through the churning, ice-laden seas of Newfoundland to lands I long to still explore.

Canada, for me, as it does for many people, brings to mind vistas of natural grandeur: the towering guardians of rock, windswept landscapes through which wide, untamed rivers tumble, or the sun-drenched plains of natural antiquity. It is not a peaceful vastness that lies before me. It is an enormity of sight, sound, smell, and touch, with a sense of grumbling awe, a wildness stirring underneath.

As a late 20th-century immigrant to this land, I suspect that it is no different than what our First Nations people felt when they wandered through the inhospitable tundras to find places of respite. It is a thread that connects them to all of us more recent explorers, though now we are all protected by modern conveniences.

As a country and a political entity, we are by no means perfect. Human selfishness and greed have sidelined and in many cases destroyed the lives of many of our First Nations. The same negative forces threaten how we treat a diverse nation now and into the future.

But despite all this, Newfoundland and Canada have given me both the sense of peace and the hunger to explore. Every Canada Day I wrestle with where we could be, but acknowledge the greatness that we are. I understand today, in order for us to be a true North strong and free, we must stand together, all of us, whether new or ancient. We are the guardians of that beautiful and awesome slumbering giant beneath our feet.

Our Canada, you are my home and native land.

For this Canada Day episode of 2025, I would like to take you on a journey exploring that vastness on a road that takes us through French and English history and through to the rich history of our native First Nations peoples. Indeed, this journey encompasses all of the goodness and the beauty of Canada, as well as the harms we have done and continue to do as a nation.

It is a journey that my friends and I undertook in 2008 based on journals I was keeping at the time. We drove from Montreal, where we were living, to James Bay in Northern Quebec. It is a road far less traveled.

The photos I took are available on my photo galleries and others on my Substack.

You may read these written travel journals as well on my Substack under Life and Travels.

Read Part 1: To James Bay and the Arctic Ocean

Read Part 2: Canoeing with elders under the grand dams of Hydro-Quebec

Thanks this week to my colleague Bartosz who introduced me to Whisper.cpp. For various reasons, typing has been difficult for me, and being able to transcribe these journals which have been hidden in a box would have been a challenge without this software.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca