Following
Elizabeth and Billie’s progress across our vast country on my handy, ever
present Atlas, I find myself dreaming (as I often do) of further travel – this time
to traverse and to discover Canada. In the past year I have read several books
about the “conquest of the west” in both Canada and the USA. This phrase hides
the fact that the so-called “conquest” was actually an unstoppable usurpation of
the lands and resources of aboriginal peoples by our European forefathers (and
mothers), aided and abetted by governments and their militaries. Those who were
defeated by disease and by technologies unknown to them are now, thanks to our
developing collective conscience (as expressed through recent decisions by the
Supreme Court, for example) finding new leverage to control their own lands. I
applaud these decisions even if they do threaten in some ways the development
of Canadian resources as other sectors of our economy envision. The future will
see aboriginal peoples taking a significant role in arbitrations over land usage
and ecology, areas in which they have considerably greater sensitivities than
the business and political groups that have up until the present been able to
make our country an ecological offender.
I read
history in order to better understand what we humans are about and how we have
gotten to the places where we find ourselves today. Each book I read fills in
certain lacunae for me, giving me greater understanding of the ways that we
have changed as well as the ways that we stay the same. Several of the books
that I have read over the past couple of years, many of which I have mentioned in
my letters from Puerto Vallarta as well as in this blog, have concerned the
events of the last two centuries in Canada, the US, and in Mexico. Some were
non-fiction, like the excellent book by Sally Denton on the Meadow Mountain
massacre by the Mormons; others were fiction suffused by their historical
settings – notably those by Larry McMurtry and by Victor Villasenor. Sitting on
my balcony in Puerto Vallarta or in my living room in the Annex of Toronto, I
am spirited into another time and place and shown the ways that others have
lived, struggled, and died, creating through their lives and the lives of their
peoples, the world in which we now take our own part.
Now when I
examine my Atlas of North America, I spy familiar rivers and places which have
been noted in the histories I’ve been absorbing. I have some sense of the scope
of changes and developments in these places; I feel an affinity for them; I
have a desire to see them for myself and to explore their historically
preserved sites, places in which even a few years ago I might have shown no
interest. To travel in this manner especially in Canada and the US would have
to be a leisurely enterprise. I could envision a trip of about two months –
across Canada to the west and then back through the US. I have little appetite
for long periods spent in a car. But this kind of travel would have to be by
car if one is to truly visit places that now hold particular and personal
meaning. So leisurely it would have to be. Many logistical questions about work
and where we are living will have to be solved over the next few years before
we can manage a project of this complexity, but I trust that it will happen.
When I speak to Mark about ventures of this kind, his first thoughts are how he
would manage his work commitments; fairly soon, however, his imagination takes
him into the idea I’m exploring and his enthusiasm matches my own. So on we go,
travelling the world in body and in spirit, learning and marvelling along the
way.
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