This weekend for Canada Day we are driving to Winnipeg. Yup. Winnipeg. By car.

Whenever I tell this to someone, the answer is an incredulous ‘why?!’ (with a few exceptions among the very coolest people I know). The answer is because it’s gorgeous. From Sault Ste. Marie to Thunder Bay is one of the prettiest stretches of highway I’ve ever been on, if not the prettiest. I’ve posted some favourites from that stretch below.

My dad was talking to Tito last night about his family leaving El Salvador during the civil war. My dad summarized ‘So you left El Salvador when you were 10, spent a year in Guatamala and then came to Canada’. It’s not just a description of Tito’s journey, there is a tone of voice to the way he says ‘Canada’ There always is. Hope, optimism, aspiration, a sense of arrival and quiet pride all were present in that one word.

Happy Canada Day.