“Home,” as the saying goes, “is where the heart is.” Tony Bennet may have left his heart in San Francisco, but pieces of my heart have been left in various places. I have lived in eight states, meeting a wide variety of people. There are places, too numerous to count, where I have wandered and been captivated by the people, the landscape, the environment, and culture. Culture, or if you will, the spirit (soul) of a place, shapes our lives and inspires us. We tend to take culture for granted as it lies beneath the surface, unseen as the air we breathe.

In their first years of marriage following the Second World War, my parents owned a surplus Army jeep. My mother was pregnant with me when they drove to Toronto. Obviously, I recall nothing of that trip, though there must have been something in the food and water that got into my fetal self. The second journey to Canada was more memorable. As a family, we spent a month traveling the eastern provinces. To say I found the people, sights, and the diverse layers and integration of European and Indigenous cultures inspiring would be an understatement.

We live our lives with the intent of direction, misdirection, and actual direction. I often looked back over my shoulder at Canada. During the Vietnam War, I considered following those who left the States for Canada. What prevented me? There was a sense of duty and obligation combined with an odd sense of apprehension.

The years passed. I moved to Michigan, where I attended seminary. I became rather ill with the flu. Weakened after recovering from the worst of it, my superior arranged for me to have a stay with a family to convalesce. Upon my arrival, I met Terri. The date was 10 March, the time was 4:10 p.m. Terri is surprised that I recall that date, but am incapable of remembering either her birthday or our wedding anniversary. As “fate” would have it, Terri’s ancestry is French Canadian, Trois-Rivières, Quebec, and Sandwich (now Windsor), Ontario.

The day before our wedding, the priest who was to preside over the rite was involved in an automobile accident. He called a friend, a priest from Windsor, who drove over the border to perform the ceremony.

Terri and I spent time in Toronto, staying in the university dorm, meeting with scholars, walking around the city, and soaking up Canadian culture. Our lives have been enriched by the CBC, both radio and television, and literature. Canada continued to be interwoven in our lives through the people we met. These included veterans who served in Vietnam, colleagues in business and academia, and volunteers whom I served with during hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. There was a group of Canadians that I would sing the Canadian national anthem to when I saw them during my rounds, though off-key, I am sorry to say. During the mad, chaotic rush of the Houston evacuation, they found me and presented me with a Canadian flag pin. I treasure that pin and the memory of them, their commitment to give aid during a national disaster, even though they could have chosen to ignore it as another nation’s problem.

Twelve years ago, the Canadian artists Terrill Welch and her husband David Colussi invited me to live in their home on Mayne Island, British Columbia, while they traveled through Europe. I lived there for three months. Terri joined me during the last week. For our 35^th wedding anniversary, Thomi Glover, an Anglican priest, presided over the renewal of our wedding vows in the island’s Japanese Garden.

One late afternoon, I was returning to the house. The ferry arrived from Victoria with off-islanders who owned vacation homes. I had grown accustomed to no traffic, but on this day, I had to wait for six or eight cars before making my turn. I mentioned (complained) about off-islander traffic to Joel and Amber Harvey the following afternoon. They laughed. “But you are an off-islander.”

The quiet and peacefulness of the island, the afternoon walks with Joel, the friendships that were budding with others, and those that came into full bloom, I carry in my heart. Through Terrill, I was introduced to the works of Canadian artists such as Tom Thompson, the Group of Seven, and Emily Carr. Another Canadian artist I became acquainted with was Roberta Murray from Alberta.

When returning to the States, I had difficulty adjusting to the pace, the endless rush, the noise, the absence of Canadian politeness, humility, and multiculturalism, and the more welcoming attitude towards immigrants who contribute to and enrich their society. Canadians, for the most part, neither wear their patriotism, and certainly, for the most part, nationalism, on their sleeves. Theirs is a quiet pride.

Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau once remarked about U.S.-Canadian relations, “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” In this Trumpian Age, we are witnessing the full effect of twitching and grunting. What we in the States will, regretfully, give little attention to are the things we culturally lose amid strained relations. Canadians have enriched our lives through their contributions to the arts and sciences. Those of us who live close to the U.S.-Canadian border have a greater appreciation of those cultural offerings because of access to the CBC and other networks, both radio and television broadcast.

We in the States should be long past behaving like an elephant and should be acting like a good, friendly neighbor. The existing, strained relationship in the Trumpian Age is of our making, and one rooted in ignorance.

Canada is imperfect. I have no illusions about human nature. The irrational shooting at the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia, that left six dead and twenty-five injured, and the attacks on synagogues by white nationalist extremists, the historical treatment of the Indigenous peoples, speak to our capacity for “evil” regardless of national identity. However, what I see in Canada, despite its flaws and problems, is a nation that cultivates a sense of interconnected villages. There are squabbles between the villages and among villagers, but there is also a sense of unity.

I am struck by the efforts of the federal and provincial governments and citizens to address and resolve issues with greater civility than in the States. Can we say, with any degree of truth, “United States” in today’s political climate? The Canadian sense of unity, a strong core belief in its Constitution for liberty and freedom, and the lower volume, generally more respectful discourse to address political issues, are examples that the citizens of the States could and should learn from as the country bends to the arc of tyranny and the degradation of its political institutions.

Perhaps it was something in the water, or the food my mother ate on my first Canadian journey in an Army jeep, that made me appreciate and relate to Canada and its culture. So, I say, with a slight variation of the Canadian national anthem,

O Canada, may God keep your land glorious and free!

Ô Canada, que Dieu garde votre terre glorieuse et libre !