Here is a poem I wrote on the occasion of Canada’s 150th birthday, initially inspired by the first line of Gwedolyn MacEwan’s Dark Pines Under Water….”This land like a mirror turns you inward”. What followed was four plus pages of notes about Canada and the notions of big-C and little-c country. I completed a version of the poem in time for a June 2017 Cobourg Poetry Workshop reading celebrating Canada and Canadian poets, but fiddled with it for another year while working on a collage setting for the poem, which is displayed below.
But let’s get to the fun! The many kinds of ice and snow we settlers care not to name….snow falling, snow on the ground, crystalline snow on the ground, snow used to make water, ice in general, freshwater ice for drinking, slushy ice by the sea, snow in which one sinks, what can become a house, a drift of hard snow that formed after a storm, skim ice, new ice, rime on plants, ice that breaks after its strength has been tested with a harpoon, ice that cracked and refroze then the tide changed, snow in large flakes, bloody snow, bright snow, dirty snow, deep snow, heavy wet snow, nasty snow, slippery snow, soft snow…..
This land is pink and undefended
on a map, though on the ground
one snowy frozen step
is very like the last, and you’ll find
no welcome mat.
Still, we’ll welcome you
(while winking at the killing
cold and winter
sun that will not rise
above a frown).
We slip with tipsy fervour
towards the US
borderline, smug
that Borealis has our backs,
cloaked snugly in the mythic
north, it’s keening wind,
its endless night, muskeg
sparse with blackened
spruce, tundra dense
with crazy-making bugs,
those fifty words for ice and snow
that we don’t know,
and always something farther
farther north.
Famous dark parka, we ever turn
our backs on your
creation, heedless of the grace
with which you’re weft
of land and water, bear,
and bird, anishinaabe
and innu, wisdom
and courage, the spirit gifts
of gichi manitou.
Mia Burrus
Nov 2018
We Call it Canada 
draft for a collage with Canada poem