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