Canada

Summary

On Canada 28 Dec, 2025 I've been visiting the US a lot these days: for work, for conferences, and simply to see friends. Commensurately, I've been also thinking more about what Canadian culture is, and what being Canadian means to me. My gratitude towards my nation goes deep. Canada shaped me into person I am today, and I'd go far as to say that Canada raised me; not as much as my mother did, but perhaps more than any other entity. Growing up, our family was poor to the point where there were stretches of weeks where all we ate were frozen dumplings for lunch and cabbage and rice for dinner. But mom did her best to hide our lack from me, and Canada helped her greatly with the conspiracy. Canada gave us a rent-subsidized apartment and five hundred dollars a month to care for me until I turned eighteen. And that would be cause enough for gratitude, but Canada went further in its generosity. Canada taught me how to swim, and how to skate. Here, municipally-run community centres with ice rinks, pools, and programming rooms are standard civic infrastructure, and our neighbourhoods are dotted with them. The municipality runs regular classes and programming in the community centres, generally priced at a few hundred dollars for ten-week classes, but low-income families could register their children for a song. Mom ponied up for skates and bathing suits, and I swam in the summers and skated in the winters my entire childhood. And so when in my teens when my friends started to invite me over to their families' summer cottages, I could join them in jumping into lakes with glee. And so when an airbnb my university friends booked over the holidays one year turned out to be unexpectedly close to an outdoor rink, I was able to play in a terribly silly game of pick-up hockey. And so even though my body is clumsy and stupid by nature, there were kinds of physical activity that I had cultivated a decade of muscle memory in, and can make pleasing amounts of improvement on in adulthoo...