Most people outside of Canada just don't get how BIG this country is...and frankly, most people INSIDE Canada don't quite get how big it is. Or how small you can actually make it, if you're willing to spend the time and energy (usually in the forms of fossil fuels).
This isn't some touchy-feely thing about relationships and understanding...no, this is just about hard-ass miles on the road, the ice, slippery, badly maintained roads that connect my little slice of the world to the slightly larger slice called Saskatchewan. I have been on the road today, on that very same icy, slippery, badly maintained road, for over 7 hours, for the sole and only purpose of taking 7 boys to play a few games of basketball.
In almost any other place in the world (Australia might be the sole exception), this would be seen as absurd. Even in most other places in Canada, if you had 7 pee-wee aged boys to take play, and there were only going to be 4 other teams there...to be told you had to drive over 3 hours on bad roads would draw scorn and guffaws. But up here, it's a fact of life. It's just what's done. No fuss, no muss. And the kids themselves are used to it, thank god...think of you, in a van, with 7 young boys, for over 7 hours there and back. Sound like hell? It surprisingly wasn't.
Oh, and we came in 3rd. So, to paraphrase one of my kids, "Yeah, we did drive 4 hours to lose."
Giant Robots, feeling good despite it all.
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