I AM THE CANADIAN CONNECTION © David Watts 15 August 2003
I am the Canadian Connection.
I am the coming together that has manifested in the northern half of the North American continent and in all places where country is an expression of common humanity.
It is because of me that Canada exists. I am the spirit of outreach that called explorers
to a Northwest Passage. They knew the Earth was round but had no idea how big it was.
They set out for the east, and found a new western world. Instead of India they found a type of Indians who taught them to survive on a continent and to cohabit with a planet.
They come to trade, and stayed to build a country.
They came for tea, silks and spices. They found cod, fur and timber.
I am the spirit of those who canoed waterways and portaged the land with bands of steel.
They set out to span from sea to sea. They built a network that spans the world. The country where this began is now home to people from every continent.
This human bridge became a northwest passage between east and west, Europe and Asia.
I am the Canadian Connection. The country I shaped links three oceans, holds a tenth of Earth’s forests and her greatest reserves of fresh water. Its rivers flow in four directions.
It is home to the muskox and mountain sheep, cougar and caribou, lemming, loon and myriad others—species that migrate freely, as Earth’s people move beyond boundaries.
Kanata means simply “meeting place.” Like the primal Aum, it evokes realities too deep for words.
The single maple leaf with many points is a symbol of an emerging, evolving humanity.
I am the Canadian Connection. I am the global gathering that is manifesting world wide.
Though I have given my name to a country, I am not limited to that or any one country.
The time is coming when citizenship will be a state not of laws but of the spirit. Our sense of belonging will be our connectedness not to borders but to the biosphere.
In that spirit there will be no United States, for all states will be united.
There will be no Great Britain, for all peoples and countries will be great.
And there will be no one Canada, for all countries will be a meeting place.
I am the Canadian Connection. Whenever two or three gather in that spirit, I am among them: in classrooms and at campfires, on the road and at reunions, at forums and festivals
Along the streams, across a continent, around the world.
“Dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the Earth.” (2 min. 40 sec.)