Click below to listen to the narration:
in ottawa’s long shadow the banners rise and fall...parliament boils like a kettle...the whole country hears the call...voices cross the provinces...from harbour to prairie dawn...we stitch our flags with questions and hum the same old song...in the city square a mother keeps a lantern by the gate...she counts the names of promises that never came even late...trams clatter past the mural where the young men used to play...and someone pins a paper heart to keep the cold away...on prince edward’s shoreline whispers curl like smoke...a ledger and a ledgered name...a town that keeps its folk...they meet beneath the church bell to weigh the public trust...and gossip turns to reckonings where salt and conscience crust...down nova scotia lanes the blueberry bushes stand...a crate of foreign berries passed off as from our land...old hands who know the soil can tell the taste of truth...they trade their stories at the co op and barter back their youth...in manitoba a quiet fight for a single chosen name...a refugee walks a dead-end maze...the bureaucratic lane...neighbours bring a kettle...and the pastor brings a song...they teach the child to answer when the world has been so wrong...high in alberta’s pines the night grows thin and small...bats fold like secrets in the eaves of canyon wall...rangers mark the roosts with chalk and worry in their breath...they sing a lullaby for species that the highways might forget...up where the ice still listens...the northern roads complain...a schoolhouse needs a furnace and the ferry needs a crane...elders stitch the winter tales and children learn to mend...they keep the map of memory where the government’s plans will end...in a small town kitchen a father lights a lamp...he reads the label warnings and feels the evening’s damp...a neighbour brings a pie and sits to share his load...they hum the country’s chorus and walk the same long road...