A NEW, UNDISCOVERED CANADA

A cross-country trip provided a brand new perspective on the beauty of the East Coast by Mark Lane, Calgary

Mark Lane

Growing G up in the Yukon during the 1960s and ’70s was an isolating experience. Physical mail was limited, black-and-white television was restricted to four hours per day, long-distance phone calls were prohibitively expensive and consumer goods, such as magazines, only showed up in Whitehorse well after they were available in other major cities throughout Canada.

Due to hindered transportation, logistics and not having a 24-hour news cycle, there were fewer resources for me to form a balanced view on the rest of Canada, other than what I was taught in elementary school. For reasons that I, as a young student, didn’t probe, these seemed to centre on the East Coast. I was taught sea shanties, told about the spectacular tides of the Bay of Fundy, read stories of Ontarians raking and burning leaves in the fall (a bizarre concept in the Yukon), and heard of faraway places with exotic names such as Charlottetown or the Plains of Abraham, which somehow were important to our country.