My Canada Project
The "My Canada" project was something I came up with during the 150th year of Canada's founding. It captures the thoughts, ideas and dreams of a variety of Canadians that are in my life or connected to people in my life.
Canada is a special country. I understand there are many nuances to celebrating a country, especially considering how many founding stories are covered in a veneer of hypocrisy. Certainly any story originating 100+ years ago likely carries the stench of racism, intolerance and more. In this, there are no perfect countries. However, for me, a country is not just what has come before but what we can make of it together in the future by learning from its past. Every Canadian has both the right and the obligation to change the country we leave to our descendents. I am proud, unlike many places in this world, that we have such freedoms to change Canada. This is the point of the "My Canada" Project, a look at our country in a point in time and the views of those in "My Canada" for the future.
A Canada Day Letter to my Godchild for her 25th Birthday
A letter to Rosalind born on the 150th anniversary of Canada looking towards her 25th birthday and our 175th anniversary.
June 28, 2017
Jeff: Embrace the diversity, flourish with the country
Jeff’s passion for friends and community has allowed me to vividly experience his immigrant journey in Canada: sometimes as a bystander, sometimes as a participant.
June 14, 2017
Joe: Canada — My Home Away from Home
Joseph Teo is one of the co-founders of HeyOrca. HeyOrca is a successful software startup out of my alma mater that I am happy to help by advising Joe.
June 1, 2017
Phil: Watch out for bears; they are cunning
Phil Veale is a software developer extraordinaire, UK transplant and a man of immense cynical and sarcastic wit.
May 24, 2017
Boris: Give back to this society!
A startup entrepreneur and now investor, Boris Wertz has backed some of the best Canadian startups through Version One Ventures.
May 9, 2017
Derek: Get serious about driving innovative entrepreneurialism
Focused, smart and one of Canada's best exports now living and working with tech people in the United States
May 1, 2017
Sarah: Let’s tear up the Indian Act!
From St. Johns, NL to Bella Bella, BC, Sarah Norris has definitely lived on the east/west extremes of our country.
April 17, 2017
Stephen: Pristine and chaos all in one
Stephen Wild is a photographer extraordinaire in Kingston, Ontario. Stephen is always happy to entertain you with a smile while teaching the hordes of photography students.
April 7, 2017
Niketh: Resist provincialism. Think like a globalist, live like localist.
Niketh Pareek is almost the definition of multi-culturalism. A Canadian of Indian heritage who grew up in Kuwait, lives in Montreal, Quebec and is married to a Canadian of Korean heritage.
March 1, 2017
Sylvia: Change, but don't. Hug a tree.
Sylvia Warkentin is the second of the Warkentin family in the series and travelled almost 'coast to coast to coast'
February 20, 2017
Rebecca: Let’s fix the education system
Rebecca MacDonald is a tour de force. Rebecca impresses upon her friends the urgency of looking at the “here and now”
February 13, 2017
Ted: Canada as the Europe of North America
Theodore Grenfell Bonnah, a Labrador Metis living in Kyoto, Japan, who has travelled the world and brought Newfoundland and Labrador to the world.
February 9, 2017
Christo: Visit the world of all your friends and neighbours
Christo Stassis of Greek descent. Passionate gamer and pizza maker.
February 6, 2017
Canada is neither all roses nor all thorns
Why do the My Canada Project in the first place.
January 30, 2017
Ingrid: We are all stronger together
Whether it is brewing sake, business sense or making amazing French delicacies, Ingrid has brought her French culture to bear on enlarging the Canadian tapestry.
January 28, 2017
Ed: Never take freedoms for granted
From Dublin, Ireland to Kingston, Ontario, Ed McNally is recent Canadian heavily involved in the culture and fabric of Kingston, Ontario.
January 25, 2017
Keli: My Canada is not unilingual
Keli Ryan living abroad from Canada and a world-traveller who has been part of many of my own adventures in Asia, Europe and Africa.
January 23, 2017
Katherine: An incredible maritime history
Katherine Crothers Leverette, amongst many other things, writes for Profile Magazine with a column called The Kingstonian.
January 18, 2017
Erwin: “Colonialist amnesia” : The myth of the two founding nations
Dr. Erwin Warkentin: an unvarnished consideration of the Canadian experience
January 16, 2017
Daniel: Drive across it before self-driving cars steal that
From Edmonton to Montreal to BC and beyond, from big AAA games to independent games. Daniel Fedor has run the gamut of working in Canada
January 13, 2017
Sahand: Long term visions require long term commitment
Sahand embodies the “Yes We Can” spirit that I personally find so prevalent in entrepreneurs.
January 11, 2017
James K.: My Canada is working as a community
My Canada has a bright future with people like James in it.
January 9, 2017
Dave: Watch a John Candy movie, or two
Being Canadian means getting to take credit for being polite and liberal, without necessarily being either of those things.
January 6, 2017
Genevieve: Love the wilderness
Whenever I think of Genevieve I think of travelling with her far into the north of Quebec to see where the road ended at James Bay
January 4, 2017
Karin: Our newest Canadian citizen
She is my newest Canadian-citizen friend, and truly my Canada is a much better place with her in it
January 2, 2017