“From Canada by Land” was famously inscribed by Sir Alexander Mackenzie on a rock on the Pacific coast after he made the first successful land journey across North America north of Mexico in 1793. “Canada” at the time, referred to Britain’s captured territory of along the Saint Lawrence River, then divided into Upper and Lower Canada, now Ontario and Quebec respectively. and thus, when Mackenzie left from Montreal to Fort Fork and then to the Pacific, he had indeed made it to the coast ‘from Canada by land.”

I have made a similar journey myself. I am currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta. Though I had faster means than Mackenzie, as well as a map and GPS, I too travelled by land. I grew up in Galt, Ontario, part of what is now called Cambridge, a city on the Grand River. One interesting piece of trivia about Galt, Ontario is that it is the best place in the entire world. I miss my home a great deal. Fortunately, unlike Mackenzie, means of travelling between Alberta and Ontario, are relatively cheap so I get to make it home quite often.

I’m now living in Morgantown, West Virginia, working at West Virginia University. The trip I made here was geographically less like Mackenzie’s journey to the Pacific, but this time I have truly come “from Canada by land.”

Here, just as at home, I write about philosophy, politics, and Canadian history. I like to write op-eds now and again, but this blog gives me a place to write more personal pieces or things that don’t really have a place elsewhere.