In April I celebrated my eighth anniversary living in the States. Celebrated is too strong a word. I nodded acknowledgement, and then went about my business, for I am a Canadian living abroad, and it is my God-given right to be ambivalent, noncommittal, and emotionally haphazard.

Today is Canada Day. Strangely, a holiday not widely recognized in the States. Hell, it might as well be Bastille Day, if you know what I mean, for in three days it will be the Fourth of July, and living as I do in a redneck kind of town, I will be overwhelmed by the sight of Ford Excursions and Chevy Suburbans plastered with American flags, plastered with stickers reading, "Burn these stripes and you'll see stars!", and well, plastered Americans.

But today is Canada Day, and while I haven't the slightest clue what it's in celebration of, I will give an ambivalent nod northward, and recollect my days on the ice flows, for I miss many aspects of my old life above the forty-ninth parallel.

I miss our family's ancestral igloo; the way the midnight sun would glint off the ice walls. I miss walrus meat and pemmican snacks. I miss massaging my gums with a stick to ward off tooth decay. I miss clubbing and skinning alive baby harp seals; something my brother and I would do each spring as a life-affirming celebration of life and all things living.

I miss moose wrestling, salmon skin cowboy boots, log rolling, chainsaw juggling, Tom Thumb doughnuts at the PNE, and panning for bauxite. I miss Orca flipper slaps while scanning the horizon - harpoon in hand - for whale sign.

How many days - how many? - did we spend on the water hunting the majestic narwhal? It's all just memories now.

I miss my dogs and my sled; the sled my dad bought me, and over which we spent so many happy hours waxing the runners until they shone.

Crossing into Washington state, lo these eight years ago, I traded the dogs for a thirty-eight revolver and the sled for Indian Casino tokens. Six days later, sleeping off a hell of a whiskey hangover, the gun had three empty shells and all my tokens were gone.

I'll save that for another story. But for now, please note, I am Canadian.