Nothing complicated. Here are some of the things I love about this place. Please jump in and add your own, and make up any categories you want.

a) Favourite Canadian Vista:

The first time I ever travelled to Pond Inlet in Nunavut, at the northern tip of Baffin Island. It was in early July, and the sun was up all day and all night. Around ten I walked to the edge of the bluff in the high Arctic on a bluff. Icebergs were floating through the straight hundreds of feet below me, and miles across the channel rose the glaciers and mountains of Bylot Island. I looked down, and there out in the straight was a pod of bowhead whales among the icebergs. It took my breath away.

b) Favourit B-List Canadian Author:

Brian Moore. Born in Belfast and died in Malibu, but lived for much of his life in Canada, and returned to the maritimes each summer. Wrote about thirty novels of incredible diversity, of which the best known are probably Black Robe (which he adapted into the screenplay of the film) and The Luck of Ginger Coffey. he was a lapsed Catholic, and most of his work deals with human efforts to make sense of and function morally within a chaotic and indifferent world - influenced, perhaps, by his years in journalism and a trip to Auschwitz. Having said all that, he is also a wonderful storyteller, occasionally very funny, and has a Ulsterman’s gift of language. A great writer if you haven’t already discovered him.

c) Nicest People:

Labradorians. Don’t know why. They just are.

d) Best Canadian Road Food:

The Valois Restaurant, southern end of Mattawa, Ontario, overlooking the Ottawa River. Run by the Valois family, it feels like a time machine back to the forties. The waitresses all wear uniforms and starched white aprons, and call you “dear”. The decor is cluttered and woody. The food is exactly what a highway restaurant should serve (burgers, fish and chips, blue plate specials, liver and onions), but it’s all perfect. And the pies…ah, the pies…

e) Best Scuba Diving:

Race Rocks, north of Vancouver BC. Runner up: the St. Lawrence River between Kingston and Brockville. And to give the East its due: Les Escoumins, near the mouth of the Saguenay.

f) Best Canadian Instrument Maker:

Grit Laskin, a world class luthier on Dupont St. in Toronto. A disciple of Jean Larrive, Grits’s stringed instruments - guitars, mandolins, mandocellos - are handmade to reflect the style and preferences of the musician he’s making it for. The instruments are superb acoustically: but Grit is perhaps the world’s foremost inlay artist, and his guitars are a beautiful to look at as they are to hear, or to play.

g) Best drive

Through the Qu’appelle Valley in Saskatchewan, on a summer evening.

i) Best Imaginary Sea Monster:

Ogopogo, of course.

j) Best Alternative National Anthem.

Lots of candidates there. Gordon Lightfoot’s Canadian Railroad Trilogy? Great song, but it would take too long to sing before hockey games. “Mon Pays” by Gilles Vigneault? (”My country is not a ‘land’, it is Winter”) Yeah, just try to sneak that one past Alberta. Same thing for “Un Canadian Errant”. The Log Driver’s Waltz? Pretty, but could we get away with having a Waltz as an Anthem?

I’d have to go with Stan Roger’s “Mary Ellen Carter”. Still get a lump in my throat every time I hear it. “No matter what you’ve lost - be it a love, a home, a friend - like the Mary Ellen Carter, Rise Again!”

h) Best Bar

The Legion, in Iqaluit. Second place: the Strange Range, Yellowknife (when the Lyalls are in town).

k) Best Corned Beef Hash

The Nisku Inn, Leduc, Alberta. Way too salty, real live corned beef and fresh potatoes, and four poached eggs on top, just like God intended. Divine Cholesterol calling you home to Jesus.

l) Airport Gift Shop With The Most Cowboy Hats In It

Calgary.

Okay, your turn.