Our Overlooked Diaspora

In the midst of the open and flat plain in southern Saskatchewan, a gravel road three kilometres long leads down into the lush green of the Qu’Appelle Valley. I have travelled this road many times during my lifetime, as it also meanders down to the Welsh family’s summer cottage—which evokes warm memories of saskatoon berry picking and late-night Scrabble games. Over the years, as I’ve walked along the road, I have seen multiple versions of that fantastically vast prairie sky: bright blue with a blinding sun, pink and red as the sun slowly sets, pitch black and starlit, and, of course, blurred and buzzing with mosquitoes in late June.

It is here, more than anywhere, that I feel I truly belong. Years of overseas post-secondary education, air travel and remote email correspondence cannot extinguish the strong emotional attachment I have to that particular piece of land. Yet as I write, I am living, working, raising children and paying taxes in another national...