I've been spending the year in the Netherlands, a nation the size of Maryland, with a population of 16 million. The Dutch live in dense, compact cities and towns, and ruthlessly guard their countryside from sprawl. Pasture, cows, and cropland are shockingly accessible from the centre of the biggest Dutch...

Okay, America, it's winter up here, and when the snow is flying you'll always look pretty darn good. February through April is when we of the semi-frozen True North escape across the border, stab our cars into snow-drifted airport parking lots at Bangor, Buffalo, or Bellingham, and catch your el...

New Yorkers, we are among you -- we Canadians -- though you are usually unaware. Unless, perhaps, it's the season of Stanley Cup Finals -- usually a torpid June week in Manhattan -- and you notice loud, polite groups of us in neighbourhood bars, cheering on our Vancouver Canucks, Montreal...

I grew up in Montreal in what felt like the shadow of the World Wars. There were soldier ghosts everywhere: in the dining hall at my school, Lower Canada College, fading sepia-tinted photos of Old Boys killed in World War I. In the school's Memorial Gymnasium, bronze tablets with long...