I’m also not from the town where I was born.

It had the closest hospital to where my Mom, Dad and brother lived. And that town is also not where I’m from because we only lived there for a year or two after I was born.

My Dad was transferred to Regina my last year of university. That’s how I ended up here after university in Saskatoon. I thought I’d live there, but couldn’t find a job.  He was transferred yet again not long after that and they moved out of province, I stayed in Regina. I had a job, and the beginning of a life here. It’s home.

But is Regina where I’m from?

I’m fascinated by people who are rooted from childhood in one very specific place. Born and raised, many for generations.

I’m not from a specific town or city or plot of land.  

So, then, while Canada seems accurate when travelling, I’ve decided to simply say I’m from Saskatchewan.

And that means I’m from…

The small town I spent all my school years, in a house my dad built on the edge of town with a wheat field just beyond our backyard.

Cypress Hills, Battlefords & Greenwater Provincial Parks, summers spent camping, other places, too, but those were the main places. I’ve camped at Cypress Hills (below) more than anywhere else because it was close by.

Seeing the first glimpse of the Hills was like approaching the Rocky Mountains from Calgary. As a kid, it was a thrill. Battlefords was close to my Mom’s side of the family, Greenwater close to my Dad’s.

It was a nine-hour drive to my paternal grandparents, on the other side of the province. About three and half hours drive to visit my Mom’s side of the family.

Measuring distance by time, not kilometres.

Is that just a prairie thing?

Hours upon hours spent on not great highways in all seasons, looking for the names of towns on grain elevators, listening to the radio (CFQC from Saskatoon), staring out the window, daydreaming.

Sky. Clouds. Landscapes. Familiar landmarks.

Saskatoon was the halfway point to my paternal grandparents. As a kid going through the “big” city, past the University of Saskatchewan, sure that’s where I would go someday. And when I did, driving back and forth in my brother’s little Mazda hatchback filled to the brim with clean laundry, household things and food Mom sent back with us. There were some really cold winter drives in that little car.

A summer job through all my university years where for two of those summers, I was based in Swift Current during the week on a crew doing a corrosion survey of a pipeline.

Hot summer days spent walking through fields (canola was the worst), wearing steel-toed work boots and hard hats we couldn’t remove in case the company helicopter flying over the pipeline reported us. I don’t think we saw that helicopter even one time.

Sometimes each of us would be left in the middle of nowhere to “bring in the line”. We couldn’t leave the copper wire in the middle of a field and had to manually pull it in, walking back into the field if it got stuck on something. Sometimes I had to wait for the van to pick me up, so I would lay in the ditch on the side of a grid road and study the sky.

This was the early ‘90s, with only radios to communicate which weren’t always reliable, or the battery died. I’m not even sure I had a bottle of water. We didn’t all carry water bottles then.

The Ghost Town Trail, Castle Butte, Last Mountain Lake Bird Sanctuary, the Little Church in the Valley and all the highways, grid roads and back roads leading in all directions from Regina.

Jack and I often get out of the city to chase northern lights, sunsets and storm clouds or look for the best fields, the best ditch flowers, hoping to spot wildlife (or donkeys!) along the way.

A lot of the country around Regina is just as familiar to me now as streets and neighbourhoods in the city.

Wascana Creek in the middle of the city is our nature refuge.

All of these places and experiences are, or have been, under an ever-changing wide open sky with seasons that challenge, delight and make us adaptable and resourceful in order to survive, and thrive, here.

Saskatchewan is not a perfect place, far from it, but that’s not the point of this.

The point is that where we’re from influences who we are, how see our place in the world and how we experience the broader world around us.

For me, it means I carry a sense of sky, space and landscapes that ground me no matter where I am. The values this place encourages…resilience, creativity and adaptability show up in everything  I do, and everything I am.

So, when I ask where you’re from, I’m not just asking for a town or city or plot of land.

What I really want to know is…

How does that place live in you?