Where is Canada?

When I began writing short stories publishing was not an issue, but having something to write about was. Like almost anyone, I needed to write about what I knew; is it actually posible to write about something you don't know? In the period of my life before this I had been an actor at a time when it was more possible in Canada to do this than it had ever been before. Young theatre directors who had been trained elsewhere had arrived back to their homeland to try to create something that did not, at first, seem likely; a Canadian culture. It was, for some, a virtual mission.
I was picked up by a somewhat vividly political theatre. I had not been political at all before that, but it was a good fit. I went to Newfoundland as an artist to do a show about a company mining town and I came back a worker determined to bring meaningful theatre to the world. This was, I believe all for the best. The truth is I was never really cut out to be an artist and what better playground for art, anyway, than to be meaningful?
I can't pretend to be an authority on Candian culture, but I am Candian. I know what those earnest young theatre directors and their associates wanted to do and I know, if not in fact then in spirit, that they failed. They didn't fail as individuals; most of them have been very successful. They didn't fail as artists. They didn't flag in their determination or intent. They did not fail to create art. But they were not succesful in defining a culture, although it was not their fault. They failed, quite possibly, in the same way as 'Love' failed to move a generation devoted to it. The world wore it away.
I have been asked so many times by so many strangers in Toronto the telling question: "What are you?" ( meaning what is your ethnic background). I always say the same thing, "I'm Candian." They in turn, always respond, "No, No! What are you!" and I always reply, "I'm Canadian"
What actually defines a Candian? This is asked about every 1/2 hour on the C.B.C. ( we have a national brodcasting corporation up here and if that's not a defining feature, what is?) All I can observe is that we are a nation of individuals united under the possibility that we are all in a single lifeboat at the side of a vessel that is perhaps sinking. Even though 'Canadian culture' as I might want to difine it has not been reached, Canadians, somehow independently, have. Independently, we know who we are although collectively our voice is a little hoarse and shallow.
The first short story I wrote was "The Wrong Song". I wanted to write about Winipeg because the place moved me. It is in the smack-dab centre of nowhere and still it hums with culture and life...much of it seemingly invisible. Where is Canada? It may not be exactly a place and it may not be exactly a culture but it is, certainly, a state of mind.