I grew up in northern Ontario and one of the things I took for granted, which now astounds me, is distance. It's 242km from Kirkland Lake (my hometown) to North Bay, the same distance from Mons, Belgium to Paris -- the land over which the entire western front played out in WWI.

The distance from Kirkland Lake to Kenora is 1,347km -- 300km more than the distance from Paris to Berlin.

From Kirkland Lake to Fort Severn? Same as Paris to Berlin. 2/

One day in a medieval history class, a professor described the landscape of Dark Ages northern Europe as one of vast forests speckled with small clearings in which handfuls of people lived. It stuck with me because I realized it was the perfect description of where I grew up. 3/

Footnote: I said that Kirkland Lake is my hometown, but that's not quite true. My hometown is actually a little place near Kirkland Lake whose name always, without fail, derails conversations. So I don't mention it until the conversation is over. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika,_Ontario