An acquaintance of mine, a woman living in Toronto, recently posted a question on Facebook about MFA programs in creative writing. I know she’s interested in creative nonfiction—we met at a CNF workshop—so I suggested the program at the University of Saskatchewan, where a talented writer of creative nonfiction teaches. We’ve both read her work, and I thought it might be a good fit. Oh, no, my acquaintance responded: Saskatchewan winters are “brutal,” and after spending a few hours there a couple of years ago, she continued, she doesn’t care for Saskatoon as a city. “I cannot imagine myself living anywhere on the prairies,” she concluded.

I sometimes describe myself as a “recovering Torontonian,” so I can understand her perspective: before I moved to Regina from Toronto twenty-two years ago, I probably thought the same things about the prairies. I quickly changed my mind, though. Yes, the winters are long, but I prefer the bright and sunny cold temperatures we usually experience over Toronto’s endless gray clouds and slush. Yes, the cities are small, but they are affordable, and it doesn’t take hours of driving through endless suburbs to get to the countryside. Yes, some parts of the prairies are flat, but I’ve come to love the big skies and to treasure the remnants of the grassland that covered this place before settlers arrived and ploughed it under. Regina is the last place I thought I would end up living, but it’s given me opportunities I never would have imagined—opportunities that I doubt I would’ve had if I’d stayed in Toronto—and so I’m grateful to this city. None of this means I don’t see the disadvantages of living here, but I can see the downsides to living in Toronto, too. Saskatchewan has become my home—I’ve put down roots here—and Torontonians who dismiss this place as cold and boring without having spent time here rub me the wrong way.

Yesterday afternoon, I walked down to the park on the corner with my cross-country skis and poles and spent a half-hour discovering muscles in my legs and arms that I didn’t know I had—until they started complaining. And this morning, we drove out to Fairy Hill, a small area of aspen bush and prairie managed by the Nature Conservancy of Canada, with our snowshoes and went for a walk. As it turned out, the snowshoes weren’t necessary: Fairy Hill sees a lot of visitors, and the trail was firmly packed snow, but the cleats on the bottoms of the snowshoes did help us on some of the more slippery hills. I was a little overdressed, and soon I was giving off steam; I haven’t been getting enough exercise and I huffed and puffed up and down the hills, pausing frequently to catch my breath and take pictures. My camera lens kept fogging over, but I managed to get a few snapshots despite that problem.

I’ve come to enjoy walking at Fairy Hill very much, partly because aspens are my favourite tree, and partly because of one hillside that’s covered in little bluestem, one of my favourite native grasses. Most of the grassland at Fairy Hill isn’t in great shape, though. When settlers arrived, they banished fire and extirpated the bison, and grassland needs to be burned and grazed if its to remain healthy. That’s how it evolved. But that one hillside is free of the buckbrush that’s invaded the rest of the grassland at Fairy Hill, and I always look forward to the long, steep climb up that hill, because I love to see the way the colour of the grass changes through the season, from purple in August to rusty gold above the January snow. 

I doubt that I would’ve been able to ski in a city park or go for a long walk in a forest just a 30 minute drive from our front door if I’d stayed in Toronto, and while I do miss some things about that city, on days like today, I’m happy we made the decision to come to Saskatchewan.