My dad lives in Canada, rather some way up North. His tales of the local lifestyle often strike as so incredibly far removed from what I am used to back home that it is hard to imagine what daily life must feel like for him. Should you wonder what he is doing over there, he is running a cottage resort called Mattawa Adventure Camp.

One example is that he is building a road on his property. No, not a garden lane, but one which required some 150 dump trucks full of rock and sand to be moved from A to B. The road is located on a river bed slope, seeing as he lives alongside a river, so there are a lot of boulders that need (re)moving. None of that subtlety that road construction in Holland needs: to get rid of the bigger ones, the preferred method is to drop multi-ton smaller ones on top of them!

Another striking example of just how close to actual real wilderness he lives is that his front yard is frequented by wild bears. The image here is taken today. Imagine waking up in the morning, looking outside and seeing this among you garden gnomes...