I have a window on this.

I spent six years working in Canada's north as a geophysical technician. I worked in every province from BC in the west to Ontario in the east with the exception of Saskatchewan.

I worked in the northwest territories and in the high arctic. On Meighan Island the standard joke was that for entertainment on a Saturday night we would walk to the north shore and throw rocks at the Russians.

I never made it to the Yukon. I never made it to Baffin Island.

I never made it to the Nahanni.

But I will bet you that the depth and breadth of my northern experience eclipses harper's by a damnsight.

I have lived with native Canadians. Worked with them. I have seen strong family units, and have had the offer of being adopted by a Cree grandmother. I have played guitar in Rankin Inlet. I have been in bars nicknamed "The Zoo" in Inuvik, in Fort Nelson, and in La Ronge.

I have seen wilderness. I have trod where nobody had trod before.

I have worked outside at minus 60, and have been driven half-mad in the summer by the heat, the humidity, the black flies the mosquitoes the deer flies and the bulldogs - known hereabouts as horse flies.

I have been alone in an Arctic expanse, with the nearest camp 30 miles away, and the nearest settlement 400 miles away, where everywhere I looked it was white below and blue above, and the only sound I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears. I have stood alone at the summit of the world, at one and the same time I was the most awesome powerful magnificent creature as far as the eye could see, and about as important as an ant.

In northern Manitoba, I called my friends and strangers "parner". Not "partner", or "pardner", or "podna". Not "buddy" or "pal" or "fella" or "guy" or "dude".

Parner.

Your parner was the guy you worked with in the bush. Someone who had your back. Someone who would put himself in danger for you, and know that you would do the same for him. Someone you trusted and respected and loved.

Your parner.

But that term could be used for strangers, too.

"Come on in, parner, and bring your parner!"

When someone you did not know called you "parner", you knew that what he was really saying was, "We obviously don?t know each other. But I will treat you as if you were my parner, and maybe that is what you will come to be."

Kinda like hippies flashing each other the peace sign.

I miss that too.

Northern Canada was where I knew for the first time that I was a Canadian. Nothing to do with politics. It had to do with the land and with the people.

My parners.

I can remember the exact moment of my baptism, actually. Northern Manitoba, early spring. Still on snowshoes, but able to work with my shirt off. Blazing line, axe in hand. And hearing a noise which, at first, I took to be a wolf-pack in full flight, heading no doubt directly for me. My heart jumped and I grabbed my axe tighter. My eyes got big.

And then the realization. NOT wolves. GEESE! Canada geese - thousands and thousands of them in full flight and in full voice, filling the sky with the scrimshaw of their formations and with the wildness of their voice as if excited to be back, to be back in Canada, and knowing that Canada - the land and the people - the COUNTRY - would welcome them home with such love!

I always have been Canadian. I just didn't know what it meant until that moment.

For most of the time I worked in the north, I was working for the extractive companies, and I have seen the benefits that white southern civilization has brought to the north, and I have seen the boom and bust of resource extraction.

And during all that time, and during all of the years that followed, I have not seen a true commitment to the people of the north by either the oil and mineral companies who left oil drums, contamination, abandoned headframes and social dysfunction in their wake, or by any government - provincial, territorial, or federal.

I went into the bush in 1966 at the age of 21 and emerged six years later changed back into who I was before, and into who I am now.

I still remember the bush, and I miss it, and I love it still. Northern Canada IS the true north - strong and proud. And it is also the true north - vulnerable and abused.

Always has been. Since the white man arrived, spreading disease and dysfunction and religion in his wake.

Stephen Harper is touring the North. He is not doing so as I did. He is up to no good, and is continuing the rape of the land and the people for his own benefit.

He is not good for Canada. He remains in contempt of parliament, and of the people for which it was once meant to stand.