The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

Cape Breton was much like Newfoundland, yet everything seemed slightly off. Light, colours, surface textures, dimensions objects like telegraph poles, fence posts, mail boxes, which you would think would be the same everywhere, were bigger or smaller or wider by a hair than they were back home. That I was able to detect such subtle differences made me realize how circumscribed my life had been, how little of the world I had seen.

From The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston 1999. Published by Vintage Canada.