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    The sun warms the lump in her throat and threatens to set tears overflowing her lids, so she closes her eyes and rests her temple against the window frame, soothed by the vibrations of the road. The wind in her hair is swift but gentle, the sun through her closed lids a kaleidoscope of reds and golds.
    Outside, the afternoon intensifies. August is the true light of summer. Thick tenor saxophone light. Unlike the trumpets of spring, the strings of autumn. Visible grains of sunlight fall in slow motion, grazing skin—catch them like snowflakes on your tongue. The land is bursting, green and gold and bark. The stalks sway heavy with corn, slowing the breeze. The countryside reclines, abundant and proud like a mightily pregnant woman, lounging. “Pick your own,” say handwritten signs. Pick me.
    The Indians grew corn. This is the part of Ontario first taken from them by settlers. They fought here alongside the English, first against the French, then against the Americans in the War of 1812. Now there are reservations, their longhouses and villages survive as drawings in sixth-grade history books and life-size reproductions in tourist villages. Their tobacco is a big cash crop in these parts, but they don’t grow it. The ground is still full of their belongings and many places have been named for their nations and in their languages, including Canada. Some say “Canada” means “village of small huts.” Others say Portuguese fishermen named it Ca Nada: there, nothing.
    Welcome to Stratford, Welcome to New Hamburg…
. So many places in Canada where you feel as though the real place is in another country. If you come from London, Ontario, for instance, you might not say, “I come from London.” You might have to qualify it with “Ontario.” Having to explain this can sound apologetic even if you are perfectly happy to come from London. Ontario. New York was named after York in England, but no one ever thinks of York, England, when they think of New York. Mike would say, “That’s ’cause the States has better everything.”
    Welcome to Kitchener
. “Did you know Kitchener used to be called Berlin?” says her father, with a glance in the rearview mirror. “It was settled by German immigrants, but they changed the name during the First World War.”
    They stop for bratwurst and crusty white rolls, just like home. Germany, that is. Madeleine knows she must cease to think of Germany as home. This is home now—what she sees out the sunny car window. Impossibly long driveways that lead to gabled farmhouses with gingerbread trim. Immense fields, endless miles between towns, so much forest and scrub unspoken for, Crown lands, shaggy and free. Three days of driving through geological eras, mile after mile and still Canada. The vastness is what sets it apart from Germany. Part of what makes it Canada. “You could take the whole of Europe and lose it here in the middle of Ontario,” says her father.
    Madeleine leans her chin on the window frame. Picture the war in Europe, the planes and tanks and concentration camps, picture Anne Frank writing her diary, Hitler saluting the crowds. There is more than enough room for all of it to have happened in the province of Ontario.
    “But it wouldn’t happen here,” says Madeleine.
    “What wouldn’t happen?” asks Dad.
    “The war.”
    “Which war?” says Mike.
    “The Second World War.”
    Mike points at her, then at his own head, and spirals his finger to indicate that she’s crazy. Madeleine controls her anger. She wants to hear her father’s answer. He says, “That particular kind of war could never happen here, sweetie, Canada is a free country.”
    “If it hadn’t been for the war,” says Maman, “Papa and I would never have met”—Madeleine squirms—“and you and Michel would never have come along….” Her mother has a way of shifting a subject into a tilted version of itself. Stories of bombs and gas chambers do not go with the story of the air force