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I loved growing up in Canada. It's a great place to grow up because - well, at least where I grew up - it's very multicultural. There's also good health care and a good education system.

It makes me proud not just to be a Canadian writer but to be a Canadian, to live in a country where we treat our writers like movie stars.

Some newer writers worry about books set in Canada having a big appeal, but it has never been an issue for me. I haven't wanted to write in the States because I don't know the States.

Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world.

Poets are accepted in Canada as practically nowhere else in the West because of their place in an officially supported and popularly endorsed Canadian culture. Yet, they are still bitter and argumentative, as poets elsewhere are, because they have no audience as such, only a sanctioned role in the cultural scheme of things.

Canada is a good country to be from. It has a gentler slower pace - it lends perspective.

Canada has been phenomenal to myself, my brother, my sister, their kids, my parents. They came there. They worked very hard. They came with a great education, very good heads on their shoulders with the simple thought of going there with almost nothing and just saying, 'We're doing this to give our kids the best opportunity possible.'

My first book didn't even have a Canadian publisher. And that upset me, because I so wanted a readership up there.

I love Canada. Canada is a great neighbour. Canada has been a great friend and neighbor for many, many years.

I'm a very cultural person, and Canada is a very cultural place.