The Caboto Chronicles, Chapter II: Where the Land Remembers
A road through the Gaspé Peninsula in the first autumn of post-pandemic freedom. A cemetery above the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And a name on a headstone that turned a road trip into a pilgrimage.
Giving Tuesday at the Gallery of Human Migration
My life has been defined by movement—between countries, cultures, and the people I love most. Today, on Giving Tuesday, I’m asking you to join me in supporting the Gallery of Human Migration. Every story it holds is proof that ordinary lives, when shared with courage, become something the world cannot afford to lose.
St. Joseph Island Coffee Roasters for “The Baule”
The things we bring into our home are never neutral — they carry the choices of everyone along the supply chain. This is the coffee we chose for The Baule, and why the story behind it mattered as much as the taste.
Call for Expressions of Interest: Migration Literary Award
There is a story you are carrying. Maybe it is your grandmother’s departure. Maybe it is your own—the leaving, the arriving, the long middle stretch of becoming someone new in a place that did not yet know your name. The Gallery of Human Migration Literary Award was created for that story. Not the polished version. The true one. This is the invitation.
Quebec City: What the River Remembers
I went to Quebec City following the ghost of an Italian explorer who sailed for an English king and “discovered” a continent that already had a name. What I found instead: a First Nations family serving breakfast in the old stone city, a river that has no interest in human timelines, a staircase that defeated my knee, and an evening with a dear friend I hadn’t touched in two years. This is the first chapter of the Caboto Chronicles—and it immediately changed the question I thought I was asking.
Celebrating Canada Day: On Carrying Two Countries Inside You
My first Canada Day in Canada was July 1st, 2019. We were having dinner with other people—music, fireworks—and what everyone around me was saying in English was almost incomprehensible. Almost like background noise. I sat in the middle of the celebration, smiling, nodding, understanding fragments. That is what it costs, I thought. Not the leaving. This. And yet—here I am, writing this in English, on Canada Day, still becoming.
Science Gathers Knowledge. The Forest Gathers Wisdom.
A forest on fire is not dying — it is maintaining itself. Dr. Suzanne Simard’s research showed us that trees perceive each other, warn each other, cooperate and compete with a sophistication we once reserved for human intelligence alone. One year into the pandemic, on Earth Day 2021, I found myself thinking: what would it mean if we learned to do the same? This piece is still asking that question. I don’t think we’ve answered it yet.
Diary of an Informal Caregiver: From Family Business to Family Care
It is 11:40 pm. My sister is waiting for me at the bus station in L’Aquila. I am glad to see her, and uneasy—a weight I cannot name, arrived before any words have. We drive home through the cool, starry night. Then she says it: ‘Nancy, Dad has bone cancer.’ This is the diary of what came next—and what it taught me about love, about caregiving, and about what it means to not have permission to be unwell.
32 Seconds, A Phone Call and Two Text Messages
The phone rang at 3:35 in the morning. Every step that brought me closer to it increased my concern. My father on the other end: ‘Nancy, did you feel the earthquake? I can’t find your sister, please help me.’ The earthquake lasted thirty-two seconds. I would not hear from my sister for forty-eight minutes. This is what those forty-eight minutes felt like—and what they taught me about what love actually is when the ground stops being solid.
Mimicking the Migration of Snowbirds
There is something quietly comic about a woman who crossed an ocean to migrate to Canada, now joining the annual Canadian migration south for the winter. But that is exactly what we did—two years into the pandemic, finally free to move, heading to Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos with a rented kitchen, a bag of Italian pantry staples, and a very Canadian need for sun. What I didn’t expect was how much watching the pelicans fish, and the turtles move through the turquoise water, would feel like a kind of permission—to slow down, to be nowhere in particular, and to let a place simply be beautiful.
