With Glowing Hearts

 I've worked VHF FM from one end of a car park to the other. I've worked a maritime mobile station that was within 1500 kilometers of being antipodal to my QTH. I've cherished every single contact but, as I discussed in a blog article a few years back, a big part of what got me interested in amateur radio was the opportunity to talk all over the world. Included among the more than 100 countries I've had the opportunity to work¹, are countries like China, Cuba, and even Russia that have historically had contentious relationships with the United States. These contacts are an important part of amateur radio's value proposition; our governments might have their differences, responsibilities for those differences might even be asymmetrical, but through amateur radio we have the chance to make one-to-one contacts based on our mutual enjoyment of this shared activity.

Seasoned US-based operators might not consider VE contacts to be DX, but that hasn't detracted from my enjoyment of making those contacts. I've met some great people from north of the border on amateur radio, people whom I consider—to the extent that you can apply this term to someone you've never met in person—friends. Back in my high school days, I honestly and unironically thought of Canada as a magical place. Canada has Rush. Canada had SCTV, a late-night sketch comedy show produced in Edmonton in the 1980s that to this day I believe featured more subtle humor and at least as broad a range of acting talent as Saturday Night Live. Canada had Wayne Gretzky playing for the Edmonton Oilers, and of course Canada had in Radio Canada International one of the better shortwave broadcast stations on the air, with that catchy jazzed-up version of "Vive la Canadienne" for their intro music. In the ensuing years, I had the chance to visit Canada three times: twice on brief cross-border trips to Niagara Falls, and once on a family holiday in British Columbia. I've always thought of amateur radio and—before I got licensed—SWLing as a way to become a sort of armchair traveler, and armchair visits to Canada never disappoint².

• VE3 and VE7 bring to mind those previous travels
• VE2 provides a chance to try out my rusty college French on the air
• VE6 evokes images of the Rockies, and those aforementioned memories of the Oilers and SCTV
• VE4 and VE5 always stir up images of wheat fields in the low light of a late evening in the summertime
• VE1, VE9, VO1, VO2, and VY2 make me think of rocky shores, of the writings of Farley Mowat, of salt cod drying in the sun
• VE8, VY1, and VY0 are easy to associate with ice and isolation, an antenna sending energy out into the dark and the cold

Today, against all odds, it's Canada that my country has managed to get into a disagreement with. I'm pleased to say that this development hasn't spilled over into a reduction of the number of VE stations in my logbook, and I hope that trend continues. I honestly—if maybe naively—believe that the combined effect of personal contacts between ordinary Americans and ordinary Canadians, such as those that take place over amateur radio, is a part of what will help pull us out of this mess.

This fall, my wife and I plan to visit Ontario. We'll see some sights, activate a POTA park or two, unashamedly do touristy things, and possibly take in a Blue Jays game. Hopefully, our respective governments will have sorted out their differences by then. If not, then maybe in some tiny way our visit will be part of the healing process. No matter what, we just know that our time spent there will be magical.

1. DXCC award pending as of this writing.

2. I don't have a Worked All Canada award; not all of these locations are places that I've actually worked.