Welcomed to Canada by Beaver and a goose

The dark Canada of endless pines, lakes and mountains, was gone, writes Damien Enright.

In the descent from 9,000m, the plane lowered as if in steps, bellying down from level to level and, after the hours aloft, we glimpsed land through wisps of cloud, pinpricks of light on the dark face of the earth below.

Next time we looked, the darkness had become a plain of light, a living thing through which corpuscles flowed, glittering and winking, clustering in places, amoeba seen through a microscope flaring for nano-seconds before dying, spread from horizon to the horizon with dark channels between them, fingers of the sea splitting the land.