It's a beautiful, twisting drive from our home to Sherman's upper meadow on Pinnacle Mountain, the place a gang to us gets together every year to celebrate Canada's July 1 birthday with a potluck, bonfire and fireworks.

Oh Canada. Car windows down late in a summer afternoon, air around us full of the sweet smell of freshly mown hay, the soft spatter of gravel hitting the wheel wells, the grumbles of the engine as we climb some wicked hills.

Oh July, a heady gift for a country that spends far too long under the icy boot of winter.

We paused on Clay Bank Road and stood in a narrow unmown strip, the very edge of Canada. Look down the line, everything to the left of the rough grass, the hedgerow, the barely visible slash cut through the mountain forest, that's Canada, everything on the right is the United States.

Canada, a country with a constitution that promises peace, order and good government, a country that eased into independence.

The United States, a country that promises its citizens life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a country created through a revolution.

We Canadians live in the shadow of this world power, and often define ourselves by what makes us different from the 'Mericans, which amuses them no end, I'm sure. No matter.

Despite our differences, we have known such long term peace that in many places all that marks our border is some shrubs and a gap in a forest. Not many places in the world can say that.

Not long past the end of this road we turned up a narrow, rutted trail more suited to a tractor than a car. Up, up, up through the woods, through the edges of a mirror like beaver pond to the startling sunlight of Sherman's meadow.

As usual, the three picnic tables were covered with the home made goodies each of us had brought. It took two hands to hold my paper plate by the time I had taken a teensy bit of this, a teensy bit of that. Piggy, piggy Marn, I know, but I'm betting you wouldn't have been any better, eh.

We are an odd crowd of friends. Farmers, university professors, a poet, a lumberjack, a potter, a tai chi instructor, and a carpenter, among others. There was four generations of one family there, the great grandma a woman in her mid-80's, her great grandchild one of the ones zipping around in an amazing sugar buzz as he toasted his umpteenth marshmallow in the bonfire.

Tummies full, twilight turning to darkness, the only illumination the flash of fireflies ... the quiet of the night broken by the trilling of tree toads, the soft murmur of conversation. The first piece of fireworks, launched from the far end of the meadow, always makes me jump.

I love watching the wonder on the tiny ones' faces, snuggled in their mothers' laps, eyes upturned to the star spattered sky, awaiting the next light trail to cut through the darkness. The older kids have sparklers and they race around the meadow together, tracing elaborate light shows in the air.

After about 20 minutes, Rusty announced the last round of fireworks, a bunch of those loud, sonic boom type ones. The silence and darkness after they finished seemed endless. When Richard lifted his flute to his lips and wove the notes to Oh Canada through a starry summer's night, joined by the voices of my almost invisible friends and neighbours, it was strangely haunting.

Sometimes it's good to remember who we are.