They say you don’t know how you’ll react when you first lay eyes on the Valley of 1000 Devils. With a slack-jawed moment of stunned silence followed by a prolonged bout of giddy gratitude sums it up for me.

Toronto artist Erika Germain is wrapping up her six-week residency in Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Highlands National Park as the 2022 Artist in Residence.

There he stands in the woods as you start walking down the Discovery Claim Trail to the creek where Skookum Jim Mason, Káa Goox (Dawson Charlie), Shaaw Tláa (Kate Carmack) and George Carmack discovered gold in the Yukon in August 1896 and sparked the Klondike Gold Rush.

In the café at Batoche National Historic Site, cooks transform bison from Parks Canada’s herd into stew and burgers, and local Saskatoon berries into iced tea and tarts. In the exhibition room, I try rug hooking while surrounded by the colorful creations of traditional Métis rug makers like Margaret Harrison. In the gift shop run by the Friends of Batoche, I buy a book that shares Métis Elder stories about important river plants in the area like pasture sage, chokecherry and cattail, and notes their names in Michif.