On Sunday, it's Mother's Day here in Canada. When I moved to this beautiful country with my family in 2017, my mum visited a couple of months later, keen to help me and my family settle into our new home.

It's official. I am now a Canadian citizen! The scheduled date for the in-person citizenship ceremony clashed with the day I arrived in Australia with my sister for a two-week trip to visit family. I received an email for a new date for the ceremony via Zoom. Not the same thing at all.

I found some notes I’d written back in February 2018 entitled Things I’ve Noticed Here — a Brit in Canada. As you’ll see, there was no particular order to my thoughts.

It seems obvious right? You’re away from home, you feel some loss, even grief and realise you feel homesick. Is that all there is to it? Maybe. I wonder, though, if it might be more complicated than that.

Growing up in the flat landscape of East Anglia, I only ever saw mountains on the telly. Now I live at the bottom of one.

The land on which I live is the unceded, shared land of the Coast Salish Peoples including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

It’s the 1940s and a movie star (a strong-looking man with a black moustache) starts looking for a place to build a town. Not just any old town. A town to make movies in. The plan is to build a town in the style of the 1880s.

How does landscape, real or imagined, rural or urban, influence your stories? Find out how to connect your characters to their world.

A story for you, written early one morning when jet lag had me in its grip.