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That sort of thing makes me a bit misty-eyed about my city. But most kinds of Canadian diversity make me misty-eyed about my country as well. It’s at least superficially heartening to know that the same leader, representing the same big tent, can successfully make the same basic pitch to a crowd in a rural Nova Scotia community centre one night, in a stronghold of Quebec nationalism the night after that, and in a place like Richmond Hill the night after that. (It’s also heartening to know he can fairly effectively knock down a “lock him up” chant, as Scheer did in Richmond Hill — encouraging “vote him out” instead.)

It becomes somewhat less heartening when you consider the extent to which some of these constituencies are being pandered to, of course. If Scheer doesn’t wake up Tuesday morning in Regina in a position to become prime minister, his party may view his “whatever you want short of independence” pitch to Quebecers as something of a liability. Scheer sounded downright silly in Vancouver on Sunday warning that “a vote for the Bloc is a vote for a referendum.” The Bloc couldn’t hold a referendum with every seat in Quebec at its command, and there is little reason to attribute its resurgence to a renewed appetite for separatism.

Even with the Bloc in remission, however, it was tough to say Canada was in any meaningful sense unified. Not being on the verge of falling apart isn’t an achievement in itself. This is a federation whose would-be Conservative prime minister promises a premiers’ meeting on Jan. 6 to start negotiating — negotiating! — free trade between provinces. This is a country designed such that things like pipelines can be built for the good of all, but where even government ownership is no guarantee of such a thing getting built.

If following a leader around on one of these absurdly mile-intensive campaign tours is occasionally heartening, far more so would be if far more ordinary Canadians could see that much of the country and its people. It’s no surprise that Canadians tend to travel abroad rather than within Canada: the distances alone explain it, even before you look at the state of competition in the airline industry. More familiarity between Canada’s endless diversities wouldn’t steel our national resolve on its own; but the lack of it means our national frustrations are no surprise.