But, on the whole, we are a nation that is welcoming to strangers and keen to tell its stories. And before I go through a partial list of small, but welcome, surprises from my travels, I would like to offer my best wishes to all Canada Letter readers and their families for 2020.

— When time permits, I try to pay at least a quick visit to any history museum I come across. Sometimes that provides context for my stories. It always sates my curiosity.

After many years of not having time during its open hours to visit the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, I finally made it inside this fall.

It’s a great place. But what really distinguishes the Glenbow is its approach to an issue many museums are facing: how to present the story of Indigenous people in Canada within institutions largely built around the experiences of the people who came here from Europe and the rest of the world.

The Glenbow takes several approaches. Most prominent is a large and brilliant gallery in which the Niitsitapi or Blackfoot people tell their own history. It’s worth the price of admission on its own.

In a nearby gallery is a multimedia installation by Kent Monkman, the Toronto artist of Cree ancestry, on the near extinction of the American bison during the 19th century because of overhunting by white settlers.