Three years in Washington DC in the late 1980s and several visits more recently to the US and Canada have provided ample opportunity for me to travel through these two North American countries, which are actually more to the size of continents. The variety is endless, the distances are enormous. For the farmer on a tractor, working his corn fields along the I-70 highway in Kansas, San Francisco and New York are far, very far away, not only in kilometres (or miles), but also in his mind. And how closely are the inhabitants of the Louisiana bayous connected to those of the Windy City, Chicago? The same goes for Canada: Quebec City and Montreal are in many ways another world than Vancouver on the Pacific Coast: the diverse richness of nature, culture, history and people, which we are about to explore.