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In “Where the World Began” Margaret Laurence is saying that the land she grew up in, the Canadian prairies, is lodged deep in her soul and has stayed with her throughout her life. Laurence counters stereotyped images of the Prairies as “dull, bleak, flat uninteresting” by describing how magnificent the Prairies were in winter, in summer; by describing the eccentrics in her town; by indicating that it was a place also inhabited by the dead (ancestors); and by expressing her love for the Canadian land and how it has remained planted in her soul. Laurence describes the marvellous activities and sights that took place in winter in the Prairies. She remembers as a child, hitching rides on the back of the milk sleigh, with the rider of the milk sleigh grinning at the children through his great frosted moustache, commanding the horses to quicken their pace, challenging the children to hang on. It was a thrilling activity, and Laurence describes it vividly, in lots of details; the children’s moccasins were “squeaking and slithering on the hard rutted snow of the roads”, their “hands in ice-bubbled mitts hanging onto the box edge of the sleigh for dear life” (Laurence, 55). Laurence also describes what the young