Click to reveal author's notes (with any spoilers!)
One highlight for me in making this puzzle was noticing that 17D (Picasso) and 20D (Neruda) were both artists with the first name Pablo. Another, looking now closer to home, was placing 25D (Pines) in the puzzle, because I immediately knew I wanted to make it a reference to Louise Penny's Armand Gamache series. As someone from Quebec, I do love her books - there's something about recognizing the homeland in the way she writes of Quebec. (There is a nine-episode TV series that was made of it, but I can't say it captured the same feeling... of course, the magic of writing is that it allows the reader to imagine into the abstract, to dream between the lines, while video has to get all of the details right on its own.)
The Centre is *for*, is in favour of, Canadian crosswords. It is a creative space where the default assumption is Canadian, from the references to the spelling.