Familiar Places, Future Footsteps – Crossing Canada Aboard VIA Rail

Travelling West on The Canadian During Our Great Trail Preparations
 

Rails and Trails - Intersections with the Great Trail 

After a busy year of researching the Great Trail (Trans Canada Trail) and exploring sections of the national pathway throughout southern Ontario, we are once again heading west aboard VIA Rail's The Canadian. Our destination this time is Jasper, Alberta, where we will meet up with family before continuing into British Columbia for several weeks of visiting, hiking, and hopefully a little paddling along the Great Trail.

 
Over the past few months, we have continued exploring local pathways, including sections of the Great Trail around Hamilton, the Hamilton–Brantford Rail Trail, trails through Dundas Valley, and several routes closer to home near Simcoe and Delhi. Combined with our earlier outings throughout Ontario, these walks have provided opportunities to spend time outdoors while becoming increasingly familiar with the many different types of pathways that make up Canada's national trail network.  For now, however, we have traded our hiking boots for the comfort of a railway carriage, and are watching the country pass by effortlessly beyond the windows.
 

Seeing Canada a Little Differently

 
Travelling aboard The Canadian is hardly a new experience for us. We have been taking this train to visit family and explore western Canada since the late 1990s, and over the years its familiar dome cars, railway stations, communities, and changing landscapes have become part of our travelling lives.   Normally, the journey is an opportunity to relax, read, play board games, enjoy the scenery, and spend several days simply travelling across the country.

 
This time, however, we are finding the experience rather unsettling.  Throughout our preparations for walking across Canada, we have occasionally had moments when travelling by car or public transit between different sections of a trail has made us question the scale of what we are proposing. Distances that seem enormous when viewed through a vehicle window can become downright intimidating when we realize that we intend to cover them on foot. Now, as we sit aboard The Canadian, watching hundreds and thousands of kilometres of forests, lakes, farmland, and small communities pass beyond the windows, that feeling is particularly difficult to ignore.

 
We have made this journey many times before, yet suddenly four or five days aboard a train seems like an extraordinarily long distance. We find ourselves looking out at the landscape, wondering how we could possibly walk across all of it. At moments, the very idea seems a little crazy.  What makes the experience even stranger is that many of the places we are passing are already familiar to us. We recognize communities throughout Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta from previous journeys and family visits. Melville, Saskatchewan, for example, is somewhere we have spent many enjoyable hours stretching our legs and stopping for ice cream during our railway travels. Now we find ourselves thinking of it not simply as a familiar railway stop, but as somewhere we may eventually arrive after weeks or months or years of walking.

 
These places are no longer just destinations or names on a map. They are becoming possible waypoints along a backpacking journey we have not yet begun.  There is something wonderfully exciting about that prospect, but also something rather humbling.  In fact, we cannot help wondering whether we have fully appreciated what we are getting ourselves into.  We have spent months studying the former Trans Canada Trail, calculating distances, researching trails, and imagining what it might be like to walk across the country. Yet none of those preparations quite compares with sitting comfortably aboard a train, travelling for hours through seemingly endless landscapes, and realizing that we are proposing to cross much of the same country at walking speed.

 
Even aboard a train, the distances are enormous. What will they feel like when every kilometre must be travelled on foot?
 

Heading West for Another Summer Adventure

 
Of course, our current journey is not simply about contemplating the distances we hope to walk next year. We are looking forward to spending time with family and exploring some wonderful places in western Canada.  Our first destination is Jasper, Alberta, where we will disembark and meet my parents before heading south through the Rocky Mountains toward Banff. While there, we hope to explore a small section of the Great Trail near the Banff Springs Hotel, giving us another opportunity to experience a part of the national pathway in a very different landscape from the trails we have been walking in Ontario.

 
From there, we will continue west to the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, where we have several more adventures in mind.  One of these is a return to Grouse Mountain near Vancouver, where we are hoping to celebrate Sean's birthday by hiking the famous Grouse Grind. Having explored the mountain on previous visits, we are looking forward to another opportunity to experience its steep forested slopes and the remarkable views from the top.
 
We are also particularly excited about the possibility of exploring a very different part of the Great Trail – the Salish Sea Marine Trail.  Unlike the trails and routes we have been researching, this section of the national network follows a water route through the coastal landscapes of British Columbia. Our ambitious hope is to combine kayaking, paddleboarding, and possibly sailing to explore portions of the route between Horseshoe Bay, the Sunshine Coast, and Vancouver Island.
 
If everything comes together, we hope to kayak from Horseshoe Bay toward Gibsons and Sechelt, explore part of the Sunshine Coast by paddleboard, and continue toward Saltery Bay, where friends may be able to help us sail around Texada Island toward Nanaimo.  Whether we can actually accomplish all of this remains to be seen, but the possibility of exploring part of the Great Trail from the water is certainly exciting.

 
We are also taking the opportunity to drop off some of our backup hiking equipment with family, discuss our proposed itinerary, and continue working through some of the logistical questions surrounding our planned journey across Canada.
 

A Different Way of Discovering Canada

 
For now, however, we are enjoying the opportunity to travel across the country aboard The Canadian.    We have always loved travelling by train, particularly the chance to watch landscapes gradually change rather than simply flying over them. Yet our preparations for the Great Trail are giving this familiar journey a slightly different meaning.   We are beginning to think less about the places we hope to reach and more about everything that lies between them. The forests, farms, small communities, rivers, lakes, and enormous open spaces passing outside our windows are no longer simply scenery along the way. They are places we hope to experience more closely, at a pace that allows us to stop, explore, and discover what makes each one interesting.

 
There is still an enormous amount of planning to do before we set out from Cape Spear, Newfoundland, next spring. But for now, we are enjoying the journey west and the opportunity to imagine what it might be like to make our way across this remarkable country one step at a time.
 
See you on the trail!