The Day We Stopped Walking the Trans Canada Trail

Finding Our Way by Following the Trails People Actually Knew

 
At some point in recent weeks during our journey across Canada, we stopped telling people that we were hiking the Trans Canada Trail. Well, not really. We are of course still following the same route of the national pathway, heading westward on our #Hike4Birds expedition, and continuing to walk across the country. What changed was how we described where we were going, particularly when asking local residents for directions or information about the trail ahead.

 
When we first began planning our journey, we imagined that explaining we were hiking the Great Trail, formerly known as the Trans Canada Trail, would provide a useful point of reference. After all, it was a national trail network connecting communities across the country. Surely people living beside it would know where it was, where it went, and how we might follow it through their region.  As we travelled, however, we increasingly discovered that this was not necessarily the case.
 
The realization developed largely in Nova Scotia, where we began noticing something curious about the trail signage. Some signs were divided between two identities, with the Trans Canada Trail logo on one side and the local trail logo on the other. On occasion, we discovered that stickers had been placed over the Trans Canada Trail portion, leaving only the regional designation visible. We had set out to follow a nationally recognized pathway, yet the signs along the route sometimes seemed more interested in identifying the local trail than the larger network to which it belonged.

 
Conversations with people along the way reinforced this observation. When we asked about the Trans Canada Trail, people sometimes had little idea what we meant, even when it passed directly through their communities. Yet mention the name of the local trail, and suddenly we were talking about somewhere familiar. People knew where it began, where it went, and sometimes what conditions we might encounter. We gradually realized that if we wanted useful information about the route ahead, it often made more sense to ask about the regional trail than the national network.
 
In Newfoundland, people understood where the T'RailwayTrail went. In Nova Scotia, references to the Celtic Shores Coastal Trail or Musquodoboit Trail or Cole Harbour Heritage Park Trails were considerably more meaningful than the name of the national network. Elsewhere, residents recognized the Harvest Moon Trailway, the Dobson Trail, or the Fundy Footpath. These were places that people knew, used, maintained, and understood as part of their communities.

 
As such, what we gradually came to realize was that asking about a particular regional trail often produced considerably more useful information than explaining that we were walking across Canada. When asked about their local trails (which are part of the TGT), people could tell us where a trailhead was located, whether a section was passable, or what conditions we might encounter. They sometimes had suggestions about places to find water, purchase supplies, or even camp. The local trail was something familiar, while the idea of walking across an entire province or the country as a whole was often too large to provide a practical point of reference.

 
This change also helped us navigate the trail itself. Rather than continually searching for Trans Canada Trail markers, which were not always present or consistent, we could sometimes follow the signage belonging to the regional trail we were travelling along. Understanding that a particular section had its own identity, management, and waymarking made it easier to recognize where we were supposed to be going. 

 
Of course, we never stopped hiking the Trans Canada Trail. We simply began describing our journey in terms that made sense to the people around us. What appeared on a national map as one enormous interconnected pathway is – it seems - at ground level, a collection of regional trails, local routes, and familiar places.  And while we continued to think about crossing Canada, we learned that asking someone how to reach the next trailhead was often much more useful than telling them we were walking to the Pacific Ocean and navigating the resulting flurry of questions.
 
See you on the Trail!