Walking the Trail and Being Seen : A Reflection from Manitoba

A Quick Note, and an Explanation 
 
This reflection was not easy to write, nor was it written lightly. Throughout our journey on the Trans Canada Trail, we have tried to balance gratitude for the kindness we encountered with honesty about the moments that were difficult, unsettling, or unsafe. In Manitoba, some of those moments were significant enough that leaving them unacknowledged would have felt incomplete.

 
This piece is not intended as a condemnation of a province or its people, but as a truthful account of how walking visibly through this landscape - and being seen while doing so - shaped our experience. We share it in the hope that openness, even when uncomfortable, contributes to understanding rather than division.
 
Reflecting on what walking the TCT in Manitoba revealed
 
In writing about the Trans Canada Trail in Manitoba, we focused first on the tangible realities of the route itself - the landscapes, the trail surfaces, the long distances, and the ways in which the idea of a national pathway stretches and changes across the prairies. Yet that account, complete as it may be in terms of terrain and logistics, does not fully capture what it meant to move through the province on foot. Just as varied as the trails themselves were the reactions we encountered while walking them. For every moment of kindness, curiosity, or quiet encouragement, there were others that were unsettling, confrontational, or deeply uncomfortable.

 
These encounters did not exist apart from the trail experience; they shaped it, colouring how places felt, how days unfolded, and how we understood our time in Manitoba. This reflection exists to acknowledge that parallel reality - not as a judgment of a province or its people, but as an honest accounting of how being seen while walking the Trans Canada Trail here became an inseparable part of the journey.

Responses were as Variable as the Trails

While the physical challenges of the Trans Canada Trail in Manitoba can be mapped and described, the social experiences encountered along the route are harder to quantify.   As we have said before, Manitoba, situated at the geographic centre of the country also feels as though it sits at the crossroads of some of Canada’s most persistent social and political tensions.  The variability we encountered on the trail itself was mirrored, sometimes starkly, in the responses we received from those we encountered along it.

 
As we walked, reactions ranged widely. At times, we were met with genuine kindness: offers of help, encouragement, and quiet curiosity from people who wanted to understand why anyone would choose to cross the province or the entire county on foot. At other moments, however, the response was suspicion, full of hostility, or just outright aggressive. These encounters were not isolated or abstract; they shaped how safe we felt, how days unfolded, and how we experienced the trail as a lived space rather than a mapped route.
 
Near the southern boundary of the province, our presence on the trail attracted repeated scrutiny. We were identified by Canadian border security while walking the national trail, and on several occasions questioned by members of the local population who insisted we were “not real Canadians,” demanding to know whether we were Nigerian or Somali. At the time we had no idea why the region had just a focus and while we are now better informed their attitudes are still nowhere near justified.  What stood out was not only the racialized nature of these confrontations, but their persistence - an ongoing interrogation of identity while simply moving through the landscape on foot.

This sense of surveillance was reinforced by repeated encounters with self-styled “Citizens on Patrol,” individuals who drove rural routes, claiming to be COPS – with the inference that they were actual police officers.  In one unsettling case the older man demanded our passports and cameras. These moments were deeply unsettling, blurring the line between civic concern and intimidation. Elsewhere along concession roads, vehicles would pull up beside us or stop briefly ahead before accelerating away, deliberately spraying us with gravel. These incidents were brief, but cumulative, reinforcing a sense of vulnerability that walking already carries.

In one community, hostility turned physical. While grocery shopping and wearing masks -  as the Covid pandemic and laws required at the time - we were forcibly held against a wall, our food kicked away, and ordered to remove our masks. Once we complied, we were released and told that those involved were “sorry,” explaining that they had only acted to “allow us” to “think for ourselves” rather than behave like “sheeple.” The irony of being physically coerced in the name of individual freedom was impossible to ignore. Similar sentiments appeared elsewhere in the province, where posters and “information” cards described COVID as a hoax or political scam.

Later in Manitoba, encounters escalated again. We were deliberately targeted and struck by ATVs on the trail, followed by harassment when we documented the incident and addressed it publicly. In one tourist town, repeated comments made it clear that we were not welcome - that “our type” did not belong, and that we did not “fit” with the people of the area.

What made these experiences particularly stark was the contrast encountered immediately beyond Manitoba’s borders. From Saskatchewan westward, the tone shifted noticeably. Encounters became warmer, curiosity replaced suspicion, and support outweighed hostility. That contrast sharpened our awareness that what we experienced in Manitoba was not simply an inevitable consequence of walking through rural Canada.

The impact of these encounters did not end when we crossed into the next province. Emails and online harassment linked to our time in Manitoba followed us across the country, eventually leading us to disable comments on the blog altogether. In subsequent conversations with other hikers and cyclists who have crossed the province, we learned that many had encountered similar attitudes and situations, suggesting that our experience was not unique.

All of this makes Manitoba one of the most challenging sections of the Trans Canada Trail for us to reflect on and write about. Not because of distance or terrain alone, but because the social landscape demanded as much resilience as the physical one. To acknowledge that reality is not to condemn a province or its people wholesale, but to recognize that trails do not exist outside the societies they pass through. Walking the Trans Canada Trail in Manitoba meant navigating both - the path beneath our feet, and the complex, often contested space of belonging, identity, and response that lay alongside it.

Further Thoughts on Walking the TCT in Manitoba

In the end, these reactions are not something to resolve or tidy away. They sit alongside the landscapes, the distances, and the days of walking as part of what Manitoba gave us on the Trans Canada Trail. Some encounters affirmed why we walk - for connection, curiosity, and the unexpected generosity of strangers. Others reminded us that moving slowly and visibly through a place can make you vulnerable in ways a car never does. Holding both truths matters.

This reflection is not about assigning blame or drawing conclusions, but about acknowledging that trails are lived spaces, shaped as much by human response as by geography. To write honestly about the Trans Canada Trail means writing about both - the path beneath our feet, and the way the world meets us while we walk it.

See you on the Trail!