Different Times, Different Means – Exploring Canada on the Trans Canada Trail

        “We move through this world on paths laid down long before we are born.”

 Robert Moor, On Trails: An Exploration

 

A Life Spent Along the TCT

 

Most people who know our story know that we hiked the Trans Canada Trail. After trekking the East Coast Trail in 2018, we returned to the East Coast and, from 2019 to 2025, we walked from the Atlantic to the Pacific and then north toward the Arctic Ocean, following the national pathway across provinces, landscapes, seasons, and stages of our lives.

 

What fewer people know – and what it took us a lot of time to realize - is that walking was never the only way the Trans Canada Trail entered our story.

 

Hike it, Bike it, Paddle it

 

Over the years, we have not only hiked the TCT. We have cycled parts of it, kayaked and paddleboarded along its water routes, sailed stretches of it, and crossed sections of it by ferry. We have lived beside it, studied along it, worked near it, researched birds along it, travelled across the country beside it by train, and made major life and career decisions while walking pathways that we later realized were part of the same national route.

 

In hindsight, this is one of the most extraordinary parts of our relationship with the Trans Canada Trail. The trail did not simply begin for us at Cape Spear in 2019. Long before we set out with backpacks, cameras, and the idea of #Hike4Birds, the pathway was already there in the background of our lives.

 

Living on the Trans Canada Trail

 

When we lived in Peterborough while completing graduate work, we were living almost directly on the TCT. Hunter Street, the local trails, the Kawartha Trans Canada Trail, and the pathways we cycled and walked while studying at Trent University were all part of a larger network we did not yet fully understand. During my Master’s research, one of my migratory bird study sites was beside a rural section of the TCT in the Kawarthas, and I often walked along the trail to reach it.

 

In Ajax and St. Catharines, we lived blocks away from the national pathway. Our ordinary waterfront walks, weekend outings, and local rambles were often on or near the TCT, even when we did not think of them that way.

 

Sean’s time at Laurentian University in Sudbury also placed him beside the trail, which passed near his residence and office. Later, while completing graduate research in Windsor, his regular walk from the VIA Rail station toward the University of Windsor followed a waterfront route connected to the southern terminus of the Trans Canada Trail.

Even our Bruce Trail hikes repeatedly intersected with the TCT. In Niagara, along the Niagara Parkway Recreation Trail, near St. Catharines, on the Laura Secord Legacy Route, through Dundas Valley, and around Forks of the Credit, we were often moving along or beside sections of the same national pathway. At the time, those walks belonged to a different story. Years later, they feel like earlier chapters of the same one.

The same was true in Simcoe, where I worked at Bird Studies Canada. We lived along the Lynn Valley Trail and often walked or cycled from Simcoe toward Brantford and Paris.

 

In winter, we skied sections of the TCT near Hamilton and through Dundas Valley.

 

In Toronto, I made the decision to begin my PhD while taking long walks on the Pan Am Path and Waterfront Trail, both of which belong to the wider TCT network. Even now, when we look at new links being developed between Ottawa and North Bay, we realize that parts of the expanding national pathway pass through landscapes connected to my PhD research sites near Algonquin Provincial Park.

 

On the West Coast, the pattern continued. In Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast, we lived near the Salish Sea Marine Trail. We swam, kayaked, paddleboarded, and sailed along waters connected to the TCT.

In 2018, while training for the long hike that would later define so much of our lives, we completed the full route from Horseshoe Bay to Sechelt to Nanaimo.

 

Even the railway kept weaving us back into the same geography. Our repeated trips across Canada on VIA Rail’s Ocean and Canadian crossed, paralleled, and intersected with the Trans Canada Trail again and again.

 

Those journeys with family, at school, at work, and through each next stage of life were not trail journeys in the usual sense, but upon reflection, we see that they each moved us along the same national corridor.  Which is both unnerving and wonderful.

 

Choosing to Hike across Canada

 

There is another part to this, too. Throughout my life and over these years, my father often sent me newspaper clippings about various topics.  Recently, cleaning out my desk, I found dozens of clippings about the TCT being built,  Dana Meise setting out on his trek, and Dianne Whelan crossing Ontario. 

Though I have no memory of receiving them.  I am sure that at the time I read them, tucked them into a drawer, and moved on with the busyness of life.   It is strange to think that the idea may have been present long before we knew where it would lead us.

 

All of this makes me wonder whether we really chose the Trans Canada Trail in one decisive moment, or whether it had been showing itself to us for years.

We like to think that we make clear decisions and set our own course. Sometimes we do. But sometimes, when we look back, we can see a different pattern. A trail sign glimpsed on a local walk. A pathway beside a research site. A rail trail used for commuting. A waterfront route followed between school sessions and term papers.  A clipped newspaper article. A national line appearing and disappearing through each of our lives until, one day, it becomes impossible not to follow.

 

While our hike across Canada began at Cape Spear. I now see that perhaps our relationship with the Trans Canada Trail began much earlier, in different times and by different means, long before we understood where it was leading us.

 

Odd how life works sometimes.

 

See you on the Trail