Why Hike the Trans Canada Trail?

 Why Trek Across Canada?

 

“Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without the burden of being productive.”

Rebecca Solnit. Wanderlust: A History of Walking

 

A Question that Assumes a Simple Answer

 
It is a deceptively simple question, and one that rarely has a satisfying answer. Why hike across Canada? Why trek the Trans Canada Trail?  Why walk so far, for so long? Why devote six years to a journey from coast to coast to coast? The question, or similarly related questions, each assumes that the answer will be singular, logical, and easily understood - when in truth it is none of those things.

 
For some, the idea of crossing a country on foot is framed as an athletic challenge or an act of endurance. For others, it is treated as a kind of personal manifesto and a declaration of identity.  For still more, it is an act of unimaginable insanity that is an utter waste of time and money.
 

Certainly not Athletic

 
One of the reasons the question why hike across Canada? lingers so stubbornly is that, at first glance, we do not fit the story people expect. We are not athletes. No one who sees us would mistake us for endurance specialists, elite adventurers, or people naturally built for physical extremes.   I am a researcher who essentially (and depressingly) lives at a desk, while Sean was a librarian and later a university educator.  As such, both of us have more in common with Winnie the Pooh than a high school athlete, let alone an Olympian.

 
In our talks, we often say (only half joking), that when people look at us, they probably don’t think we are outdoors people, explorers, or adventurers at all. And that disconnect matters. Because if walking across an entire country were simply the domain of the exceptionally fit or the professionally trained, then the question would be easier to answer. It could be dismissed as a test of athleticism.

 
Instead, our bodies and our ordinariness complicate the narrative. They force a more uncomfortable and more honest question: if this kind of journey isn’t reserved for the visibly athletic, then what is it really about, and why does it call to people like us in the first place?
 

Quiet and Messy Reasons

 
But for us, the reasons were quieter, messier, and far less resolved at the outset.
 
For my part, I have always loved birds and the natural world, and I have always been deeply curious about landscapes, ecosystems, and the ways people relate to place. But curiosity alone does not explain why I stepped away from a conventional life and a professional career. 
 
But then, at one point, life felt as though it was narrowing rather than opening.  I wasn’t making my own decisions and my efforts were no longer getting me ahead.  The currents of my life were being directed by others and I was only just surviving.

 
After years of training - a PhD, contract positions, short-term funding, and the constant pressure of sustaining not only my own work but often the jobs of others - the ground beneath me felt unstable. The work demanded everything, yet offered no sense of continuity or belonging. Walking became a way of slowing the slide, of reclaiming time, and of choosing a different measure of value.
 

At first, I set out on day walks and then weekend hikes on the Bruce Trail – which is an awesome and inspiring pathway, but certainly not a trek across Canada.   
 

What You Carry With You

 
Sean’s reasons were different, though no less human. Always a person who constantly kept himself busy, whether that be at work, getting another degree with improbable speed, volunteering in the community or out photographing something.  He was always busy, at one point in our lives I thought he simply had lots of energy. 
 
The truth was much tougher.  After years of knowing him I began to see and then discovered that he stayed busy to escape memories that had never loosened their grip.   Ultimately, he would walk for the same reason, purposefully choosing the world’s longest trail with the simple yet complex goal of keeping his mind exhausted.

 
As a child, he had undergone a lot of medical surgery and undergone countless doctor’s visits. In elementary school he endured a year of childhood abuse that went unacknowledged by family. A few years later, he was discarded by his parents at a young age, and more recently, he had endured the loss of an academic career that had once promised stability and purpose.   These experiences left marks that shaped how he moved through the world - cautious, guarded, and deeply distrustful of institutions and people alike.  Walking offered a form of distance that did not require forgetting, only space and time.
 
Stepping out the door and onto the trail would give him the opportunity to navigate those things that he had long avoided and which had begun to affect him in unexpected ways. 
 

Walking to Heal, Trekking for Hope

 
His situation would lead us onto the Camino Frances, then the Via Podiensis / GR65 and finally the Camino Portuguese – on which we would cross Spain, France, and Portugal.  

These were inspiring and life-changing adventures, and the moment each one ended, we eagerly began planning our next one.

 

Disconnection at Home

 
At the same time, we began navigating a family problem.  A younger family member was skipping more than 40 days of high school each semester, he was stealing and lying, and eventually he lost his friends, all just to play video games.  He, like so many others, had become disconnected from each other, the natural world, and everything that was essential in life.
 
At its core was a life lived online and behind a screen, accompanied with few lived experiences.

 
What became clear was that much like ourselves, many people around us were struggling - distracted, disconnected, and overwhelmed in ways that were easy to dismiss but hard to undo. Screens filled the gaps between moments. Time slipped by unnoticed. We were all busy, yet increasingly absent from one another, from the natural world, and from the things that quietly ground us. Time in nature and time spent walking did not offer a solution to these problems, but it did offer space to notice them. It slowed everything down enough to see how far removed we had become from the rhythms that once shaped daily life. And in that slowing, hiking began to feel less like a personal escape and more like a way of paying attention - to ourselves, to others, and to what had been missing all along.
 

A Slow Process of Learning

 
What we learned, slowly and often painfully, is that long journeys are rarely about escape in the way people imagine, and even the way we hope at times.  You can hike as far as you want, but you can’t outrun your mind and ultimately you cannot walk away from yourself. 

Instead, you walk with what you carry, day after day, until it changes shape. Some burdens grow lighter. Others simply become more familiar, and something you can live with rather than struggle to hide from.
 

A Canadian Question

 
Along our early trails and pilgrimages, one comment was kept rising up – Why not hike Canada?  People from countries around the world would continually comment on our home nation as full of wildlife, full of wonder, and full of nature from coast to coast to coast.  Every time we heard others talk about Canada we saw it in a new light – and our own curiosity began to take over.  At the time, we had each lived in various provinces and territories across the nation for almost 45 years and had taken Via Rail trains from the Atlantic to the Pacific dozens of times.  Yet we began to wonder just how much we did not know about our country.

 
And so our increasing interest in exploring, our hope that hiking and time in nature would help us find answers, and the tantalizing of being able to take in Canada at a more natural pace led us to the Trans Canada Trail and the development of Come Walk With Us with #Hike4Birds at its core. 
 

Letting Meaning Emerge

 
In the end, the question “Why hike across Canada?” resists a tidy answer because it assumes that meaning precedes action.  In other words it means that we must have known the answer before we set out onto the trail.  And that is definitely not the case. 
 
Instead, for us, meaning emerged through time - through weather and fatigue, through birds encountered in unexpected places, through kindness offered and withheld, through the quiet work of putting one foot in front of the other.

 
We all have our reasons for seeking peace. Time in nature can help create it. So can the act of striving toward something larger than yourself, not for recognition, but in the hope that the journey might mend those anxieties in yourself – and if you’re lucky, you might even inspire others to look at their own lives as well as the world around them with a little more honesty and care.
 
And sometimes, that has to be enough.  Because sometimes that is all you get. 
 
See you on the Trail!