How Do You Walk Across Canada?

“For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone,
 and is a succession of little things that are brought together.”

Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh, October 22, 1882

 

The Everyday Questions We Are Asked About the Trans Canada Trail

 

After telling someone that we spent six years walking the Trans Canada Trail from the Atlantic to the Pacific and ultimately north to the Arctic, the questions that follow are remarkably consistent. People want to know how we knew where to go, where we slept, how we found enough food, and whether we were frightened by bears or other wildlife. Sometimes the questions are practical, sometimes they reveal a genuine interest in undertaking part of the trail themselves, and sometimes they seem to come from a mental picture of two people disappearing into the Canadian wilderness with backpacks and hoping to emerge several thousand kilometres later at another ocean.

 

The reality was both less dramatic and considerably more complicated.

 

Walking across Canada was only occasionally and briefly something resembling a wilderness expedition. It was a long process of moving between communities, trails, rail corridors, city pathways, rural roads, highways, parks, forests, campgrounds and whatever services happened to exist along the route at that particular moment. The Trans Canada Trail itself changed constantly from east to west to north, which meant that the practical routines of navigating, sleeping, eating and staying safe changed along with it. There was never one system that carried us across the country. What worked in Newfoundland did not necessarily work in Ontario; what worked on the Prairies became inadequate in northern British Columbia, and by the time we were travelling toward the Arctic many of the assumptions and routines that we had built up and that had been perfectly reasonable between the Atlantic and Pacific no longer applied.

 

How Did We Know Where We Were Going?

 

At first, this seemed like the easiest question to answer. We had the dated guidebooks published about the trail from over a decade ago, and we had the Trans Canada Trail online map to study, which provided us with a general sense of where the trail was supposed to go.  In addition, before beginning the TCT, we had already spent years following long-distance hiking routes and Caminos, where navigation usually involved some combination of guidebooks, trail markers, GPS tracks and a relatively well-established understanding of where the route was supposed to lead. We expected the Trans Canada Trail to require more planning simply because of its scale, but we still assumed that once we were on the ground, the basic question of where the trail went would usually have a clear answer.

 

Sometimes it did. Named local trails, established rail corridors, urban greenways and well-maintained recreational routes could be remarkably straightforward. In Newfoundland, the T’Railway Trail created an obvious corridor across much of the island. Prince Edward Island’s Confederation Trail was similarly coherent. Large portions of Quebec followed established cycling and rail-trail infrastructure like the P’tit Temis, Route Verte, and Petit Train du Nord, while other sections across the country were sufficiently well signed that we could simply walk and enjoy the day without constantly wondering whether we were still on route.

The difficulty usually came between those places.

The TCT connects hundreds of local trail systems, and the transitions between them could involve municipal paths, roads, ATV tracks, water routes, temporary connectors and occasionally a line on a map that no longer corresponded particularly well with what existed on the ground. In Ontario, signs, apps and visible corridors did not always agree, particularly where flooding, construction, closures or seasonal conditions had changed the route. Manitoba offered an even clearer example. In the Whiteshell, flagging tape sometimes served where permanent trail markers might otherwise have been expected, while near Emerson the official app and signs on the ground suggested different routes. Along the international border, what appeared on the map as a grassy trail proved to be waist-high vegetation concealing deep holes that made travelling with our carts impractical, so we shifted onto the parallel Post Road instead.

 

Over time, navigation became less about blindly following a line and more about evaluating information.  When TCT signs gave out, or we went to a place unexpectedly, we relied on GPS information and relied on local trails that are part of the TCT network. We also relied on ourpre-hike research and re-studied sections ahead whenever we had connectivity.  We learned early on to know what the local trail section in the TCT network was and to follow it rather than rely on trying to find TCT signage, which was often far less consistent and correct (the TCT route has shifted over the years but not all the signs have followed it).

 

With that said, some of our best information came from people who actually lived beside the trail. Trail builders, park staff, farmers, cyclists, campground hosts and local residents frequently knew whether a bridge had washed out, whether an old rail corridor was overgrown, whether a road was safe to walk or whether a route that still appeared perfectly continuous online had become impassable months earlier. Manitoba taught us particularly clearly that local knowledge could distinguish between a trail that was merely difficult and one that was presently unusable or only mapped online in theory but had not been developed in reality.

 

Princeton, British Columbia, eventually gave us one of the clearest examples of why no single source could be treated as absolute. When we walked into this section, online trail maps still showed a route along the Kettle Valley Rail Trail toward Hope, yet local residents and trail workers described serious flood damage, missing connections and unsafe conditions. When we walked out to look for ourselves, the damaged infrastructure confirmed what we had been told. The line still existed digitally, but parts of the physical route no longer existed in the same way.

 

So how did we know where we were going?

 

Usually by combining several imperfect sources and then looking at the landscape in front of us.

Perhaps that is the most useful thing the TCT taught us about navigation. A map tells you where somebody intended and hoped a route to go. A sign tells you where someone believed it went when the sign was installed. A GPS track tells you where a line has been recorded. A local person may tell you what happened last week. None of those pieces of information is necessarily wrong, but on a trail stretching 28,000 km across  an entire country, they do not always describe the same reality at the same time.

 

Eventually we stopped asking only, Where does the trail go? The more important question became, Can that route reasonably be safely followed today?

 

Did We Camp Every Night?

 

People often seem surprised by the answer to this question because the image of walking across Canada tends to include a tent every night.  And make no mistake, we certainly camped a great deal, but where we slept depended enormously on where we were.

 

Newfoundland offered some of the easiest opportunities for wild camping on the entire Atlantic-to-Pacific journey. Along the East Coast Trail and T’Railway Trail there were many places where a tent could reasonably be set up, tucked off the track, sufficiently removed from homes or cabins, and be close to water – although finding somewhere flat and dry was often a different matter.   Larger communities such as Clarenville, Gander, Grand Falls-Windsor, Deer Lake and Corner Brook then became opportunities to stop indoors, wash clothing, dry equipment, repair gear, recharge batteries and cameras, resupply and occasionally give our bodies a proper rest.

 

That mixture continued across the country, but the proportions changed constantly.  There were established campgrounds, provincial parks, national parks, trail shelters, commercial camping areas, wild camps beside trails and roads, motels, hotels and many times we stayed with people we met along the way or who invited us. Sometimes communities naturally appeared at the end of a walking day. At other times the geography did not cooperate at all, and we had to decide whether to stop early, walk much farther than planned or improvise and try to camp unnoticed – which led to some unusual evenings.

 

Ontario demonstrated just how regional the answer could become. Through the Greater Toronto Area, camping was rarely possible or even realistically available, so accommodations became part of the route and daily distances were shaped by where we could find somewhere safe and affordable to sleep. In eastern and southwestern Ontario, campgrounds, communities, friends and family provided other possibilities. In cottage country and Muskoka, private property, seasonal campgrounds and high accommodation prices complicated what appeared on a map to be a landscape full of forests, lakes, and crown land. Farther north, camping became easier again in some places, but water, land ownership, trail conditions and the next day’s route continued to influence where we could reasonably stop.

 

This was one of those aspects of the journey that looked simple from home and became much more interesting/complicated once we were actually living it. Seeing a forest beside a trail does not necessarily mean there is somewhere appropriate to camp. A road may be surrounded by open land but bordered entirely by fences and private property. A beautiful riverside might be too wet, steep or exposed to use. A city may contain dozens of parks but nowhere a traveller can responsibly erect a tent without notice.  And – then there was the fact that no matter where we were or how remote we felt a region was – there were always people nearby, which changes the viable options open to you in both frustrating and good ways.

 

Eventually the question was rarely simply, Can we camp here?  It became: Can we find somewhere safe, reasonably dry, close enough to water, appropriate for the circumstances and positioned so tomorrow still makes sense?

 

Sometimes the answer was a tent pitched to wild camp, sometimes it was a campground or a provincial park. Sometimes it was a motel room whose main attraction was simply a shower, laundry machine and somewhere to spread wet gear to dry out across every available surface.  And sometimes someone we had met along the way changed the entire plan by offering a backyard, a meal or another form of hospitality we could never have scheduled from home. Where we slept became part of the uncertainty and part of the fabric of the journey.

 

How Did We Find Enough Food?

 

For much of the Atlantic-to-Pacific crossing, food was less difficult than people imagine.  We were asked by an interested and talented group of school children in Falcon Lake, Manitoba, if we hunted and fished while on the Trans Canada Trail.  While we never did either – a point of disappointment to a group of youth with far more outdoors skill than us – that also did not mean we could simply walk until we became hungry and assume a grocery store would appear. Resupply always required planning – even if at times it was only at times a week in advance.  What we relied upon also required shifting our expectations. 

 

When we began on the East Coast Trail, we relied on dehydrated trail meals – but they are expensive, bulky, have lots of packaging, and get repetitive quickly, let alone attempting to rely on them for more than 750 days.

 

Supermarkets that appear conveniently located when travelling by car may be several kilometres away from the trail when on foot – or in the middle of a mall or plaza that is challenging to get to on foot. In addition, opening hours, holiday closures, seasonal business choices, and small-town realities all shift what is listed as being available and open and what is not.  A store can change ownership or be closed.  An owner can be away on vacation and be closed.  A community marked prominently on a map does not necessarily contain a full grocery store or restaurant. 

 

Beyond these realities, we quickly discovered the challenge of relying on mailing ourselves resupply boxes – community postal officials (as we discovered) can close for the day, begin holidays a few days early, or simply send a box that they were meant to hold back because they don’t know who you are or what Canada Post’s FlexDelivery system is.  And of course, mail can simply be lost.

 

With all of that said – much of the Atlantic to Pacific corridor of the TCT follows the same broad corridor where most Canadians live and where the larger cities are situated. As a result, across Atlantic Canada, Quebec and much of Ontario, communities appeared frequently enough that food could usually be replenished every few days. Grocery stores were supplemented by gas stations, convenience stores, cafés, restaurants and whatever happened to be available in smaller places. Newfoundland was a mixture of all of these, with larger communities allowing us to resupply completely and smaller places providing just enough to keep us moving. Manitoba showed the same pattern in a different landscape. Winnipeg, Emerson, Altona, Morden, Neepawa, Russell, Roblin and other communities became resupply points, while smaller settlements could be much less predictable. As noted, a place name on the map did not guarantee an open store, café or restaurant – or even a hospitable shop owner willing to sell to someone they did not know and who was not from their community.

 

Food was also one of the ways kindness repeatedly entered the journey. People offered fruit, baked goods, meals, cold drinks, vegetables and sometimes simply gave directions to somewhere we could buy what we needed. Those gestures cannot be planned and rarely appear on an itinerary, but after thousands of kilometres they became part of how we remembered particular communities.

 

All of this began changing as we moved farther north. Northern Ontario had already increased the distance between dependable services, and the route through northern Alberta pushed resupply planning farther still. By northern British Columbia, food was no longer simply something purchased along the journey. It increasingly determined the journey. Long gaps between dependable services meant carrying many days of supplies at once, and by Fort St. John and beyond the weight of food itself began affecting our pace.

 

That experience eventually became what we have come to think of as “distance becoming supply.”

A hundred kilometres was no longer simply a number on the map. It represented breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks that had to be purchased, packed and physically moved across those hundred kilometres. If the terrain slowed us down, those supplies needed to last longer. Carrying more food or water made the carts heavier, which could slow us further. Somewhere north of Dawson Creek, the relationship between distance and food became much more direct and more challenging than it had been during most of the Atlantic-to-Pacific crossing.  Throughout the Arctic portion of the journey, getting the calculation wrong could become genuinely serious.  On a number of occasions up north – even with extra supplies on us – the topography of the landscape and unexpected challenges gave way to real and unpleasant food issues for us. 

 

So when people ask how we found enough food, the answer changes depending on which part of Canada they mean. For much of the TCT, we simply purchased what we required in the communities through which the route passed. We shopped where residents shopped, ate where people ate, carried enough to bridge the gaps and adjusted when what we expected to find was not available. Farther north, however, resupply and eating truly became one of the more challenging parts of the expedition itself.

 

Was the Wilderness Dangerous?

 

This question often arrives in another form: What did you do when bears came after you?

 

The assumption is understandable. Canada, its national parks, and extensive forests are associated with bears, wolves, moose and vast northern landscapes, and anyone imagining two people sleeping outside for years naturally begins imagining what might be wandering around the tent.

 

To be clear, wildlife deserves distance and respect, and we never treated it casually. We encountered bears, heard coyotes regularly and travelled through places inhabited by moose, wolves, bison, caribou and many other animals. In the North especially, wildlife shared the same roads, river valleys and camp areas (car pull-off areas) that we were using, and an encounter became more consequential when we were carrying food and were many kilometres from assistance. Clean camps, careful food storage, awareness, bear spray, bells, and the willingness to wait or retreat were simply part of travelling responsibly.

 

But to be honest, while we have woken up to a black bear outside of our tent, the fact remains that after walking the country, wildlife is not what comes first when I think about danger on the Trans Canada Trail.

 

Traffic does – narrow road shoulders, transport trucks, RVs, blind corners, construction zones, high-speed vehicles and distracted drivers were a much more persistent concern than bears. Northern Ontario exposed us to long highway sections where constant attention was required. Alberta contained routes where we eventually decided the mapped route was no longer worth the risk. From Dawson Creek north toward the Arctic, highway travel is the defining reality of the journey, with large trucks, RVs and construction traffic sharing the same corridor. As we note in our daily blogs, roads are one of the largest safety concerns for long-distance walkers because conditions can shift quickly with traffic speed, shoulder width, weather, visibility, and impairment.

Weather could be equally serious. Snow in Quebec brought our first year on the TCT to an end as we only had summer clothes on us.  In contrast, extreme heat in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan forced us to rethink water, pace, distance, when we walked and ultimately our gear choices. Cold, storms and mountain weather changed decisions farther west. Wildfire smoke affected visibility and breathing in British Columbia.  Rain could turn apparently straightforward trails or roads into mud, flood crossings, or undermine infrastructure. In the Arctic, there were days when remaining where we were was the sensible choice because wind, cold or rain had made continuing unnecessarily risky.

 

Water was another challenge precisely because Canada appears to have so much of it. Walking beside a lake or river does not automatically mean you have safe or convenient drinking water. In Ontario, even being beside a Great Lake did not necessarily put water into our bottles; access, filtering, pollution, steep shorelines and distance from the route all become factors on the ground. Across exposed prairie roads and later northern highways, the distance to a dependable water source often influenced the entire day.

 

And then there was exhaustion. Perhaps that is the least dramatic hazard and one of the easiest to underestimate. A difficult kilometre is rarely the problem by itself. The problem is the accumulation of thousands of them. Heat after poor sleep. Traffic after several stressful days. Mud after rain. A sore ankle after weeks of pavement. A bad decision made late in the afternoon because you are hungry and simply want the day to end can have consequences well beyond that moment. None of which is dramatic, but enduring constant insects, rain, mud, road noise, and being constantly vigilant while also writing and photographing each day can gradually affect morale and judgment, even though none of these seem especially serious in isolation.

 

Factors, Not Fears

 

To anyone reading, I am sure all of this sounds like a lot – and in some ways it is.  But these are all only factors we learned to navigate along the Trans Canada Trail.  These factors and realities do not mean that we spent six years frightened.  In fact, most days were simply days of walking from one place to another along the route.  We ate, hiked, and slept.   Birds sang from the trees. People passed on bicycles. Someone might stop to ask where we were headed. We bought groceries, had a coffee, found water, took photographs, crossed another section and looked for somewhere to sleep. The extraordinary length of the journey was built mostly from very ordinary days.

 

What changed over time was our understanding of risk. The dramatic things people imagine were rarely the things demanding our attention every hour or even very often. The most important dangers were often mundane: a narrow road shoulder, too little water, excessive heat, worsening weather, a route that no longer existed as mapped, or the temptation to keep walking after fatigue had begun affecting judgment.

 

The Everyday Work of Walking Across Canada

 

Perhaps these questions are so common because a journey of this size is difficult to imagine through ordinary life. Eighteen thousand kilometres sounds huge and abstract. Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic sound like general geographical ideas. It is easier to picture bears, tents and wilderness than to imagine thousands of mornings spent checking weather, packing food, deciding between two possible routes, drying socks, filtering water and calculating whether the next community is realistically reachable before dark.  We were hardly survivalists or ever really needed to be.  Much of our life on the trail was ordinary – yet that ordinary work was the journey.

 

We did not cross Canada because we always knew exactly where we were going. We crossed it by learning how to decide where to go when the information we had on hand disagreed. We did not sleep in one kind of place. We slept wherever the geography, communities, weather, budget and circumstances made sense.  We did not carry six years of food. We moved through a country of communities and gradually figured out what we needed, where we could get it, and how far we could push ourselves.   And we certainly did not spend every day defending ourselves from the wilderness or wildlife (ok, maybe the blackflies in the summer). More often, staying safe meant paying attention to roads, weather, water, fatigue and our own willingness to change a plan when the world in front of us differed from the one we had imagined.

 

Perhaps that is what most of these questions eventually have in common. People ask how we managed a journey that sounds extraordinary.  Yet the truth is that most of the answers we have are remarkably ordinary.  We studied the maps, researched the trail, paid attention to the realities of the section we were on and listened to local people who knew the region better.  And when those things told us something different from what we had expected, we tried to be willing to change our minds.

 

As we have said before, 18,000 km from coast to coast to coast sounds impressive – but in reality it was a trek undertaken step by step.

 

See you on the trail.