Exploring Québec on the Trans Canada Trail: Our Walk, Stories, and Resources

Québec on the Trans Canada Trail

Three Seasons Walking the Sentier Transcanadien

When we crossed from New Brunswick into Québec in November 2019, we were entering the fifth province of our #Hike4Birds across Canada. Over the preceding months, our journey had taken us from Cape Spear, Newfoundland, across the Maritime provinces, along coastal footpaths, former railway corridors, rural roads, and some of Atlantic Canada's most demanding wilderness trails. Now, as autumn gave way to winter, we were about to discover another side of the Trans Canada Trail.

Québec would eventually become one of the most varied and memorable provinces of our journey, combining exceptional rail trails and cycling networks with challenging mountain footpaths, historic communities, vibrant cities, and extraordinary opportunities to explore nature. However, unlike the four provinces we had already completed, our passage across Québec would ultimately take place over three separate hiking seasons between 2019 and 2022.

Our first visit took us along the Petit Témis toward Rivière-du-Loup, where freezing temperatures and the difficulties of arranging the next sections of our route brought our inaugural season to an end. We returned in autumn 2021, beginning near Baie-Saint-Paul and continuing through the beautiful Charlevoix region, Québec City, the Eastern Townships, and eventually Montréal. Finally, in spring 2022, we returned to complete the section from Montréal toward Ottawa, following the P’tit Train du Nord and exploring the natural landscapes of western Québec.

Along the way, we witnessed bird migration along the St. Lawrence River, encountered spectacular autumn colours, discovered welcoming communities and remarkable local bakeries, and enjoyed some of the best-developed recreational pathways we would experience anywhere in Canada. We also faced difficult weather, changing trail conditions, costly accommodation and reservations, and the challenges of bringing together a national pathway that was not always understood as one connected route.

Throughout these journeys, we documented our experiences in daily journals, sharing photographs, natural history observations, local discoveries, and the realities of travelling through Québec on foot. Since completing our coast-to-coast-to-coast #Hike4Birds, we have expanded the collection to include walking itineraries, cycling assessments, planning resources, and reflections on the lessons of those three seasons.

Whether you are planning an adventure on the Sentier Transcanadien, interested in exploring Québec's remarkable trails, or simply curious about following our journey across Canada, we invite you to explore these resources and Come Walk With Us.

Follow Our Walk Across Québec

Our complete Québec Trans Canada Trail journal brings together the daily entries, photographs, experiences, and observations from all three stages of our journey across the province.

We began with our arrival from New Brunswick into Dégelis, following the Petit Témis through quiet forests, past lakes, and toward the St. Lawrence River. The quality of the trail, with its maintained surface, rest areas, and interpretive information, was a welcome change after some of the road connections and demanding footpaths of New Brunswick. However, shorter days, falling temperatures, and the arrival of winter eventually brought us to Rivière-du-Loup, where we concluded our first season of walking across Canada.

When we returned to Québec in autumn 2021, our journey began again near Baie-Saint-Paul. The demanding footpaths of Charlevoix led us through spectacular forests and mountains overlooking the St. Lawrence River, before we continued toward Québec City and south through communities connected by the Route Verte and other excellent recreational pathways. Our journals record everything from steep muddy trails and changing weather to remarkable kindness, historic towns, and the cultural experiences of travelling through French-speaking Québec.

This stage culminated in Montréal, where we celebrated reaching the extraordinary milestone of 10,000 kilometres walked on the Trans Canada Trail. It was an achievement that would have seemed almost unimaginable when we first stood at Cape Spear in 2019.

Our final Québec stage began in spring 2022, when we returned to Montréal and followed the P’tit Train du Nord northward through the Laurentians. Beyond Mont-Laurier, the route changed character again as we continued through rural communities, road connections, and the landscapes of the Gatineau region before finally crossing into Ottawa, Ontario.

Readers can follow each of these three stages chronologically through the complete provincial archive, experiencing how the landscapes, seasons, and circumstances of our journey changed over time.

Planning a Walk or Cycle Across Québec

For those considering their own adventures on the Trans Canada Trail, we have assembled several resources examining the practicalities of travelling across Québec on foot or by bicycle.

Our Walking the Trans Canada Trail in Québec: Research, Resources and Planning Information guide examines the province's route, trail networks, services, accommodation considerations, and the logistical challenges of planning an extended journey. Complementing this, our walking itinerary for the Trans Canada Trail in Québec documents our daily stages, distances, and the time required to complete our crossing over three separate seasons.

Québec offers some of the most extensive and well-developed recreational trail systems in Canada, but the character of the route changes considerably between regions. The Petit Témis and P’tit Train du Nord provide long, well-established railway corridors, while Charlevoix includes rugged footpaths that demand different equipment, preparation, and expectations. Between these distinctive trail systems, the Sentier Transcanadien also incorporates urban pathways, cycling routes, and roadway connections.

For those interested in backcountry walking, our feature on hiking the Sentier des Caps de Charlevoix explores one of the most memorable mountain footpaths of our Québec journey, including the landscape, trail conditions, and considerations for planning a multi-day hike.

We have also examined whether the Trans Canada Trail in Québec can be cycled. The Route Verte, Petit Témis, P’tit Train du Nord, and other established pathways offer exceptional opportunities for cyclists, although the precise route of the Trans Canada Trail includes rugged hiking sections that are not appropriate for conventional cycling.

Our guide to understanding the Trans Canada Trail in Québec provides a broader introduction to the regional trail systems, route connections, and experiences available to walkers and cyclists.

These resources are intended to help future visitors appreciate the possibilities and challenges of the route rather than prescribe a particular adventure. Our observations date from 2019, 2021, and 2022, and current trail conditions, reservations, access arrangements, camping regulations, and services should always be confirmed before setting out.

Discovering Québec's Birds and Wildlife

Birding and encouraging people to reconnect with nature remained central to our #Hike4Birds throughout Québec. The province's varied landscapes, from boreal forests and mountain ridges to agricultural lowlands, river corridors, and extensive wetlands, offered remarkable opportunities to observe birds and wildlife across different seasons.

During our first visit in November 2019, the forests and waterways around the Petit Témis introduced us to the changing wildlife of early winter. Migrating birds were already departing, colder temperatures were transforming the landscape, and the quiet railway corridor provided opportunities to appreciate the wildlife that remained as winter approached.

Our return in autumn 2021 offered a different experience. The forests and mountain landscapes of Charlevoix were changing colour, while the St. Lawrence River and its surrounding wetlands provided important habitats for migrating birds. The Cap Tourmente region was particularly memorable, illustrating how seasonal migrations connect Canada's landscapes to places far beyond its borders. As we continued through southern Québec toward Montréal, agricultural fields, waterways, forest edges, urban parks, and canal corridors introduced us to additional environments and wildlife. These observations are preserved in our daily journals and regional accounts of birds and nature along the Sentier Transcanadien.

Finally, our spring 2022 journey from Montréal toward Ottawa brought another transformation. Returning songbirds, flowering plants, active wetlands, and the forests of the Laurentians and Gatineau region offered the opportunity to experience the province in a season quite different from those we had encountered previously.

Together, these observations provide a record of Québec's natural environments as we experienced them while walking through the province at different times of year. They also illustrate one of the unexpected advantages of having our journey interrupted: we were able to witness the same province through several distinct seasonal landscapes.

Reflections from Our Fifth Province on the Trans Canada Trail 

Québec changed our understanding of the Trans Canada Trail in ways that extended far beyond its geography. It was the first province where our journey could not be completed as a relatively continuous progression from east to west. Winter conditions, access arrangements, logistical challenges, and later the COVID-19 pandemic meant accepting that our plans would have to change repeatedly as we hiked across the country.

Yet the interruptions also gave us opportunities to reconsider what progress meant during a journey measured in years rather than weeks or months. We learned that returning to an unfinished province did not diminish the experience, and that a continuous walking journey across Canada could be completed through persistence, adaptation, and a willingness to accept circumstances beyond our control.

Our reflections on hiking across Québec on the Sentier Transcanadien revisit the challenges, discoveries, and experiences that shaped those three seasons, while the original journals preserve the uncertainties and rewards of each day as we experienced them.

Québec also offered important lessons about the difference between a well-developed trail network and the practicalities of travelling through it on foot. Excellent cycling infrastructure, beautiful mountain pathways, and thoughtfully maintained recreational corridors did not always translate into a simple long-distance walking itinerary. Accommodation costs, reservations, camping restrictions, and the connections between individual trail systems all influenced what was possible.

Looking back after completing our coast-to-coast-to-coast journey, Québec remains one of the most memorable and varied chapters of our #Hike4Birds. It was a province of extraordinary landscapes, rich cultural experiences, remarkable recreational trails, and lessons in patience that would remain valuable throughout the years ahead.

Come Walk With Us Across Québec

Today, with our coast-to-coast-to-coast #Hike4Birds complete, we hope these collections offer something for anyone interested in exploring Québec and the Trans Canada Trail. Some readers may be planning a cycling adventure along the Route Verte or P’tit Train du Nord, others may be considering a backcountry walk in Charlevoix, while still others may be interested in the province's birds, natural history, communities, and cultural landscapes.

Our complete Québec archive remains the best place to discover the full collection of daily journals, photographs, itineraries, planning resources, birding observations, and reflections. We invite you to begin wherever your interests lead you, whether beside the quiet lakes of the Petit Témis, high above the St. Lawrence River, among the historic streets of Québec City and Montréal, or along the forested corridors of the Laurentians.

For us, Québec was the fifth province of a journey that would eventually carry us across Canada and north to the Arctic Ocean. When we finally completed our Québec crossing in June 2022, we had connected the sections of our journey from Cape Spear to the Saskatchewan–Alberta border. Returning to the western route, we could once again continue toward the Rocky Mountains and eventually the Pacific Ocean.

From Québec, we invite you to continue exploring the next chapter of our adventure in Ontario, where the enormous scale and variety of Canada's most extensive provincial section of the Trans Canada Trail would bring challenges and discoveries of its own.

Thank you for joining us, whether you followed our journeys through Québec between 2019 and 2022 or are discovering #Hike4Birds for the first time.

See you on the trail!