TransCanada

The Canadian road trip

CBC tweaked the memory bank this morning.

They interviewed folks with road stories about their trips on the TransCanada highway.

Well, our little family has a few but there was this one in particular.

It would have been many years past and we were living and working in the unique little town of Dauphin Manitoba. We were in deep, at the time, into the hippie commune/back to the land ethos. We were living in an old farmhouse that required a full Linda makeover but we were comfortable and getting used to chasing cattle back to where they belonged, on the other side of the neighbour’s fence.

The job was not so comfortable. Another story.

We had two little kids at the time, too little cash and one little Datsun hatchback.

We were ready for something. We had put an ad in the Mother Earth News magazine, our monthly journey into the stories and dreams of young folks living and thriving in leafy, Vermont rural splendor. Maybe it was time to chase the ad.

So, we packed it in, loaded up the little red Japanese fun machine and pointed it due east.

We hit the road and the road was the TransCanada.

Did we have a plan, no sir.

We had a map. No Siri.

We had a pup tent no RV.

We had some traveller’s cheques (look it up kids), no credit cards.

It was pretty sketchy but also pretty wonderfully seventies as we stepped into the world of the very young on the road, except most of them were travelling without youngsters. We pitied them.

There were some advantages then.

Gas was cheap especially in a Datsun.

Camping was cheap, especially tenting.

I got lucky and married a renaissance woman who took self-sufficiency, creativity and a warrior spirit to life in a different lane. She once stood down a motorcycle gang who took over a campground we were in. She stood guard over the tent. Fearless.

The first leg across Manitoba into Northern Ontario was exciting but a little boring. We realized quite soon that the camp chairs were taking up more than their fair share of Datsun space and the kids insisted we set them up on the road for the lucky first persons coming by in need. We rolled through Manitoba and into the, new to us, cities of Kenora and Thunder Bay. I believe we had an interesting visit in Thunder Bay with a psychologist we had met earlier. He could have warned us that there may be some issues along the way but we stuck to gestalt conversations instead.

I recall we took a more northern route through Quebec as we were shy of the big cities in central Canada. First of all, they didn’t have any communes that we were aware of and the tenting sites were a little hard to find in the urban landscape.

Those little towns and villages in Quebec were a revelation to me. This was my familial homeland, the birthplace of my grandfather and my ancestors back to Michel Chartier who came from Chambon France to Quebec in 1665. This was my first time in a space where language and culture were not my own and I was both touched and fascinated by this special place in my country. I wish we would have stayed there longer but we were in a hurry to get to those long-hair cooperatives on Prince Edward Island.

Back on the TransCanada, you can imagine the wonder we felt at the lush, verdant landscape, the soft air and the pristine waters as we drifted through the Maritimes and then taking our first big water ferry ride onto the island. A highlight of the Maritimes was the side run up the Cabot Trail, and the visit to Fort Louisburg where my already history loving son, knew more than us.

The kids found their bliss on the beaches, Linda found hers in the green and I found mine in the new taste of fried clams.

We had planned to take the really big ferry to the Rock. We checked the price of the crossing, checked the remainder of the cash and realized we had run out of Canada. We have since been to Newfoundland and often think it may have been a good thing we didn’t get there at that time. We may have never left. It’s a province that is a national treasure, in my opinion.

So, we headed back.

The same route back through Canada did not hold much promise of the new and so we thought, let’s go see if those Mother Earth communes in Vermont were as tasty as they looked in the magazine.

The States were new and seemed harmless. Perhaps we should have been a bit more tipped off by those draft dodgers we met in the Kenora campground.

So, we crossed the border into Maine. I can’t remember where the crossing was but it got weird real fast. Sure, our hair was long and the beads were visible but boy oh boy, those border guards sure had us pegged as a clear and present threat to their republic.

Out of the car, into a cold room, seated on hard chairs under a picture of Nixon, they grilled us and stripped the Datsun. There was talk of drugs, child abduction and general mayhem as possibilities for this little hippie family.

Anyway, they finally let us in, but we never really warmed up much to America after that. We did wander down a few rural roads in Maine and Vermont looking for those welcoming hippies, but they were in deep cover, I guess. So, we pressed on, would be back-to-the-landers, getting less and less sure that America was the land we wanted to get back to.

Soon we were just desperate to get home and back on the TransCanada. By this time, we were scraping quarters from the floor mats for gas as we kept the little red car pointed west. Our navigational skills were skimpy and we inadvertently drifted in close to Chicago. We freaked out and drove all night trying to put distance between ourselves and the home of Al Capone.

Then we heard the first tornado warning. They were new to us. The radio guy said we should pull into the ditch and get under the car. I started heading toward the ditch and the two little ones started screaming and telling me to wait until the tornado gets here, you idiot.

It just kept going on and on like that until finally we hit the Canadian border and those friendly guards welcomed us home.

I think they knew.

We sure knew that Canada and the number one highway was now a lovely, long slow float home and we had just left behind an America that was mostly whitewater.

Since then, we have had a number of road trips on the TransCanada, and it’s heartening to see the possibilities of our next generations finding those sweet spots in their own neighbourhoods and feeling the pull of their own pavement.