It’s Day 55 – Cape Spear—The End of the Road

Day 55 was the shortest ride of the entire Ride for Di. Just 50 kilometres separated the beautiful home of Rob and Jane, who had hosted us in Conception Bay South, from Cape Spear, the easternmost point in Canada and the final destination of my journey.

Fifty kilometres.

After nearly 7,000 kilometres across Canada, that hardly seemed like a distance worth mentioning.

But these would be the most impactful 50 kilometres of the trip.

Rob was my guide for the final ride. Along the way, he shared the history and stories of the many remarkable places we passed: Bell Island and the Clapper, Signal Hill, The Rooms, and countless other landmarks and breathtaking ocean vistas.

The first 30 kilometres were relatively flat, following the fine gravel on the Newfoundland T’Railway, a former railway line converted into a recreational trail.

But the final stretch was a different story.

We wound our way through the streets of St. John’s before tackling four impressive climbs to Cape Spear. Two of them included what cyclists affectionately call walls—sections with gradients around 10 to 13%.

Apparently, Newfoundland wasn’t going to let me finish this journey without one final test.

Then Rob said,

“Around the next corner, you’ll see the Cape Spear lighthouse.”

Despite the climbs, my legs suddenly found another gear. I couldn’t help myself. I was turning the cranks faster and faster.

The clouds had hung dark and low all morning, threatening to unleash a downpour, but we’d encountered only a little rain. It was 10°C, although the damp ocean air made it feel considerably colder.

The smell of the sea filled my lungs. Fog drifted across the cliffs, softening the rugged coastline.

I turned the corner.

And there it was.

The lighthouse.

The road wound around one corner after another, with the ocean and towering cliffs on one side and windswept, barren hills on the other.

Then I saw people ahead. I hadn’t expected that. And suddenly, everything seemed to slow down.

I thought about Mile Zero in Victoria, where this journey had begun.

I thought about Dianne.

I thought about my family.

And then it really hit me that there was no more road ahead.

After 55 days, I wouldn’t be getting on my bike tomorrow morning to ride another 150 kilometres. There would be no next campground to reach, no next province to cross, no next mountain to climb.

This was it.

I teared up.

And yet, I couldn’t have been happier.

I was overwhelmed by the people who had come to celebrate with me. When I finally stopped and put my feet on the ground, Hugh handed me a Canadian flag to hold in celebration of crossing the country.

Wow.

I couldn’t stop smiling.

I looked out over the Atlantic Ocean.

The Journey of My Life had come to an end.

But tomorrow would be Day 1 of another journey.

And somewhere out there, beyond the ocean and the horizon, lay a road for which I had no map.

I wouldn’t know its challenges, its climbs, or its unexpected turns until I encountered them.

And somehow, that no longer frightened me quite so much.

What the Hell Was I Thinking?

When I stood at Mile Zero in Victoria, I couldn’t have imagined that my journey would end this way.

I had just turned 70. I was relatively inexperienced at bike camping. Ahead of me lay the Rocky Mountains, the Prairies, Northern Ontario, unpredictable weather, wildfires, mechanical problems, and thousands upon thousands of kilometres of uncertainty.

Three months earlier, Deanna and I had taken two of our grandchildren to the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa.

In the section devoted to trains, planes, and other modes of transportation, I was shocked. I came to a sudden stop.

My heart started racing.

I could hardly breathe.

I felt sick.

There is a wall-sized map of Canada.

Presumably, its purpose is to impress upon visitors the extraordinary vastness of our country and the importance of transportation in its development.

It certainly impressed something upon me.

I stared at the map.

“What the f$%& have I committed to?”

“What the f$%& was I THINKING?”

“I’ve taken on too much. WAY more than I can handle!”

I stood there, staring at the immense distance between Victoria and St. John’s.

The enormity of what I was about to attempt truly sank in.

As it turned out, my fears weren’t entirely misplaced.

There were times during the ride when I felt that the journey had thrown just about everything it could at me.

The relentless rain in British Columbia.

The punishing headwinds and rain on the Prairies.

The long distances, isolation, and difficult weather of Northern Ontario.

The major mechanical breakdown in a remote part of Alberta, where I had no cell service and needed to be rescued.

The roads and trails where I got lost and travelled kilometres out of my way.

And, of course, there were the climbs. Always another climb.

There were days when I questioned whether I could keep going.

But something remarkable happened along the way. The difficulties became less important.

The people, the beauty, and the extraordinary experiences became so much more important.

And I began to understand that the journey was giving me far more than it was taking from me.

The Kindness of Strangers — and Friends

I will never forget the unexpected acts of kindness and generosity I encountered across this country.

I think of Tex, the noble farmer in Chaplin, Saskatchewan, whose kindness came when I needed it.

I think of Mike and Caroline in Calgary, Hugh, Rose, and Vivienne, and Rob and Jane in Newfoundland, who welcomed us into their homes and overwhelmed us with their hospitality.

I think of the countless strangers who stopped to help, offered encouragement, shared a conversation, or simply made a difficult day a little easier.

These people became part of my journey.

They reminded me that, no matter how vast this country may be, the distance between people can be remarkably small.

And then there was the beauty.

I think of the ferry crossing from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Argentia, Newfoundland.

The vastness of the ocean.

The sunset and sunrise over the water.

And the pod of dolphins that appeared near the bow of the ferry, leaping and diving in perfect synchrony.

“LOOK! LOOK! LOOK!!!”

We were like two-year-olds.

How could you not smile and giggle with delight? I felt like the luckiest man alive.

After the final ride, Hugh and his family welcomed us into their home for fish and chips.

The next morning, I sat at their dining room table, savouring my coffee and looking out at the extraordinary view.

Life is good.

We are blessed.

What Happened to the Man Who Left Victoria?

When I set out from Victoria, I knew that riding across Canada would be a physical challenge.

What I didn’t anticipate was how profoundly it would change me.

I am different.

Physically, I lost the equivalent of 25 one-pound bricks of butter in body fat. But the more important weight loss had nothing to do with my waistline. During the hundreds and hundreds of hours I spent alone on my bike, I had time to think.

Really think.

About my life.

About the past.

About the people I love.

About the things that matter and, perhaps even more importantly, the things that don’t.

Somewhere along those thousands of kilometres, I began to let go of mental baggage I had been carrying for far too long.

Things I simply didn’t need to carry forward into the next chapter of my life.

With every turn of the crank, I felt a little lighter.

And a little stronger.

I arrived at Cape Spear with a renewed sense of purpose and a much clearer understanding of how I want to spend the years ahead.

Will I keep all 25 pounds off?

Who knows?

But I intend to keep the more important weight off.

Because the man who arrived at Cape Spear is not the same man who left Victoria.

And that, perhaps, is the greatest gift this journey has given me.

The Inspiration of Terry Fox

Throughout this journey, I often thought about Terry Fox.

In 1980, Deanna and I were driving across Canada to begin a five-year adventure living in Vancouver.

Somewhere in Northern Ontario, along one of the longest and most isolated stretches of highway imaginable, we came upon Terry.

It was early in the morning.

There he was, running along the highway on one leg, mile after seemingly endless mile.

I remember thinking that the stretch of road was almost unbearable to drive.

And there he was.

Running it.

We were moved to tears.

Terry ran the equivalent of a marathon almost every day during his Marathon of Hope. His extraordinary determination inspired a fundraising movement that has since raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research.

My journey and my achievement are nothing compared with his.

But comparison isn’t the point.

Terry showed me something that has stayed with me for more than four decades.

That an extraordinary dream can begin with a single step.

That determination can carry us further than we ever imagined.

And that sometimes the most important thing we can do is simply show up.

Get out of bed.

Put one foot in front of the other.

Or, in my case, get on the bike and turn the cranks.

Again.

And again.

And again.

You don’t have to know exactly how you’re going to reach the end.

You just have to find the courage to begin and the determination to keep going.

Learning, Earning, and Returning

Much of my thinking during the ride centred on the final stage of my life.

I have often reflected on the idea that life has three broad stages: Learning, Earning, and Returning.

I’ve spent much of my life learning and earning.

Now, at 70, I am firmly in the Returning stage.

And the question I kept asking myself, kilometre after kilometre, was this:

How do I make the most of the years I have left?

How can I make a meaningful difference to my family, my friends, and my community?

What do I want my legacy to be?

I have a long list of things I intend to change and do.

But two stand out.

First, I intend to reconnect with the meaningful people in my life with whom I’ve lost touch.

Life is too short to let important relationships quietly fade away.

And second, I hope this journey leaves something lasting for my grandchildren.

I hope that one day, perhaps long after I’m gone, one of them will face a seemingly impossible challenge.

Maybe they’ll feel overwhelmed.

Maybe they’ll doubt themselves.

Maybe they’ll wonder whether they have what it takes.

And then, I hope, they’ll remember their grandfather.

And think:

“Grandpa was a BADASS!

“If that old guy could ride across Canada at 70, then I can do THIS!

“I’ve got this!”

If my journey gives even one of my grandchildren the courage to take on a challenge they might otherwise have avoided, then every kilometre will have been worth it.

And Then There’s Di

Of course, there was another reason for this journey.

The most important reason.

My sister, Dianne.

Months before I began the ride, I told Dianne that I wanted to dedicate it to her.

At first, she pushed back.

That was Di.

She never wanted to be the centre of attention.

But as we talked about the ride and what I hoped to accomplish, she became increasingly engaged and supportive.

She even talked about coming to see me ride through Ottawa.

And perhaps being there when I finished in St. John’s.

I think we both knew, back in May, that she wouldn’t be able to do those things.

But we talked about them anyway.

And I treasure those conversations.

Dianne had so much more life to live.

So many things she wanted to do.

So many people she wanted to hug, kiss, and love.

So many ordinary, wonderful moments that we all too often take for granted.

Ovarian cancer took those possibilities away from her.

By the time she was diagnosed, her cancer was already at Stage 4.

It was too late.

And that is what makes this disease so cruel.

In an age of extraordinary medical and technological advances, why are so many women still diagnosed with ovarian cancer only after it has reached an advanced stage?

Why are the outcomes still so devastating?

And why aren’t we doing more?

I want people to remember Dianne as someone who cared deeply about others.

Someone who was generous with her love, her kindness, and her attention.

And I want her memory to help other women and families facing this terrible disease.

I want more awareness.

More research.

Earlier diagnosis.

Better treatments.

And, ultimately, more women surviving ovarian cancer and living the full lives they deserve.

I cannot bring Dianne back.

But I can do something in her memory.

And that is what the Ride for Di has been about.

It is my way of honouring her life, expressing my love for her, and trying to make a difference for others.

Every Turn of the Crank

At the beginning of this journey, I wrote that every turn of the crank had three purposes.

One turn toward my physical destination.

One turn toward personal transformation through reflection.

And one turn toward honouring Dianne by raising awareness and funds for ovarian cancer research.

On the final climb to Cape Spear, those three purposes came together.

Every turn brought me closer to the easternmost point of Canada.

Every turn brought me closer to understanding who I am and what I want to do with the remaining years of my life.

And every turn was for Di.

At Cape Spear, all three journeys converged.

The physical journey was complete.

The personal journey had transformed me.

And the journey to honour Dianne had become something much bigger than I could ever have imagined when I first told her about my plans.

I had set out to cross a country.

But somewhere along the way, the journey became about so much more than reaching the other side.

Thank You

No one completes a journey like this alone.

First and foremost, thank you to my family.

You accepted the risks, the uncertainty, and my long absence. You supported me even when you might reasonably have questioned my sanity.

I missed birthdays, family gatherings, and other important moments.

Sorry, Lindy, for missing your birthday party!

Thank you for understanding why this journey mattered so much to me.

To Deanna, thank you for being my partner through this adventure, for your patience, encouragement, and unwavering support.

To the friends who welcomed us into their homes, helped with mechanical problems, offered meals, or simply made sure I had a comfortable place to rest: your generosity meant more than you can know.

To the strangers who stopped to help, the campground neighbours who shared their stories, and the people who offered a kind word just when I needed one: you made this journey unforgettable.

To everyone who followed the blog, sent messages of encouragement, shared my posts, or cheered me on from afar: thank you.

On some of the loneliest stretches of road, your words made me feel that I wasn’t alone at all.

And to everyone who donated to ovarian cancer research in Dianne’s memory: thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Your generosity has given this journey a purpose far beyond anything I could have accomplished simply by riding a bicycle across Canada.

You have helped turn my love for my sister into something that can make a difference for others.

And that means everything to me.

One Final Ask for Di

One last turn of the crank. One more gift for Di.

If this journey has meant something to you, I ask you to consider making one final donation to ovarian cancer research in Dianne’s memory.

Every contribution, large or small, helps support the fight against a disease that has taken far too much from far too many families.

Together, we can help give other women and their families more hope, more time, and more tomorrows.

Thank you for helping me honour my sister.

Support ovarian cancer research in memory of Dianne

Donate to the Ride for Di Donation link for the Ride for Di fundraising page.

The End of the Road. The Beginning of Something New.

For 55 days, my life had been remarkably simple.

Wake up.

Pack up the tent.

Get on the bike.

Turn the pedals.

Keep going.

Regardless of the weather, the terrain, or the circumstances, the task was always the same.

Get on the bike.

And move forward.

But tomorrow would be different.

There would be no next province.

No next mountain range.

No next 150-kilometre destination.

No road stretching endlessly toward the horizon.

For the first time in 55 days, I wouldn’t have to get on my bike.

And yet, in so many ways, I feel as though I’m only just beginning.

I think back to that day at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa.

I remember standing in front of that enormous map of Canada, my heart racing, wondering what on earth I had gotten myself into.

I remember the fear.

The doubt.

The overwhelming sense that I had taken on something far bigger than I could possibly handle.

And now, I can’t wait to go back.

I look forward to standing in front of that same wall-sized map.

I will look at the extraordinary vastness of this country.

I will trace the route from Victoria, across the Rockies, the Prairies, Northern Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes, all the way to Cape Spear.

I will remember the mountains and the oceans.

The wind and the rain.

The kindness of strangers.

The laughter.

The tears.

The moments when I doubted myself.

And the moments when I felt that life simply couldn’t get any better.

I will think about the man who left Victoria and the man who returned home.

And, most of all, I will think about my sister.

I imagine standing there, smiling at that enormous map, and saying:

“Dianne, we did it!”

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One last turn of the crank. One more gift for Di.
If this journey has meant something to you, I ask you to consider making one final donation to ovarian cancer research in Dianne’s memory.
Every contribution, large or small, helps support the fight against a disease that has taken far too much from far too many families.
Together, we can help give other women and their families more hope, more time, and more tomorrows.
Thank you for helping me honour my sister.

Day 53 — I Made It to North Sydney!

It was a cold 7°C this morning, and the sun hadn’t yet reached the lowland where our campground was tucked away.

My teeth were chattering as I coasted downhill out of camp toward the road to North Sydney.

And then the road turned sharply upward to a steep and long climb.

I was excited about it.

I needed some blood flowing back into my cold-numbed fingers and toes.

As I reached the top of the climb, the first warm glow of sunlight hit me.

Life IS good.

Fifty-three days ago, before this journey began, I would never have willingly gone for a bike ride when the temperature dipped below 10°C.

And I certainly never looked forward to a big climb.

During this trip, people told me I’d get so sick of riding a bike that I might never want to do it again.

Yet when I woke this morning, I couldn’t wait to get riding.

Something changed in me somewhere along the road, weeks ago, somewhere before Winnipeg.

Until then, despite all my determination, there had been this nagging little question buried somewhere inside me:

Can I really do this?

At some point, that question was replaced by something very different:

“You can’t stop me from doing this!”

There were several other, bigger climbs today.

My legs feel strong. I can feel the power moving through the drivetrain. For moments, it feels as though I could keep doing this forever.

After 53 days and thousands of kilometres, I’m enjoying cycling more than ever.

This was the shortest ride of the journey this far…but, with the great weather, one of the very best, surrounded by cloudless skies, calm ocean and endless forest.

The “Returning” Years

As I wrote in an earlier post, I neglected too many old friendships during my “Earning” years—the years of paying the mortgage, raising kids, building a career and simply trying to keep everything moving forward.

I love the notion that now, in my “Returning” years, I should also be returning to some of those old relationships—with good people who once meant a great deal to me.

It was in that spirit that I was delighted to receive an email today from an old friend I had allowed to slip out of my life.

His name is Don.

Don had seen the CTV interview about the Ride for Di and wrote to ask how he could make a donation.

What a wonderful gesture.

And what a reminder of how guilty I feel for not keeping in touch.

Because Don played a much bigger role in my life than he probably realizes.

It was sometime around 2006 when Don and his wife, Pauline, invited us and some other friends over for Saturday-night dinner.

At some point that evening, I told Don how discouraged I was that I could no longer run because of my bad knee. I was overweight, out of shape and missing something that had once been an important part of my life.

Don is an exceptionally good listener.

More importantly, he is empathetic.

He took me into his garage and showed me his road bike.

I can’t remember exactly what he said. I don’t think it was anything profound. He simply suggested that maybe I should try cycling.

If sporting-goods stores opened at noon on Sundays back then, by about 1:00 the next afternoon I had bought a thousand-dollar bike—and, to my considerable astonishment, another thousand dollars’ worth of things I had never previously known existed but apparently were absolutely essential to riding one: pedals, cycling shoes, Lycra shorts, jersey, helmet…

Who knew a bicycle was the inexpensive part?

But something else happened.

Cycling became a love.

Years later, when my son Mike was struggling with running injuries and was told he might never race competitively again, I found myself having my own version of the “Don talk” with him.

Eventually, I bought Mike a bike for his birthday.

And wow, did he ever connect with it.

Which brings me back to this morning.

Here I am, nearly 20 years after that Saturday-night conversation, cycling through Cape Breton on a beautiful fall day.

I’m on Day 53 of a ride across Canada in memory of my sister Dianne.

And I’m pushing toward the finish because I want to get to Montreal in time to watch Mike compete at the World Championships—at the highest level of cycling in the world.

Think about that.

A friend listened to another friend who was feeling discouraged.

Without Don, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be on this bike today.

There might never have been a Ride for Di.

And who knows what path Mike’s athletic life might have taken?

We rarely know the impact we have on another person’s life.

Sometimes it isn’t a grand gesture.

Sometimes we don’t need the perfect words.

Sometimes we just need to listen.

To understand what someone is struggling with.

And perhaps gently point toward another possibility.

Don probably had no idea what he started that Saturday night.

But I do now.

A simple moment of empathy can change everything.

Thanks, Don.

Who thought that little conversation in your garage could turn out to be one of the amazing moments in the Journey of My Life.

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I’m riding across Canada in memory of my sister Dianne and to help fight ovarian cancer. If you’d like to support the Ride for Di, please consider making a donation to Ovarian Cancer Canada. Every donation, large or small, helps make this journey more meaningful.

It’s Day 51 on my journey and I’ve made it to Antigonish!

The people along the way have made this trip unforgetable.

How Do You Deal with the PTSD?

There’s a small tavern called Pitstop Burgers in Saint-Léonard, New Brunswick, a village of about 1,300 people.

We had only two reasons for going there: it was close to the campground where we planned to spend the night, and it was highly rated on Google.

As it turned out, those seemed to be the same two reasons everyone else was there: it was close to the highway and a couple of hotels—and it was highly rated on Google.

There were only three other customers when we arrived: an older couple sitting at a table beside another elderly man who was on his own. The three of them were already deep in a lively conversation.

I tease Deanna a lot about needing hearing aids because I have to repeat almost everything I say. Yet put her in a restaurant and she suddenly develops the hearing of a German shepherd. She can pick up a whispered conversation three tables away—especially if there’s even the faintest possibility of juicy gossip.

This time, though, the subject wasn’t gossip.

The couple was from New Hampshire, and they were telling the man, who was from Montreal, that most Americans hate Donald Trump as much as Canadians do.

That was enough for Deanna.

She joined the conversation.

Within half an hour, another couple had sat nearby and joined in. Our little dinner stop had somehow turned into a four-table international summit. Even more remarkably, the newest couple lived in Ottawa—just a few blocks from us.

The man from Montreal was simply stopping overnight in Saint-Léonard and had come in for a bite before turning in. As it happens, I may see him again on September 27 at the UCI Road World Championships in Montreal, where our son will be racing. Photography is his hobby, and he plans to be there shooting the race.

He’ll be easy to spot: a tall man with a magnificent head of shocking white hair. Deanna and I will be walking the circuit during the race, so I’ll keep an eye out for him.

The husband from New Hampshire dominated much of the conversation. He was 77, although he looked considerably younger than I do—which I found mildly irritating.

He was intense. Stylish, heavy-framed glasses made his dark eyes seem even more penetrating, and above them was a gleaming shaved dome. He openly expressed his jealousy of the Montrealer’s spectacular white hair.

He was also a retired member of the storied 101st Airborne Division, where he had served in the medical corps. He met his wife while posted in Germany, and she still has a beautiful German accent.

Their stories were fascinating.

His military experiences included Vietnam, Iraq and Mogadishu.

As I listened, one question kept coming back to me.

“How do you deal with the PTSD?” I finally asked.

I tried to imagine what his life must have been like: caring for so many young, strong and capable men and women who had been maimed, disfigured physically or psychologically, or killed outright.

How do you make sense of that?

How do you find any measure of meaning in it?

He was silent for a moment.

Then he looked intently at his wife.

Apparently, you don’t ever completely make sense of it.

He told me that you have to stay focused on the most important person in your life. On your family. And on being present—in the moment you have right now.

After everything he had seen and experienced, that was where he had landed.

Here’s to that.

The Two-Hour Shower

The next night I was at River Run, an RV park and campground. Deanna had left again, so I was back on my own for three days, once more hauling all my camping gear on the bike.

I was walking from my campsite toward the showers when a group of people called me over to join them on their deck.

Yes, a deck.

A large wooden deck.

Attached to a camper.

They were wonderfully friendly people, and my intended quick trip to the shower somehow turned into a couple of hours of stories, laughter, three shooters and a glass of whisky on ice roughly the size of a Tim Hortons XL coffee.

So much for the shower.

These wonderful people were all, like me, in what I’ve come to think of as the “Returning” stage of life—the time when perhaps the question shifts from What can I achieve? to What can I give back?

One of them, Ed, is himself a cancer survivor.

He is also the retired owner and operator of several funeral homes.

His best friend persuaded him to get involved in helping run the campground.

“You’re retired. Why not get involved here?”

Shortly afterward, that same friend died of cancer.

But Ed stayed.

Naturally, I had to ask him about his years in the funeral business—about dealing with people at some of the darkest and most painful moments of their lives.

Ed is tremendously empathetic and immediately lovable. He has an endless supply of jokes and funny stories, but underneath all that humour is something much simpler.

Caring.

Maybe that’s what his profession taught him.

Or perhaps that’s why he was so good at it in the first place.

Are You Guys from Around Here?

In Memramcook, New Brunswick, a sign announced that the road ahead was closed to everything but local traffic. This was a MAJOR problem in my route, meaning I would have to cycle many kilometers further. What were the possibilities.

I saw these two men who just pulled into an HomeHardware and I approached them asking if they were from around here.

Jean-Guy Leblanc, and his brother-in-law, Francis Leblanc (I kid you not about the last name…apparently 75% of the residences have the last name Leblanc) had a good laugh. Not only were they were from Memramcook, they were every bit a part of it.

Both the men are 76 years old and both are working until the “Good Lord” takes them away. Jean-Guy, wearing suspenders that look like measuring tapes, was as good humoured and comedic as if he had just come from a circus…he had me laughing from the moment I asked him the first question until I bid him farewell. I not only got all the details on why the road was closed and on the different options to get around the closure, but some great lessons on getting the most out of life. Not only did he have great humour, he had loads of compassion. Both he and his brother-in-law donated cash on the spot to ovarian cancer. ““`

That’s NOT the Point

On several occasions during this ride, people have asked me about Dianne and her battle with ovarian cancer.

Eventually, they ask:

“How old was she?”

“Eighty-two,” I’d respond.

And occasionally the response is something like:

“Oh, well…”

As though 82 somehow makes it okay that she died when she did.

As though reaching a certain age means death should become easier to accept. As though the value of a life gradually diminishes with every birthday until, eventually, we’re supposed to shrug and say:

Well, you have to die of something.

That misses the point entirely.

Dianne was a young 82.

Our mother lived to celebrate her 100th birthday. There was every reason for Dianne to imagine that she might have many good years ahead of her.

When I moved into her apartment during the final weeks of her life, she kept telling me:

“I have so much to do.”

And she did.

She had so much to live for.

She had plans. She wanted to travel. She wanted to spend time with friends and family. She wanted more dinners, more conversations, more laughter, more adventures.

She wanted to live.

So What Is the Point?

For far too many women, ovarian cancer is discovered only after it has already advanced.

That was Dianne’s story.

By the time her cancer was diagnosed, it was too late for treatment to make the difference we desperately wanted it to make.

And that brings me back to why I’m riding across this enormous country.

Why should this still be happening?

Why aren’t we better at finding ovarian cancer early enough to give more women a fighting chance?

Why haven’t we invested enough in the research that could change those outcomes?

These aren’t abstract questions to me anymore.

They have a name.

Dianne.

She should still be here.

Perhaps right now she would be sitting in Tuscany with some of her longtime friends, sipping a glass of wine, telling stories, laughing too loudly and planning wherever she was going next.

Instead, I’m riding across Canada without her.

And with every kilometre, I keep coming back to the same thought:

Dianne had more life to live.

So do thousands of other women.

That’s the point.

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I’m riding across Canada in memory of my sister Dianne and to help fight ovarian cancer. If you’d like to support the Ride for Di, please consider making a donation to Ovarian Cancer Canada. Every donation, large or small, helps make this journey more meaningful.

Everything Is Changing

It took me almost 12 days to cross the roughly 1,500 kilometres of Ontario. Now I’m into my fourth day in Quebec, about 60 kilometres east of Quebec City.

Everything has been changing.

At campgrounds west or Ontario, I met a couple from Vancouver who were returning home after dropping their daughter off at Queen’s University. There were tears.

I met another couple from Winnipeg who were on their way to drop their son off at the University of Alberta. There will be tears.

As the end of August approached, U-Haul vans and trailers began appearing everywhere, along with pickup trucks piled high with the accumulated possessions of university-bound children..

The days are shockingly shorter than when I started this journey. Mornings are increasingly dark, foggy and cold, which affects how early I can get on the road. And darkness now determines when I have to get off it.

Tonight, it was dark before 7:30.

That doesn’t leave much time to pitch a tent, shower, make dinner, clean up and settle in for the night—let alone write anything coherent about it.

I never intended to be on this journey this late in the season.

The weather is becoming more unpredictable. The mornings are colder. And increasingly, the winds are coming from the north.

So much has changed.

And so much continues to change.

From Wilderness to Civilization

The boreal forests and vast, secluded expanses of Northern Ontario have gradually given way to farmland, towns and cities.

There’s less need now to plan around long, lonely stretches of road. Gas stations, grocery stores and convenience stores have returned to my life.

Civilization!

From just west of Mattawa in Northern Ontario all the way to Rigaud, Quebec, I rode hundreds of kilometres on converted rail trails—mostly flat, often following the Ottawa River.

They carried me through forests, marshes and fields, across rivers and around lakes.

And best of all:

No cars.

Near Ottawa, excellent cycling infrastructure carried me safely through the city and eventually onto the Prescott-Russell Recreational Trail.

After thousands of kilometres of highways, shoulders, transport trucks and the occasional white-knuckled encounter with traffic, there’s something almost decadent about a bike trail.

Day 44 — A Perfect Day on a Bike

Today is Day 44.

The day started somewhat miserably in Portneuf, west of Quebec City.

It was 7°C when I climbed onto the bike, cold enough that my breath hung in the air like little clouds announcing: Fall is coming.

Fortunately, the temperature climbed quickly.

And unlike the previous day—when I spent hours battling 20 km/h winds from the northeast—the wind had swung around to the northwest.

A tailwind!

One of cycling’s greatest miracles.

Suddenly the bike felt lighter, my legs felt stronger, and I began entertaining the completely irrational idea that perhaps I had become a much better cyclist overnight.

I followed the Route Verte, much of it along Highway 138, with mostly wide paved shoulders. I passed through beautiful towns with wonderful views of the St. Lawrence River.

It was simply a marvellous day to be on a bike.

Approaching Quebec City, I joined the bike path along the river. It was filled with walkers, joggers and cyclists, all seemingly determined to squeeze everything they could out of this perfect late-summer day.

People were even swimming in the St. Lawrence.

In September.

Canadians.

I crossed the river by ferry and continued east along Highway 132 toward Montmagny.

Just a few weeks ago, I was riding kilometre after kilometre through wilderness.

Now there are roadside stands everywhere, selling sweet corn, raspberries, blueberries and apples.

The landscape is changing.

The season is changing.

And I think the journey is changing, too.

Coming Home — But Not Staying

One of the strangest moments came on Day 39, when I rolled into the driveway of our home in Ottawa.

Home.

After weeks of sleeping in a tent, eating beside my bicycle, wondering where the next source of water might be and calculating every day around wind, weather and distance, I was suddenly standing in my own driveway.

But I couldn’t stay long.

I’ve heard enough about what may await me farther east—and especially on the road toward St. John’s—to know that I need to keep moving.

Winter is coming.

And it has started sending me warning letters.

Ottawa also felt like another kind of dividing line.

Somewhere around there, my Western Adventure ended.

I stepped on the weight scales at home.

Imagine 25 x 1 lb bricks of butter piled on a table…that is the equivalent of how much fat I left in Western Canada. My apologies to my western friends!

Now I’m on my Eastern Adventure.

And something else has changed.

I feel that much of what I set out to prove has already been proven.

I can do this.

That realization brought back a quote I remember from my university days:

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are still thousands of kilometres ahead.

But perhaps the biggest distance I needed to cross was never on the map.

Milestones

● Entered my sixth province

● Entered my third time zone

● Passed the halfway point

And then there was the biggest surprise of the entire journey.

The Last Person I Expected to See

One of the most isolated stretches of my entire trip was the road through Northern Ontario between Longlac and Hearst.

It’s roughly 230 kilometres with virtually nothing.

No gas stations.

No stores.

No potable water.

No cellular service.

You carry what you need.

I carried enough food and water to get me through and brought a water filter so I could refill from rivers along the way—which I did.

I divided the ride into two days.

The first was about 125 kilometres, after which I found a suitable place in the forest to pitch my tent.

That night, under the stars in the vastness of the Northern Ontario wilderness, I could hardly have felt more alone.

The next morning, I performed what had become my standard wild-camping ritual: checking whether the food bag I had hung high in a tree the night before was still there—or whether a bear had enjoyed a much better breakfast than I had.

The bag was still hanging.

Always a beautiful sight.

I broke camp and continued toward Hearst.

Around lunchtime, I spotted a gated entrance to a private commercial property just off the highway. It gave me a convenient place to lean my bike, sit down and eat.

I had barely stopped when a vehicle travelling along the highway slowed down.

Then it stopped.

I hadn’t spoken to another human being in a day and a half.

I looked toward the vehicle.

And I couldn’t quite comprehend what I was seeing.

Because the last person in the world I expected to see was also the best person in the world I could have hoped to see.

Deanna.

She had secretly cooked up a plan with the rest of the family.

And there she was.

In the middle of nowhere.

Somewhere between Longlac and Hearst.

Close to the halfway point of my ride across Canada.

After weeks of cycling alone, I had suddenly found my wife standing beside a lonely highway in Northern Ontario.

Surprise!

Her arrival has changed this journey profoundly—and wonderfully.

So much so that it deserves a story of its own.

And I’ll tell that one next…or maybe later

Help Me Make Every Kilometre Count

I’m riding across Canada in memory of my sister Dianne and to help fight ovarian cancer. If you’d like to support the Ride for Di, please consider making a donation to Ovarian Cancer Canada. Every donation, large or small, helps make this journey more meaningful.

The Longest Day of the Journey

The question I’m asked most often on this trip is:

“How many kilometres do you ride a day?”

There really isn’t one answer.

Every day on this journey is different. The distance is usually determined by how far it is to the next official campground—or, failing that, my best guess at where I might find a decent wild camping spot.

One day I might ride only 75 km. Another day, much farther. I generally plan around 150 km, but sometimes circumstances require me to stretch well beyond my comfort zone.

Day 29 was one of those days.

I needed to ride 168 km to reach MacLeod Provincial Park.

The day before, Day 28, I had ridden only 106.7 km, but it had been a tough, long day: constant rain and a chilly wind blowing directly out of the north and directly into my face.

Now I was worried about how much harder the next day might be. Fear might be the best way to phrase it.

I rolled into Nipigon Marina Park and Campground after the office had closed. Fortunately, another camper named Dave came to my rescue.

Dave had a sensibly sized RV—one that wasn’t roughly the dimensions of a Greyhound bus—and gave me the lowdown on what to do and where to pitch my tent.

Dave is in the “Returning” stage of life, probably in his mid-to-late 70s. He’s tall, with a full head of striking white hair. You could picture him in a TV commercial for retirement living—he’s that kind of good-looking.

I imagined that back in his “Earning” years he might have been a CEO. He’s outgoing, confident and very much a take-charge kind of guy. And that evening, he took charge of making sure this soggy cyclist got settled.

Dave lives in a condo about 75 km south of Toronto where, on a clearer day than this day, he told me, “you can see the Toronto skyline perfectly.”

He lives near a marina because he loves sailing, which might explain his perfect tan. And he takes his “sensible” RV north to remote places like this to escape the crowds of city life.

We didn’t have much time to talk that evening because the rain started again.

It was still raining the next morning when Dave walked over as I was finishing packing my wet tent and preparing for the long ride ahead.

I thought it was nice of him to come over to say good morning and ask how I’d survived the night in my tiny, rain-soaked tent.

“Good morning,” he said. “Do you pray?”

What?

Do I pray?

Did this guy somehow know how worried I was about the day ahead?

I didn’t answer as forthrightly as I might have.

Something had happened three months earlier.

More on that in a moment.

“I’m not very religious,” I said.

“You don’t have to be,” he replied.

We talked for a while. He was clearly thinking not just about the difficult day ahead of me, but about my entire journey.

Then he took my hand.

He told me that he and his wife were praying for me.

There was something about the warmth of his smile, his words and the simple act of holding my hand that enveloped me.

Wow.

I thanked him.

And I thought about that moment many times throughout the day.

168 Kilometres to Go

Like I said, I don’t set out each morning determined to ride a fixed distance. The road, the weather and my body usually have some say in the matter.

And on Day 29, they had plenty to say.

The first 80 km took me almost directly north, over relentlessly difficult, uphill terrain.

Worse, the wind was once again coming straight out of the north.

It was a cold autumn wind.

My average speed dropped below 10 km/h.

For much of that first half, I seriously considered abandoning the plan to reach MacLeod Provincial Park. I could stop early and wild camp wherever I could find a suitable patch of ground.

And believe me, after hours of grinding into that wind, some very unsuitable patches of ground were beginning to look pretty suitable.

But eventually the road turned east.

Suddenly, that brutal headwind became a slightly favourable crosswind.

The terrain flattened.

The kilometres started coming a little easier.

And late in the day, the sun finally came out.

I rolled into MacLeod Provincial Park with about an hour of daylight remaining.

168 kilometres.

Ten and a half hours of pedalling.

My longest day of the journey. The longest day I will ever spend on a bike seat!

And somewhere in all those hours on the bike, through the cold, the hills, the headwind and the doubts, I kept thinking about Dave.

“Do you pray?”

Do You Pray?

Three months earlier, I had moved into my sister Dianne’s apartment to help her in whatever way I could.

It wasn’t an easy time for her.

I think it was a time of fear.

She was a little annoyed that some people had stopped coming to see her. Part of the problem, as I imagine happens for many people in their final days, was that she wasn’t always forthcoming with others—or perhaps even with herself—about how dire her situation had become.

She also talked about the people who did visit.

Some simply didn’t know what to say.

There were long, awkward silences.

But silences are okay.

There’s no need for them to be awkward.

Sometimes everything that can be said has already been said.

Sometimes silence, with companionship, is enough.

By this point, Dianne had decided that she wanted Medical Assistance in Dying. But she also said she wanted to be alone when it was finally administered.

I wondered if, beneath that decision, she was afraid no one would want to be there.

Our conversations during those days were long and, at times, all-encompassing.

At the end of one particularly difficult day, I helped her back into bed.

I asked if there was anything else I could do for her.

She looked at me.

“Can you pray for me?”

I couldn’t remember the last time I had prayed.

Yet I answered,

“I will.”

That night, following my usual habit of overthinking almost everything, I thought about Dianne and about her fear of what was coming.

I made some notes.

Then, in the den of her 26th-floor apartment, dimly lit by the lights of the city beyond the windows, I lay on the fold-out bed and said a heartfelt prayer for my sister.

The next day, I sat in a chair beside her bed.

Dianne—still my big sister—started asking questions, almost as though she were checking to make sure her little brother had actually done his homework.

I admitted I prayed. I told her I prayed that she would understand, know, how much she was loved by her friends and family, and about how much difference and impact she made on their lives, and what a blessing it had been that she allowed me into this intimate time with her. 

Then we didn’t talk for a long while.

There was silence.

But it wasn’t awkward.

Words were spoken that otherwise would never have been said.

Dianne’s circumstances changed rapidly after that.

She thought she had weeks left but it became days.

With her last breath, in her tiny palliative care room, she was surrounded by family and friends and an abundance of love. 

I think of Dave…

”Good morning, do you pray?”

Yes, I Wild Camped. Will I Ever Do It Again?

When I first came across the expression “wild camping” while preparing for the Journey of My Life, I had an image—as you might—of a truly wild camping experience.

You know: butt naked except for maybe a loincloth, carrying a spear you made yourself from a branch. You’d kill whatever you needed for dinner—a squirrel, a rabbit, maybe a bear—and cook it over a fire you started by rubbing two sticks together.

As it turns out, wild camping in the bike-touring world is not quite that wild.

Mind you, it’s still considerably wilder than the camping I’m used to.

Over the years, our family camping trips have evolved into major social events. And since they are mainly social, responsibility for them lies almost entirely in the capable hands of Deanna, Minister of Domestic Affairs and All Things Social.

In these areas of responsibility, I operate strictly on a need-to-know basis.

Deanna is also part German, and she possesses many of the endearing traits—rightly or wrongly—attributed to that heritage: precision, attention to detail, and discipline.

Camping for her is a finely tuned operation. Everyone has assigned tasks. Meals are planned and responsibilities shared. And, as if by magic, somehow four or five of the best adjoining campsites have been secured for family and close friends.

Rustic?

Well, if my sister Cathie comes along, we have espressos or lattes in the morning. If she doesn’t, we go really wild and drink percolated coffee—which Deanna and our son-in-law, Drew, have perfected.

Our meals would rival what you’d expect in a fine restaurant, just without the fancy plates and cutlery.

At night, marshmallows are toasted, s’mores are devoured, Drew plays guitar, people sing along, and stories are told around the campfire.

The only suggestion for improvement I heard this year came from one of the grandchildren, who asked that Grandpa’s campfire story not be quite so scary next time.

And our gear?

Light, minimalist and practical?

Not exactly.

We have a tent large enough to host a small cocktail party, an inflatable mattress so thick and high off the ground you almost need a ladder to mount it, huge memory-foam pillows, and some very nice linens to complement the sleeping bags.

Wild camping on a bicycle is not like that.

Everything Has to Fit on the Bike

On a bike, if you can’t carry it, you don’t take it. And generally, the fewer things you carry—and the lighter they are—the better.

I bought a specialized bikepacking tent—the one I mentioned earlier that feels like sleeping in a toppled-over phone booth—and a much smaller sleeping bag. Normal camping equipment is simply too bulky.

There is still a surprising amount of gear to carry. I have roughly 100 items, counting the bike, bags, tools, clothing and camping equipment. Thanks to all the experienced cyclists who post their gear lists online, I also brought along a number of things I never imagined I’d actually use.

But I’ve used pretty much everything.

Take needle-nose pliers.

I thought, Why on earth am I carrying these? I’ve never needed pliers on a bike ride in my life.

On this trip, I’ve used them probably a dozen times.

Once, on a long, secluded stretch of road, a tiny piece of wire penetrated my tire. Without those pliers, I couldn’t have removed it. And without removing it, I couldn’t have installed a new tube without immediately puncturing that one too.

We can argue about tubeless tires another time.

And then there’s the ultralight plastic trowel.

TMI Warning

Part of the wild-camping code is to Leave No Trace.

This presents certain challenges when it comes to one’s daily constitution.

The accepted solution is to carry an ultralight plastic trowel so that, when nature calls:

● You dig a hole of a prescribed depth, width and so forth—which seems to vary depending on the author, presumably according to the author’s perhaps boastful personal production volume.

● In places such as British Columbia or the Canadian Shield, where digging into the ground can be nearly impossible, you cover everything thoroughly with rocks.

This amuses me to no end.

At my age, I am literally stooping to new lows.

And yet there is something weirdly satisfying about the whole procedure. Perhaps there’s a little feline DNA in me, giving me some primitive gratification from figuratively kicking kitty litter over my “gifts.”

The understanding is: that no one else should see or smell what you’ve done!

Picking the Right Place

Finding a good wild-camping site isn’t easy, particularly for a newbie like me.

There seem to be three basic approaches.

1. The organized approach.
 Use an app such as iOverlander to find places where other wild campers have stayed legally, including Crown land. The locations can be approximate, though, and so far I haven’t had much success with it.

But I remain determined.

2. The calculated approach.
 Set a minimum and maximum distance you want to ride that day, then look for the best possible camping spot somewhere between the two.

My results using this method have been decidedly hit-and-miss.

3. The emergency approach.
 The weather becomes absolutely horrible, you’re completely exhausted, darkness is coming—or, to use the more precise technical term, you’re fucked.

Three of my six wild-camping experiences have fallen into Category Three.

Not recommended.

I’m not particularly proud of one of them, shown in the photo.

I had been turned away from a campground packed with long-weekend crowds. No hotel rooms were available. So I kept riding and searching…and searching…and searching.

Eventually, I found a tiny elevated square of ground, barely large enough for my tent.

Nearby, a glacial river thundered down the mountainside. Trains roared past through the night, their whistles screaming and their wheels squealing and grinding as they rounded the mountain curves.

And somehow, I had one of the best sleeps of the entire trip.

Exhaustion is apparently an excellent soundproofing system.

Darkness, Northern Lights and Being Completely Alone

I’ve slept deep in the woods on a cloudy night where it was so dark that the mysterious noises outside the tent were almost reassuring.

At least they reminded me that I was still of this world.

Another night, I camped in an open area. Sometime during the night, I reluctantly crawled out of my warm sleeping bag to pee—and found myself standing beneath the Northern Lights.

They danced and shimmered across the sky, mesmerizing enough that I forgot about the cold and just stood there watching.

There are some things you simply can’t plan.

Note to self: Don’t camp in an open area on a clear night. The condensation can make it seem as though it rained all night.

Four of my wild-camping experiences—including the last two nights—have also been in places with absolutely no cellular service.

No calls. No texts. No contact with family or friends.

Just me, my little toppled-over phone booth, the darkness and whatever is making that noise outside.

Final Thoughts on Wild Camping

I’ve had some extraordinary moments wild camping on this trip.

But when this ride is over, I’ll probably never do it again.

But as I ride hour after hour, memories surface.

Sometimes it’s something shitty I’ve done in my life, intentionally or otherwise.

Sometimes it’s something shitty someone has done to me.

And sometimes it’s something shitty that worked its way into my personality during those long, tough “Earning” years of life.

For each one, I’ve figuratively dug a hole of the prescribed depth and width, or I’ve covered it completely with rocks.

No one needs to see—or smell—the mess

I Left the Prairies but They haven’t Left Me Yet

I drafted this post while hunkered down in my tent at Inwood Park Campground near Upsala, Ontario, just west of Thunder Bay.

I spent the evening—including dinner—inside a tiny tent while rain hammered down, accompanied by rumbling thunder and flashes of lightning. It was a bit like spending the evening inside an old phone booth lying on its side. Very constrained.

A perfect place, as it turned out, to reflect on the vastness of where I’d just been.

I left the Prairies three days ago, but in a lot of ways, the Prairies haven’t left me.

They begin just west of Calgary and end somewhere around Falcon Lake, Manitoba, where the landscape begins its transformation into the Canadian Shield. It took me a little over 12 days to ride from the land of endless horizons into the land of endless forests, rocks, lakes, and rivers.

It’s beautiful.

I love it.

Looking back over those 12 days, I’ve already written about the wonderful people and the brutal headwinds. I did have three days of tailwinds, but the other days were nasty enough to erase most pleasant memories of them.

But there were some striking things I left out.

From a bike, one of the most unforgettable is the constant presence of freight trains passing nearby—mind-bogglingly long trains. Some stretch for kilometres. They pass you heading east. They pass you heading west. The whistles, grinding wheels, and rumbling of these monsters carry across the Prairies day and night.

You’d think trade between East and West was booming.

Then there is the sheer size and scale of the farming.

I was fortunate enough to ride through during the early grain harvest. Vast fields of gold rolled like waves in the wind—which, on far too many days, was rolling in exactly the wrong direction.

Headwinds. Damn it.

From a bicycle, it’s easy to believe that the overwhelming majority of Canada’s farmland is out here. The scale is difficult to comprehend until you spend hour after hour pedalling through it.

And then there is the night sky.

The stars stretch in every direction, right down to those endless horizons. Standing beneath them, with almost nothing between you and the universe, you realize just how small you are.

I have rarely felt more tiny—or insignificant.

---

While tenting, I got to see what other people in their “Returning” Stage like to do, and like to take with them.

---

Prairies and Thoughts of Dianne

Dianne was the eldest of six children growing up on our farm, and she fit some of the eldest-child stereotype perfectly.

She took charge.

She could be hard at times, and she certainly suffered no fools. But she was fiercely loyal and extraordinarily kind to family and friends.

A close friend observed that during the last year or so of Dianne’s life, she softened considerably. She became kinder, more outgoing, more openly loving.

I noticed it too.

Especially during her final weeks, her conversations, observations, and reflections became more focused. More distilled. It was as though, with time running short, the unimportant things simply fell away.

It reminded me of the first person with cancer I ever knew, although at the time I didn’t know he had cancer.

I was 14.

I’ll call him Mr. H.

He “hired” me as his farmhand for the summer. I’m pretty sure my parents had arranged the job partly to help him out—a neighbour in need. That was simply what country people did.

He became a great mentor, and that summer job eventually stretched into a year and a half.

When I turned 15, my mother let me drive her car along the back roads to his farm. I would get up early, drive over and do the morning chores, come home for breakfast, catch the bus to school, return home, eat supper, drive back to his farm for the evening chores, then come home to do my homework.

Sleep.

Repeat.

Again and again, until he became too ill and other arrangements had to be made.

Eventually, my dad took me out for lunch. Alone. My father had never done that before, and he would never do it again. He told me Mr. H had died.

Like Dianne, as his illness progressed, Mr. H spent a lot of time observing, reflecting, and teaching me lessons that seemed pretty dark to a 14-year-old boy.

I understand them better now.

Death is a great teacher.

And a remarkably consistent one.

One day, Mr. H grabbed a hoe and took me into a cornfield. It must have been early July because the corn was about knee-high—right on schedule according to the old saying: knee-high by Fourth of July.

He pointed to all the milkweed growing among the corn and demonstrated how to carefully hoe around each stalk, removing the weeds without damaging the corn.

Carefully.

Delicately.

I am not, by nature, a delicate person.

This was going to be a problem.

Then he handed me the hoe.

“So you want me to do this patch here?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

Then he gestured toward the field.

The whole field.

“What?!”

It was 40 acres, but to a 14-year-old holding a hoe, it might as well have been the entire province of Ontario.

It would take forever.

“You’d better get started,” he said, “or you’ll never get ‘er done.”

I don’t remember whether I spent the entire first day cursing him under my breath, but probably.

I do remember thinking it was impossible.

I can’t even remember whether it took me a week or two to finish. What I do remember is that, after a few days, something changed.

I became comfortable being alone with my thoughts.

Mr. H would occasionally inspect my work and offer a few pointers. And he talked to me about being alone.

“You’re born alone, and even if you’re surrounded by friends, you live alone, and you die alone,” he would say.

I’m not sure whether he knew he was echoing Orson Welles.

But his point was clear: being comfortable alone—with your own thoughts, even while doing the smallest and most monotonous task—was part of the work of a good farmer.

Maybe even a noble one.

I would love to know what Mr. H would have thought of something Blaise Pascal wrote more than 350 years ago:

> “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

One of the unexpected gifts of this journey has been being largely free from the news and from social-media algorithms engineered to constantly grab our attention. There is something liberating about stepping away from the endless stream of distractions—news, entertainment, work, outrage—and simply having time to think.

On the Prairies, I had plenty of time to sit quietly on my bicycle.

And plenty more to lie quietly alone in my tent.

I won’t be solving all of humanity’s problems.

But I may solve a few of my own.

Out on the Prairies, on that starry night amid those endless horizons, everything is insignificant..

It is a lesson less about reason than about faith.

No matter how small the strike of a hoe, or the turn of a pedal, or the “I love you” to someone who matters to you every time you see them…it matters.

I can hear Mr. H saying: 

“You’d better get started…”

47 Years Ago, Winnipeg Changed My Life

In an earlier blog, I reflected on the fun double meaning of calling this the “Journey of My Life.”

First, this is the biggest physical challenge I have ever taken on—and probably ever will.

But there’s the other—this journey is roughly 7,000 kilometres long, and I’m 70 years old. That means I can map the ride against my life:

Every 100 kilometres represents one year.

As I pedal along, I find myself thinking about those 100-kilometre markers and asking: Where was I at that age? What was happening in my life?

Sometimes the parallels are quite funny..

A Shitty Day for a Shitty Year

Day 20 was a shitty day on the bike.

The rain was pounding on my tent before I even got up and persisted for much of the day, finally stopping shortly before I rode into Portage la Prairie. Add the cold and a strong, unfavourable headwind, and it was easily the worst riding day of the trip so far.

At the start of that day, I had reached 2,163 kilometres—the equivalent of being 21 years old in the “Journey of My Life.”

So what happened when I was 21?

My father died, and a seven-year relationship with my high-school sweetheart ended.

A very shitty year for the first reason. In retrospect, considerably better news on the second.

So, yes, the shitty cycling day more or less lined up.

Day 21 was different. Dark, low clouds threatened rain all day, but they produced only a couple of hours of drizzle. Better still, the crosswinds turned favourable, and what could have been another grinding day became a surprisingly easy recovery ride.

A recovery year, perhaps?

By the time I reached Winnipeg, my bike computer showed I reached 2,381 kilometres.

Twenty-three years old in the “Journey of My Life

Dear reader, you might ask, “What was significant in your 23rd year?”

For a start, on Saturday, August 11, 1979, I was in Winnipeg.

I was a University of Waterloo co-op student on a work term with a publishing company. They had sent me on a mission to visit major independent booksellers in Northern Ontario, Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon.

Armed with my book bags—large, hardened suitcases filled with sample books—I met with store buyers and showed them the hot titles for the coming season.

You know, the really exciting stuff.

Like the latest edition of Edna Staebler’s Food That Really Schmecks.

Who could forget?

As I travelled through Northern Ontario, I took lots of photographs with my old Nikon FM 35mm SLR. By the time I reached Winnipeg, I had five rolls of 36-exposure film that I desperately wanted developed.

For anyone who grew up with digital photography, it’s hard to explain the suspense involved in taking pictures back then. You could spend days happily clicking away without having the slightest idea whether you had captured a masterpiece—or 180 badly exposed pictures of your thumb.

So when I arrived at my Winnipeg hotel around 3:00 that Saturday afternoon, finding a photo shop was urgent. In those ancient times, stores closed early on Saturdays and stayed closed all day Sunday.

From my hotel room on the 21st floor, I spotted a store below and figured out how to reach it. I would have to cross a major intersection about a block away.

The corner of Portage and Main.

How did I not know about this famous intersection?.

I was 23. I was a kid. I was naive. And I wasn’t particularly worldly.

I was almost at the store when two young women crossed the street and stopped me.

“Can you tell us how to get to Portage and Main?”

I laughed.

I explained that I had just arrived in Winnipeg myself and that, by sheer coincidence, Portage and Main was the only intersection in the entire city I could actually help them find.

They laughed too.

They had just arrived from Vancouver that afternoon and were in Winnipeg for a two-week session with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

As naive as I was, I thought dancing with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet sounded pretty amazing.

I would run into them twice more on Sunday before finally asking them to join me for a drink in the hotel bar.

In those days, Winnipeg bars couldn’t serve you just a drink on the Sabbath. You had to order food as well.

One of the women ordered a Brown Cow—Baileys Irish Cream and milk—along with french fries and gravy.

An unforgettable culinary combination.

Hey, we were 23.

And that woman would become the love of my life.

The Road Ahead

Winnipeg changed that 23-year-old forever.

Today, 47 years later, I have roughly 4,700 kilometres of road still ahead of me. But this time I have maps, apps and a reasonably good idea of the hills, turns and obstacles that lie between Winnipeg and the Atlantic.

That 23-year-old had no such map.

He had no idea what lay ahead over the next 47 years—the heartbreaks and losses, certainly, but also more happiness than he could possibly have imagined.

He didn’t know that the young woman drinking a Brown Cow and eating french fries with gravy would become his wife.

He didn’t know they would raise two wonderful children, welcome a daughter-in-law and son-in-law into the family, and eventually find themselves surrounded by four beautiful grandchildren.

He didn’t know any of it.

Which, perhaps, is just as well.

At 23, the road ahead seemed almost endless.

At 70, I know better.

Roads have a way of disappearing beneath your wheels much faster than you expect.

And so do years.

He would be shocked to know how quickly 23 years of age becomes 70.

And somehow, 47 years after a chance encounter with two strangers asking directions at Portage and Main, I have pedalled my way back to the very place where the most important journey of my life really began.

Headwinds, Cold Mornings, Warm People

Today I crawled into a campground just east of Brandon, Manitoba, after a day of unrelenting headwinds and crosswinds.

So far, I’ve travelled more than 2,100 kilometres—about 30% of this journey of a lifetime. My legs are suggesting that 30% is a much bigger number than it sounds.

I have no idea how many pedal strokes that represents. But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, every turn of the crank moves me in three directions: physically, toward St. John’s; inwardly, along a path of reflection about what’s possible at this stage of my life; and outwardly, toward honouring my sister Dianne by raising awareness and funds in the fight against ovarian cancer.

Learning, Earning, Returning

There’s a popular idea that life can be divided into three stages: learning, earning and returning.

I’m relatively new to the “returning” phase, having retired only a few years ago. Part of this ride is figuring out what that means.

What can I still contribute? How can I make a difference to my family, friends and community? And what constraints of the “earning” years am I finally free of, allowing me to do things differently?

Not long after leaving Mile Zero in Victoria, I received a message from an old friend, Mike, who lives in Calgary. He invited me to stay with him when I came through town.

I hadn’t seen—or even talked to—him in years.

But Mike isn’t just an old friend. He’s a really old friend. Our friendship goes back 45 years, to when we were young guys working together at a publishing company in Vancouver.

He was Best Man at my wedding.

When I arrived in Calgary, I discovered that Mike has barely aged. He’s still tall, fit and handsome, with a full head of hair—all qualities a guy like me could easily hate. And although he’s a couple of years older than I am, he isn’t quite retired yet.

Fortunately, he’s also an extraordinarily good man.

Mike went well out of his way to help me sort out bike shops, replacement parts and the assorted mechanical crises that come with dragging a heavily loaded bicycle across Canada.

He and his wife, Caroline, live in a beautiful, walkable neighbourhood. Soon after I arrived, Mike took me for a stroll. We picked up fresh buns from a nearby bakery and ice cream from a local creamery.

That evening we feasted on hamburgers made with great Alberta beef, followed by homemade blueberry crumble buried under ice cream. Joining us were Mike and Caroline’s daughter and her boyfriend, both in their twenties and already building solid careers with large companies—an impressive start to their “earning” years.

The conversation left me feeling pretty good about the future when it’s in the hands of young people like them.

The next morning, Caroline made me a huge breakfast and sent me off with a homemade sandwich. Mike got on his bike and rode with me through Calgary, making sure I found the pathway that would take me safely out of the city and eastward again.

Then I was on my own.

And somewhere out there on the road, with Saskatchewan ahead and far too much time to think, one question kept bothering me:

Why the hell did I ever let this friendship go quiet?

Too busy earning?

Too busy with life?

Too confident there would always be more time?

One thing this ride is teaching me is that “returning” doesn’t have to mean only giving something back to the world.

Sometimes it means returning to the people who mattered along the way.

So I’m making a list.

Old friends I haven’t called.

People I’ve lost touch with.

Friendships worth recovering.

I still have thousands of kilometres ahead of me.

Apparently, I also have a lot of phone calls to make.

After a Hot Day in the Saddle

At a campground in Bassano, Alberta, a guy named Curtis walked up to my picnic table.

He had a biker beard—maybe four inches wide and twice as long—a T-shirt, jeans and plenty of tattoos on weathered, tanned skin. He looked like a guy who either works outdoors all day or rides his chopper all day. Possibly both.

He was about the right age to be a “returning” kind of guy.

He had come over from his RV, where he had parked his motorcycle—a chopper with bizarrely high ape-hanger handlebars, straight out of the 1969 classic Easy Rider. He also had a sports car which, when he started it at 5:30 the next morning, produced roughly the same amount of noise as a jumbo jet at takeoff.

Curtis handed me Popsicles, a Pepsi and a bottle of water.

Then he plopped down a glass full of ice and started pouring Jack Daniel’s into it.

“Say when,” he said.

“When, when, when, when…WHEN”

Apparently, “when” means something different in Alberta.

What an impressive “home” pour.

And what a wonderful, completely unexpected act of generosity.

RVs in Alberta—and Returning

In Medicine Hat, the campground, like most I’d seen in Alberta, catered mainly to RVs. But this one had two tiny, side-by-side “Bike and Tent” campsites—just enough room for a tent, with no space for a car, let alone a house on wheels.

While I was eating my freeze-dried dinner at the picnic table, a man rode his motorcycle into the other site and set up camp.

Later, he walked over carrying two cans of beer and plopped one down in front of me.

That beer turned into a long evening of conversation between two men firmly planted in the “returning” stage.

Gerald—or Geri, as his friends call him—is from New Zealand. He’s 67, fit and energetic. He was riding from Alaska to the southernmost reaches of South America.

He described seeing elk, caribou, bison and some of the most spectacular scenery imaginable. He was travelling with little more than what he could strap onto his motorcycle. He’d already done similar trips through Asia and plans to tackle Europe and other parts of the world.

Across the road from us sat an enormous RV, roughly the size of a Greyhound bus, complete with slide-out compartments and a small car being towed behind it.

Geri looked over at it.

“Everyone wants to get away and leave it all behind,” he said. “These people want to get away and take everything with them!”

I laughed.

But it also left me thinking.

How much stuff do we really need?

And how much of this “outdoor” living do I want to do in the last stage of my life?

Geri seemed to have answered that question for himself.

Everything he needed was strapped to a motorcycle.

Salt of the Earth

On Sunday night, I ended up in Chaplin, Saskatchewan—population 222.

After a tough week of riding, I decided to treat myself to a proper Sunday dinner at the town’s only bar and restaurant.

So much for a Sunday dinner. Pub Grub was all that was on the menu.

I was the only customer until I was about halfway through my meal.

Then five people came in and sat at a round table beside mine. Suddenly, I felt like an imposter, someone who stumbled in and sat down in their dining room.

They were wonderfully friendly—and wonderfully curious about the alien, me, who had invaded their home turf and the even more, about the alien thing I was doing: riding a bicycle across Canada.

When I went to the cashier to pay, one of the men got up and walked toward me.

He was a giant of a man—big, strong, and wearing clothes that looked as though he’d been working in them all day. He looked to be in his sixties.

He introduced himself as Tex.

He told me he’d been born in Chaplin and had worked the family farm there all his life.

Then he pointed toward the table.

“That’s my dad over there. He’s ninety.”

He paused.

“People here are good.”

I grew up in the country, and it occurred to me that farmers never really retire. They just keep working, helping and contributing for as long as they can.

Tex put his massive hand on my shoulder.

“My mom died some years ago from breast cancer,” he said. “I like what you’re doing.”

His eyes got a little watery.

So did mine.

Then he said:

“I got your dinner.”

And suddenly my disappointing Sunday pub grub was something so much more impactful…

Maybe farmers don’t have three stages of life..

Maybe, for people like Tex, returning is simply something they do all their lives.

Salt of the earth.

And out here on the Prairies, I’m discovering there’s an awful lot of it

Monday of this week, August 3rd—Day 9—was the most incredible day of the journey so far. And Day 10 turned out to be equally notable, but for being the most satisfying and fulfilling imaginable—I’ll write about that in a future post.

On the evening before Day 9, I made a stupid decision a smart calculated risk that would lead to some incredible vistas and wildlife, as well as some of the best riding and hiking imaginable. My Garmin bike computer revealed a shortcut that would take me along a trail beside a lake. I usually don’t rely on Garmin alone to plan my routes. Normally, I use other apps to double-check that everything will actually work.

But at this campground, as well as the one the night before, there was no internet and no electricity to fully charge my devices. So I took the Garmin shortcut.

At first, the path was wide and reminded me of the many bikeable trails in Gatineau Park.

And the scenery was amazing!

But the wildlife encounters that morning was something else entirely.

But previous to all these, while I was still in the park, on the service road leading to the entrance/exit, I came down a fast descent at around 6:30 a.m. into a blind left-hand corner.

I squeezed the brakes as hard as I could.

Just metres in front of me stood a brown bear staring at me.

Her cubs, startled, bolted off the road and scampered up nearby tree trunks to get away from me.

The mother was startled too, she had backed up a bit.

What could I do?

I couldn’t go forward. And there was no way I was going to back my fully loaded bike up the hill.

I found myself reaching for my iPhone.

Maybe I was thinking that my very last video before I died might also be my best one ever—capturing some intense drama for posterity?

I looked at the screen.

Shit.

Because there was no cellular service in the park, I had shut the iPhone off to save battery.

I started powering it up.

The bear was looking at me.

Then, she reminded me of my wife and kids, who get really annoyed when Dad takes too long to take the family portrait—she simply turned and ambled into the forest. No hurry.

I thought the bear cubs were freaking adorable as they shimmied down the tree trunks, butt-first, and then chased after their mother.

It would have made an amazing video.

Instead, I watched the Apple startup icon slowly appear on my phone while my hand trembled from the adrenaline rush.

I later confirmed that the bear was not a grizzly, but a black bear. Interestingly, black bears can have brown fur.

But it didn’t matter what kind of bear she was in that moment.

To me, she was the size of a Volkswagen minivan.

And I was very pleased that she had other ideas for her menu du jour.

Oh, yeah, back to the route: it started to get a bit rough.

Then rougher.

And then really rough.

My bike broke down—the derailleur failed—and it could no longer be ridden.

I walked it across a beam over a river. I lifted it over fallen trees. And as the “hike” continued for hours without seeing another person, I gradually lost the good humour required to take pictures of myself crossing knee-deep streams, pushing the bike up steep riverbanks, or scrambling across rockslides and the many other fun obstacles along the way.

I had committed to staying safe on this journey and to not doing anything stupid.

Technically, except for the bear thing, I was doing pretty well.

I had lots of food, a tent, and enough supplies to get me through the night and, eventually, back to civilization.

But in retrospect, taking that trail was incredibly dumb a good calculated risk. I’ve had lots of experience on mountain trails, in the Rockies and in the Pyrenees.

When I got to within about five kilometres of a road, I was totally exhausted or, as my son might say, “fucked.” Maybe I would camp there for the night.

My hope was that a park ranger on patrol would eventually find me and take me back to the park entrance. From there, I could call my loved ones to let them know I was safe and sound. I could catch a bus—yes, Banff has city buses with bike racks—and get to town, find a bike shop in the morning, and be back on the road the next day.

Then…

Ta-da!

An off-road vehicle appeared.

And with it came three guardian angels.

Young, bright, energetic and clearly very comfortable in the wilderness, they knew exactly what to do.

Before I could say much of anything, they had my bike, my bags and me loaded into their truck…a VERY serious off-road vehicle with wheels monstrously huge.

And off we went.

The driver, Tobias—the guy on the right in the photo—had just bought the new truck, and it was impressive.

He left the road and crossed an open area that looked completely impassable, with terrain as random and rugged as on the moon.

The truck pitched and bounced as we made our way forward, and I got my first real off-roader experience: being thrown around in the back seat like a rag doll.

Actually, it fun.

It reminded me of riding one of those mechanical bulls.

Along the way, Tobias pointed to a ridge where they had eaten dinner, then to a steep hill where he said his truck had slid sideways.

I asked him if he wasn’t terrified that the truck would roll.

“No, it don’t roll.”

Apparently, Tobias had never promised his girlfriend that he wouldn’t do anything dangerous.

Mikayla, the woman on the left, is a town councillor in Cochrane. She told me which hotel I should stay at and recommended two “really great” bike shops where I could get my bike fixed.

Ethan, in the middle, is a student.

He was the observer of the group, making observations about me, about what I was all about, about Alberta, about politics—pretty much everything.

At one point, he turned his attention to Tobias.

“He’s a true stereotypical Albertan.”

Tobias protested.

Ethan continued.

“Yeah, you work in the oil industry, you drive this truck, and you’re listening to Country and Western!”

Ethan seemed to have won the argument.

Tobias is a handsome young man with a moustache, wearing the kind of shirt and blue jeans that, if he had been wearing a cowboy hat, would have made him look a little like the Marlboro Man.

The off-road trail eventually turned into a gravel road and then, finally, a paved road as we headed toward Cochrane.

We travelled through the foothills and past streams where Tobias talked about trout fishing, and the outlooks where they’d camp or hang out. Along with the others they talked about what makes this region so special and their love of living the outdoors life.

We traveled over a large indigenous held territory and other stretches of land, with virtually no houses—stretches of hills, ridges, valleys, and rivers that were absolutely gorgeous in the golden light of this evening.

Eventually, they dropped me at a Tim Hortons about a hundred metres from my hotel so I could get something to eat.

They wouldn’t take any money.

They wouldn’t even let me buy them food.

They said they were just happy to have been able to help.

Such wonderful people. Bright, full of life, generous. What a blessing to have met them. 

The staff at Tim Hortons were just shutting everything down for the night. The only food they could still serve me was pastries.

After my shower, lying for the first time in eight days in an actual bed, I thought about supper.

My apple fritter.

I seemed plenty enough—maybe I was already plenty full from all the humble pie I had been forced to eat earlier that day.

Either way, I fell into bed knowing that I had somehow survived one of the most spectacular, frightening, frustrating and ultimately rewarding days of my journey.

And I had three complete strangers to thank for it.