Journey Mercies

In our twelve years living in Mongolia, we developed a saying that comforted us on many road trips: Every journey eventually ends.   The only time I remember hitchhiking in Mongolia, a small Russian jeep stopped to pick me up.  I counted the grown men as they were disgorged from the back seat.  3 .. 4 .. 5 .. 6 .. 7!!  And now I was offered the chance to become part of this 3-D jigsaw puzzle as they continued down the road.  It was winter and any extra space was filled with bulky clothes.  You'd think that despite the heater not working, there would be enough body heat to keep us warm.  All I remember was how cold my feet were and I couldn't move them 1 millimeter to try to get circulation going.  But, as I kept repeating to myself, every journey eventually ends. Our five-and-a-half week loop around Eastern Canada has been so much more comfortable than that.  The roads were rough at times but nothing like Mongolia.  It has been very rich...

I just assumed that all the Atlantic provinces were miniscule compared to their western siblings.  One of the geographical surprises I had on this journey was how big the province of Newfoundland and Labrador is.  To drive right across it from Cape Spear to the western border with Quebec is the same distance as from Raith, Ontario to Yoho National Park in BC.  2130 kilometers.  That second drive involves five provinces and three time zones. It starts in the Eastern Time Zone, then passes all the way through Central and ends at the west end of Mountain. Not far out of Raith I made a rather abrupt impulse stop where the highway crosses into the Central Time Zone - the last of many time changes of this journey.  As we stretched our legs, we noticed a plaque honoring a certain Sir Sandford Fleming - one of the brightest knives in the shed.  That might be a mixed metaphor but then, what Fleming gave to Canada (and the world) was also quite an eclectic mix. ...

Yesterday we took a long walk from our campground to pay homage to another Terry from Transcona, Winnipeg.  Maybe we should have driven, but that didn't feel right.  We have been driving west now, from St. John's Newfoundland, for what has felt like a very long time.  This is a very big country.  But we've been d riving .    I can't even imagine running it.  On only one good leg.  The Terry Fox monument that we were walking to was located as far west as he had made it from St. John's before his cancer flared up again and ended the Marathon of Hope. The day before he had to quit, Terry would have run past the small town of Pearl.  On the other side of the Trans-Canada from Pearl is a large amethyst deposit.  Before Patty and I arrived at our campground we took a little prospecting venture to the Blue Points Amethyst Mine.  I envisioned finding one of those huge geodes with lustrous purple crystals like you see for sale at a gem shop....

On arriving in Waskaganish on James Bay, a resident asked me if I had noticed the wildfire-burned areas on the way in.  The way she asked it made me wonder if the trauma of having fires so close to destroying her community was still fresh.  I had noticed.  It would have been hard to miss.  I noticed another thing.  What would have been charred black ugliness two years ago was now vibrantly pink with fireweed.  I was amazed at how quickly destruction had changed to beauty.  It seemed an obvious parable of redemption. As we drove west from there, Patty typed 'boat launch' into Google for a possible boondocking site near Matheson, Ontario.  That led us to a pretty park by the water.  It came complete with clean, open washrooms and picnic tables.  Best thing of all? No 'Thou shalt not camp!' signs.  There were a couple of other interesting signs though.  There was a 'No Parking - Fire Route' sign at one end.  That confused me ...

Our visit to Canada's largest territory on Sunday was almost as brief as my visit to Sanirajak a few years ago.  I was on my way to Igloolik for work and had to make an airport stop in the community which used to be known as Hall Beach.  Sounds kind of tropical right?  It's not.  It's a cold, exposed strip of gravel without a single Tiki bar.   Sanirajak has two claims to fame.  The first is it's local cuisine. I noticed the proud sign on the airport wall describing the preparation of igunak .  Aged walrus meat is buried in the gravel beach in July.  By Christmas time it has attained its full pungency and flavour, at which time it is exhumed and consumed.  The Sanirajak equivalent of a turkey.  While wandering around the airport (it didn't take long), I enjoyed seeing the mothers wearing their amoutuit .  With big hoods like kangaroo pouches ready to hold a sleepy baby.  I love these celebrations of Inuit culture. Saniraja...

I had some preconceived ideas of what a group of Cree believers might look like in a small town on the Arctic Ocean at the end of a long dusty road.  A little huddle of the faithful trying to keep their flickering light from being snuffed out by the winds of darkness.  We arrived last Saturday afternoon and I asked the first locaI I ran into if he knew anything about the churches there in Waskaganish.  "Just go down the hill and you'll see the big tent they've set up for a week-long Jamboree." We arrived at the tent at 7:30 sharp like we were told, but I forgot that we had changed time zones to Cree Standard Time.  No problem.  I saw a guy with a Winnipeg Jets jacket come in so I had time to find out the name of a fellow fan.  Kelly.  But he wasn't just another fan.  He had actually played for the Jets.  I looked a little closer at the logo.  Ahh. Waskaganish Jets.  No matter.  I had a new friend. I once attended a church servi...

Alfred, a local Cree man, said he had been hitchhiking about half an hour when we picked him up.  It's a good think we did because the flies here have an exclusively carnivorous diet.  We were able to bless Alfred with a ride, some snacks, and some bug spray.  We got some valuable information in return.  I had seen a possible campsite about 10 kilometers off the highway and wondered whether the road was passible and if we'd be allowed to camp there.  He gave me an affirmative on both counts.  The road WAS drivable (just) and the campsite was beautiful.  We got to see both sunset and sunrise over the still waters of Lac Waswasipi. Forty years ago, I was the one who was hitchhiking in Quebec and heading westward.  A guy stopped for me on the outskirts of Montreal because he was hoping I'd be able to direct him out of the city.  That seemed a little funny because we were basically out of town already.  But for a bit of information of dubiou...

Yesterday we had lunch at a tear duct in the Eye of Quebec.  It's a big eye.  You don't need a detailed map to spot it.  But it can't be a very old map.  The Eye only opened in the 1960's.  Before that it was as invisible to the map-gazer's view as it's quintuplet sister in Manitoba. A long time ago, as one theory holds, a large rock was tumbling through space when it broke up into a string of smaller large rocks. These meteorites slammed into the earth from Manitoba to the Ukraine.  When the five-kilometer-wide piece hit Quebec, debris sprayed up and then landed again to form Mount Babel in the center.   The Eye of Quebec is the sixth largest meteorite crater on earth - 100 kilometers in diameter.  But, till recently, went unnoticed by the average Guy. It wasn't until a hydroelectric dam was built and Manicouagan Reservoir formed a moat around Mt. Babel that the eye popped open. The day we left Manitoba on our loop around Canada, my sister I...

It's a long drive across Labrador but every once in a while Patty would punctuate the silence with an observation: So. Many. Trees. Does Canada supply, like, most of the world's oxygen? Our wedding verse says 'the trees shall clap their hands.'  That's quite an ovation. No wonder there's a pine tree on Labrador's flag. There must be infinity trees. That last comment finally made me pull off the road into a turn-out.  I'm good enough at math to know there couldn't be THAT many.  Definitely no more than half an infinity.  But there was only one way to find out.  Count them.  First I donned the bug suit I bought down the road.  Between black flies, mozzies and bulldogs, there was approaching infinity predators.  I paced out a plot 10 x 10 meters and counted 112 trees.  A quick Google search got me the area of Labrador.  With a glance at the map I could subtract the area covered by lakes and tundra.  I'm sure there's a margin of error b...

Every Monday evening back at home, my son Sim and daughter-in-law Jess come over to watch an episode of Alone.  In the show, ten people video themselves trying to out-survive the others by living off the land.  Sim has asked me if I would like to try challenging myself like that. I do enjoy bushcraft. As a twenty-year-old I tried my hand at starting a fire using a bow drill.  With a lot of trial and error - using different kinds of wood and getting the notch in the fire board just right - I finally got ignition.  Another time I attempted the same thing with ice.  I'm not lying.  I froze some water in a bowl and then sculpted it with a warm hand to get as close to a magnifying-lens shape as possible.  I focused the suns rays and actually managed to get some smoke.  If it's true that 'where's there's smoke there's fire' then, yes, I have started a fire with water. I was really hoping that we could finish our latest season of Alone - the one that too...

When seeking guidance from God before committing to this journey, I remembered a text from my friend James Bear, Anishinaabe elder from Brokenhead and fellow follower of Jesus.  It was soon after the US Presidential election.  He closed our conversation with:  I interpreted Jim's text-ese to mean Okay. Take care.  Pray for Canada.  Celebrate Canada.   I've thought of that text a number of times along the way, especially when choosing a place to set up camp at the end of a day of prayer on the road.  I didn't just want a place to crash.  I wanted a place that would celebrate Canada. Probably about half of our camping spots have been 'boondocking.'  Even boondocking on the Loblaw parking lot in downtown Toronto was somehow significant but I think my favorite spot so far was right beside a lighthouse in Nova Scotia.  During the night if I'd wake up I could see the rhythmic flashing of the light but when I got up before dawn, it had stopped....

Bucket List Item 1: See a Dog What are the odds of one province giving its name to two breeds of dogs?  100%.  Newfoundland and Labrador.  What are the odds of spotting your favorite breed in its natural habitat?  Approaching 0% as we get nearer the ferry that will take us off the Rock and over to Labrador.  There have been a number of famous Newfies in history.  Nana in Peter Pan.  A Newfoundland saved Napoleon from drowning.  Seaman the Newfie accompanied Lewis and Clarke on their Corps of Discovery.  And in Newfoundland itself stories abound of daring sea rescues by their eponymous dog. In our short time on the island I've been analyzing every dog I've seen as to its pedigree.  Not a single Newfie. So where are they? Bucket List Item 2: Eat Traditional Food Ever since we were in Newfoundland eight years ago we've been hankerin' for fish and brewis.  We asked a local and he said that Facebook made traditional food pretty hard to f...

There once was a traveler from Winnipeg, Who drove east through a land quite gigantic. When he got to Cape Spear, he said "It seems clear, That I'm further from home than from Limerick." Cape Spear is as far east as you can get in North America.  We actually passed western France on the way.  Okay, just the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, but I'm sticking to my claim.   We arrived on Canada Day Eve and when Patty and I sang O Canada at the tip of the continent, there was only one creature further east than us.  A seal pup lay listening about two feet from the Atlantic.  We serenaded it with the second verse as well: O Canada! Where pines and maples grow. Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow. How dear to us thy broad domain, f rom East to Western Sea, Thou land of hope for all who seek! Thou True North, strong and free! We camped in our motorhome right there at the Cape and woke up on Canada Day to some classic Newfoundland fog and the mou...