Across Canada in 7 Days

camping from Edmonton to Ottawa

By Bri Vos

October 29^th, 2014

Leaving

Working for yourself has some definite benefits. In September Patrick and I finally made the drive from our home in Edmonton to his parent’s farm in Ontario. We blocked off a week to make the trip and set our course northward. We took the furthest north through roads we could and worked from campsite picnic tables. We were absolutely blown away by the beauty of this country we call home.

Camping in September in the “northern” areas of Canada is a great thing. We had our pick of any campsite we liked because we had each campground almost entirely to ourselves. And maybe it was the fact that nature was in the process of taking back the campgrounds for the off season that allowed us to have some pretty spectacular wildlife experiences.

Saskatchewan

Being from Alberta, most people assume I love all things to do with mountains but the truth is that, while the mountains are incredibly beautiful, for me, nothing can compare to the flat land prairie. Because of this, Saskatchewan has always held a special place in my heart. This time around, we camped our way through Northern Saskatchewan which is famous for it’s gorgeous lakes and moose-filled forests.

On our first night we camped at Jackfish Lake north of the Battlefords and I didn’t think it could get any better. The sun set across the lake was all kinds of beautiful and from our tent, perched at the top of the lake, we fell asleep listening to the waves lapping into the grass.

Saskatchewan also has a small town-ness that seems unchanged since the 50’s and I find it hard to believe anyone would be impervious to it’s charm. Driving north from Prince Albert, the highway turned into a single lane, hardly paved line barely cut back from the forest around it, hugging lakes and hidden bogs. We went for hours without seeing other vehicles. It was beautiful.

As we got close to Creighton on the provincial border, we started seeing graffiti on the rocks of the Canadian shield that had begun to peek at us out of the forest. This rock graffiti would define our impression of Northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, but my absolute favourite piece was on the rocks just west of Creighton: “You fucking complete me”

Manitoba

Manitoba is flat: flat lakes, flat rocks, flat river and flat fields that stretch forever. And it is beautiful. We made it too late in the season for camping at many of the provincial parks (a side effect of camping in the off season) but we ended up setting up in the community park in Cranberry Junction just east of Flin Flon. With our tent once again pitched on the edge of the lake, we spent the evening watching a group of local kids ride their bikes off the dock, dive in to retrieve them and then do it all over again. We rose before the sun, packed up, got on the interlake highway and set our course for Winnipeg.

We drove as the sun rose and the fog began to burn away. Watching the sun’s rays lick along the edges of the forest’s thick fog was completely surreal and incredible.
Manitoba has a lot of positives but one major negative is that unless you’re within sight of Winnipeg (or have Manitoba Telecom Service) your cell phone won’t work. Since our connection to the outside world and our work depends on our cell connection when we travel, this caused a bit of a problem. We planned to stop at the first public library we saw, use their wifi to get some work done and camp on the edge of Lake Winnipeg for the night.
We drove for 7 hours before we found a small town library that was open and had a wifi connection.

After making my long awaited Canadian Icelandic pilgrimage to Gimli, we headed into Winnipeg to have supper with an old friend. That night we fell asleep in Bird’s Hill Provincial Park listening to the light rain fall on our tent. There are few sounds as beautiful as soft rain on a tent.

The next day we followed the folding sky into Beausejour where Patrick’s mom grew up. The town is wonderfully unchanged: the classic movie theatre still stands, the record store and ice cream shop still proudly open for business on main street, the water tower a 1950’s benediction hovering over the west edge of town.

That was our last glimpse of prairie before we delved deep into Canadian Shield. Taking back roads only wide enough for one vehicle through Whiteshell Provincial Park, we crossed into Ontario.

Ontario

In an earlier phase of life, I spent time working as a university admissions counsellor. It was a fantastic job. I travelled through seven provinces and my only requirement was to talk to prospective students about the school I loved. During that time I drove a lot. Before this trip, I had driven from Victoria to Thunder Bay, Sudbury to Montreal and through all the small towns and backroads of the Maritimes. The only section of Northern Ontario I hadn’t covered was 12 hour stretch from Thunder Bay to Sudbury. I thought it would look the same as the highways of Northwestern Ontario.

I was wrong.

Our first day in Ontario, the weather was perfect. 19 degrees and sunny, just the right kind of weather to have picnic lunches and afternoon swims in the crystal lake waters around Kenora. By the time we were pulling into Thunder Bay, the forecast had changed. Each time we climbed another hill as the highway drew us closer into town, we could see the black storm clouds building on Lake Superior. We took the hint and stopped on the edge of town to buy a couple extra tarps.

I’ve been to Thunder Bay a couple of times and while I’ve always enjoyed my stay, I’ve never really thought of it as a destination but we were getting tired as we left town so decided to make camp for the night in Sleeping Giant provincial park and hope for the best weather-wise. The descent into the Sibley Peninsula is a winding 40km and as we left the main highway we drove into a cloud. Not a fog, not a haze or a mist, it was a cloud and it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever experienced.

After setting up camp along the lake (there are actually steps down from each site to the lake, in a sense creating a private lake front for each site), we started to prep our supper. The cloud around us was so thick that the water looked as though it stretched out forever and that the trees on either side of us were all that existed in the world. From the edge of this insulated space, a skunk came ambling into our site. At first we froze, no sudden movements. But the skunk insisted on being friends with us. He checked out our tent, rubbed against our legs like a cat and as quickly as he came he disappeared back into the mist.

While we were still in awe over the skunk’s visit and cooking up our meal over the fire, a perfect little red fox stepped quietly into our site, sat down between us in front of the fire and spent a few minutes enjoying our company and blowing our minds.

The wind blew us out of Sleeping Giant in the morning, despite our surreal experience the night before and we got back on the highway heading for Sault Ste. Marie. Having assumed that this stretch of the road was more of the same Canadian shield rock, lakes and forest that we’d been through the day before, I hoped we could make some time on the road. It wasn’t far into the day that I realized how wrong I was. The highway around the Northern shores of Lake Superior are winding and slow, hugging the lake, dipping into deep valleys before emerging on the peaks of pink granite cliff faces that plunge into the water. The lake itself doesn’t seem to end. As far as the eye can see it’s waves surge from infinity into a foaming, crashing torrent at the bottom of the sheer cliffs.

You need to drive these highways slowly not only because they’re cut into the rocks at a sometimes terrifying height, but also because you can’t miss a moment of these views.

We ended up settling for the night in a protected cove called Pancake Bay. With our tent on the edge of the soft sand beach, we drank wine and read books while the waves lapped up over our feet. The night was clear and the sky was gorgeously lit up with stars. It was pretty perfect.

Our last camping stop before we made it to our Ontario home was Killarney Provincial Park. A friend had told us they had heard it was beautiful so we took the 100km detour from Sudbury towards the Killarney Channel. We passed by the park gates and went to check out the town of Killarney first. It’s not much more than a few lines of colourful houses along the channel that faced George Island. Until the 1960’s there were no roads in. It was all planes and boats by summer, skidoos by winter and it still retains that remote atmosphere. Boats tied to the docks outnumbered any other vehicles and we watched bush planes landing and taking off, circling above the town.

On the water we found a fish & chips shop that had a line that wound half way down the street so we decided to join. It was a fantastic decision.

To work off our fish & chips and to make room for second supper, we decided to explore the hiking trails that run around and through the park. Now the park is a staggering 485 sq km so we didn’t see a whole lot of it, but what we did see was incredible. As the sun set, we headed back to set up camp.

That night, Patrick and I woke up in unison when we heard footsteps outside our tent. Crashing through the underbrush and standing just feet from where we were sleeping a moose was bellowing out a mating call. In the distance we could hear it being returned and since it was clear that rutting season had begun we decided it was best to stay still and quiet in the tent and just be in awe that we could hear the moose breathing.

Killarney Park was made a protected area in the 1960s and much of it had to do with the influence of the Group of Seven who frequently painted there. A. Y. Jackson’s efforts to protect the area from logging were particularly recognized and on his 90th birthday the park named a lake in his honour.

Killarney begs to be experienced by canoe and so the next morning we were up early and on the lake before there was even a breath of wind, the glassy surface of the water broken only by our paddles.