In June 2004 I set off across Canada on my bicycle. Or at least I'd planned to cross Canada. It didn't work out, mostly because of the weather, but I did have a great ride.

These pages are an account of that trip, as told through travelogs I sent to friends. I hope you enjoy the ride!

    Out the library window I can see fresh snow on Chinaman's Peak. It is a cold day, blustery, with a form of sleet falling here in the Bow Valley. Yes folks, I'm still in the Rockies, bogged down in inclement weather but enjoying myself nonetheless.
    For four days I've been hold up with a band of migrant workers, most from Quebec. We are housed at a roadside tenting campground called Wapiti Tents, wedged between the Trans Canada Highway and the Canadian Pacific Railway mainline, beneath a young forest of spruce trees.
    It's a nice enough spot, shared with a few skinny squirrels and a pair of fat magpies, who raid us for food when we so much as look the other way during dinner.
    Much of our time has been passed escaping the deluge, and marveling in those moments when the clouds clear and the magnificence of this place reveals itself. Great granite spires emerge from black rolling clouds that seem to rise straight up before thundering down on us again.
    In the evening we all sit around a large campfire, where my campmates have quickly adapted themselves to my boy scout trick of heating rocks in the fire, stuffing the hotties in socks, and littering my sleeping bag with them. They prove a vital source of heat in the cold, and do a good job of keeping the sleeping gear dry through the mercifully short but damp nights.

    I've made a few friends among my new companions. Most significant is Guillame, who says his name is "Will" in translation. A former poli-sci major at McGill University in Montreal, Guillame abandoned the world of politics to study music. With no musical background at all he has, in a few short years, taught himself several instruments including the piano, the guitar and the saxophone. When he's not been busy entertaining us all with his vast vocabulary of songs, or educating me in the jazz rhythms of tradition Quebec music, we have had occasion to walk by the Bow River, talking. By far this young man, who resembles paintings I've seen of the Hindu God Krsna, is the most intelligent and creative individual I've met of his age and gender in a long while.
    Guillame is not alone in the camp of hippie look alikes. Several of my fellow campers are multi-disciplined, able to play music, paint, draw, dance, juggle and sing. Pretty much all of them can sing. And they do, frequently, old Quebec folk songs they learned round the dinner table.

    Of course, its not all some caravan dream. The other night some local boys got their car locked in our campground. They'd been down drinking with some  other boys and didn't notice the hours get away. It was funny because there was also a couple women in the same predicament, unable to get their auto past the locked gate. The women simply decided to call a cab and return for their car in the morning, a very sensible solution, although not as sensible
and just walking home.
    The boys however decided on another measure. Stealing the camp axe they broke the lock by hammering it several times then, keeping the axe, they drove off. Fortunately one educated camper, who coincidentally has had the experience of taking care of hostels and campgrounds before, was able to furnish the camp attendants with license plate numbers, physical descriptions and the like. The culprits were returned the next morning with Mountie guides, the axe, their wallets and their tales between their legs.

    Meanwhile, the whole experience of hanging out in Canmore for a few days has brought back something I'd almost totally forgotten. I used to live here! Twice! And I like it!
    Both Banff and Canmore have something very special, something they share with Whitehorse, Yukon. That this is: No matter how much the place gets built up, nature still rules! In Whitehorse it is cold. Here in the Bow Valley it is simple raw natural power of great beauty. You cannot take five steps in traffic here and not have your attention drawn away by the bigger thing that is around you.
    These days that raw natural beauty is expressing itself mostly in wild weather, shiftings of the wind that make one moment bitter cold and the next sopping wet. To be fair, there have been brief interruptions of blue sky and hot sun, but they are like tiny diamonds set in a tarnished silver brocade.
    Mostly what we're seeing is the dullness, the cold, grey damp. But even then, there is no mistaking where we are, and even me, grizzled and old mountained as I am, find myself simply stopping, staring, gawking at what is around me.

    Anyway, thought you all should know that I'm just slogged down a bit, weathering the weather. Hopefully, if the forecasts are correct, I will find a couple decent days to string together and continue my journey east. Until then, think I'll just keep the buttons tamped down and the powder dry.