On April 1, 2005 I set off across Canada on my bicycle. Or at least I'd planned to cross Canada. These pages are an account of that trip, as told through travelogs I sent to friends. I hope you enjoy the ride!

Au Revoir

Hey Kids,
Well, Dad survived his big showdown with the grim reaper. One day he was barely alive and the next he was sitting up in bed, growling at the nurses and bugging me about my age and long hair.

He was back to normal, and my brother and I were out of town. In the end I'd let myself be caught up in a lot of nervous energy, and hyped emotion, and wound up on a No-Joy-Ride that cost me $400.

In the middle of it all, my brother, whom I don't really know at all, began questioning how long I planned to stay once we returned to Montreal. I took the hint and was gone the day after we got back.

Well, unbeknownst to him, I did not leave Montreal right away. I checked into a neat little hostel, The Auberge Alternative, right down in the guts of Old Montreal, with its three and four hundred-year-old, French-style, four and five story buildings, that overshadow the four meter wide streets and turn them into long narrow echo chambers that alternately bustle with traffic, and go still enough to let the ghosts of horsedrawn wagons clippity-clop over the cobble stones.

I stayed long enough to let myself fall in love with Montreal all over again, for the second time in as many weeks, with its busy sidewalks full of the most exotic creatures, to its hit and run boulevards, and the maze of row housed side streets, swirling bicycle lanes that all seem to coagulate at the foot of Mount Royal, that oasis of woods and rock and great green lawns, crested by a palace-like pavillion overlooking the St. Lawrence River.

I stayed long enough to reaquaint myself with my friend Guillaume, my pal Angela who I knew as a kid, her main man Andre, and Chantal, one of the folks I'd met earlier in my journey, just after the crash in Thunder Bay, while I was convalascing at the hostel there.

I stayed long enough to leave Montreal with a memory other than the whole escapade with my Dad, the accident, and my brother giving me the bum's rush. I stayed long enough to want to go back someday, and I left Blu and BoB there as well. We will continue our journey to the east next year, when my foot is better and there's time to get it done.

Yesterday I left the hub and the bub and found myself wandering the Rideau Canal, and downtown Ottawa, for 10 hours. While wandering I discovered a small abandoned park behind the National Archives. It was on a high bluff above the Ottawa River and the sun was going down. I began to write while I was there, a poem about being Canadian. It speaks to the idea Canada is a place populated by gypsy seed, people who were cut off from their homes and families, people who came to build families and homes of their own. After all I'd experienced these past weeks, being in Ottawa, and thinking of my country that way, it seemed perfect. I felt like a true Canadian.

I've seen a lot of Canada these past months. I've also survived two crashes, a tornado, a snow storm and a monsoon. No wonder my foot is sore. And I haven't stopped yet, there's still some miles to go.

Right this moment I'm in Sault Ste. Marie. I'll be leaving here just before midnight. Not sure exactly where I'll stop next, but I'm going west.

Hope you're all well.
Will