We’re on a mission right now. We don’t often travel with a purpose, but now we’re on a mission across Ontario and overlanding Quebec with reasonable haste to reach east coast Canada. Sure, Ontario and Quebec have cool things to see, but we’re not giving in to distractions right now. Here’s a tale of absolute focus and commitment to a achieve a pre-determined mission overlanding Canada 😉
The Mission
So what is this mysterious ‘mission’? Well, it comes about due to several of the inter-provincial borders in Canada recently opening-up. After spending all of our time so far in western Canada, we’re on a mission to see the east, particularly the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland & Labrador. Sounds easy enough, eh? Just pop over to the east coast. But it’s almost 5,000km across the country. And we have just a few weeks left in which to achieve said mission before the harsh Canadian winter sets in. So we need to step-on-the-gas (as they say here) with this mission thing.
There is just one teeny-weeny potential fly-in-the-ointment of our mission to reach the eastern provinces… we don’t actually know for sure whether we will be allowed in when we get there! For Covid purposes, the four Maritime provinces formed a ‘bubble’ which still hasn’t fully opened up in quite the same way as central Canada. And to add just a little bit more complexity to the equation, each of the Maritimes still has its own on-line application process for getting in.
Ontario images – and despite the many warnings… no, we didn’t see any moose!
The guidance on their websites (understandably) doesn’t really cater for our status here. We’ve been in Canada almost 18 months, but we have no residency status, so we can’t (truthfully) answer some of the *required* on-line form questions. We could blag-it and provide some less than honest info, but we really don’t want to do that. So on the basis that things are changing rapidly across Canada now, infections down and vaccinations on the up, we decide to push ahead with the mission. Fingers crossed that by the time we get there, the Maritimes will welcome us with open arms 😉
Our ‘mission’ therefore, is to skip through Ontario and Quebec so we can: a) see the fabulous Maritime coast and islands in good weather; and b) see Wally Whale before he packs his trunk and heads south for the winter. Once the mission is accomplished, we can return to see the great Ontario and Quebec properly later in the year.
Ontario
After scooting across the prairies of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, we enter Ontario and very soon realise two things: first, we hit another time-zone and are now three whole hours closer to UK than we were in BC. Secondly, the attractions of western Ontario are a real challenge to our focus on the mission!
Challenges to The Mission: the beauty of western Ontario
The far south-west of Ontario around Kenora is a beautiful lakeland just screaming out for some paddle-action from our Boaty McBoatface kayak. We managed to resist the call of the kayak both there and further east around Lake Superior, but we did do a few short stops for hiking (you can’t hold just a few short hikes against us, can you? 😉). This was well worth a bit of time, particularly in Pukaskwa National Park with amazing lakeside beaches.
Cool Ottowa
Taking the shortest route across central Ontario, our last stop in the province was the national capital of Ottowa. In the day we spent there, Ottowa seemed a cool city and we look forward to returning to see the museums. But for now it’s a convenient place to make a transition across the river into Gatineau and francophone Quebec.
Winnie the Who?
But just before we shift the story into Quebec, here’s an interesting (and slightly disappointing) bit of trivia we found in Ontario. Did you know that the real, original home of Winnie the Pooh is not in the Hundred Acre Wood of Kent, England but in White River, Ontario?
Yup, the real story of Winnie goes back to 1914 when one Lt Harry Colebourn was heading to Europe to the Great War. Waiting on the platform at White River train station, he met a chap with a baby black bear and offered him $20 for the cub. He named the bear Winnie (after his home town of Winnipeg) and took the cub with him on the ship to England.
When Harry deployed to the front line, he handed little Winnie over to London Zoo. In the post-war years, a young Christopher Robin Milne was a frequent visitor to the zoo. Winnie was his favourite animal and there is an old photo in White River of Christopher Robin spoon-feeding honey to Winnie at the zoo! Christopher Robin took the name for his own teddy bear and his father, one A.A. Milne, took the bear as inspiration for the famous stories. Cool huh?
So what’s the disappointing bit? Well… standby for a rant… the statue erected in White River to mark Winnie’s home town is not A.A. Milne’s Winnie ☹. The statue is of the Disneyfied spin-off bear!! What were they thinking??? Ignoring the wonderful Ernest Shepherd illustration from A.A. Milne’s original books!! That’s the proper image of Winnie. It’s great that White River commemorates Winnie’s origins, but sad that they felt the Disney caricature best represents the iconic stories for kids today. Please kids, go back and read the originals. They are far superior to the Disney rubbish. Rant over.
Quick Quebec
Continuing the mission from Ontario, our route through Quebec is quick, but it doesn’t take long to notice a culture change as we cross the Ottawa River bridge into our eighth province. Driving across Canada, each province tends to blend seamlessly into the next. But entering Quebec there is a sense of a different culture here.
Around Quebec
Another thing we noticed as we drive across Canada is the different ‘post-covid’ status in each province. Some provinces have dropped all restrictions, some are relaxing rules but still requiring masking. We check local rules as we go and make sure we comply everywhere. Quebec seems to have dropped most of the restrictions, but we notice that many people are still choosing to mask in indoor spaces, so we go with local practice.
We mentioned francophone Quebec above. Quebec is very francophone. It’s not just a part of Canada with a French history. French is the primary language here. Outside of tourist hot-spots, only a few brave francophone souls attempt to tackle the challenging (and often ridiculous) pronunciation of the English language. My 1981 O-level French does not stand me in good stead for Quebec. What with Covid masks concealing facial expressions and screens muffling sound, we have quite a struggle to communicate. But once we’ve done the shopping and head out into the countryside, the beauty of Quebec defies all language barriers.
On the cross-country drive up to Lac St Jean, Quebec showed us scenery dotted with villages of pretty white-boarded houses and silver-spired churches, it then excelled itself with the stunning Saguenay River gorge. At the junction with the St Lawrence Seaway, the village of Tadoussac has a reputation as ‘whale-central’ – the place to see whales munching up all the dense krill in the area.
Wally Whale – back to the real world
Unfortunately (and perhaps not unpredictably) we weren’t the only ones heading to Tadoussac to see Wally Whale in August. We reckon that at least half the population of Canada had descended on the village, cramming onto boats heading out for a rendezvous with Wally. It was all too much for us. We don’t mind a bit of hussle-bussle, but with the pandemic-peace over the last 18 months, we had grown used to being in a minority at even the most popular attractions. Not any more! Canada is getting back to normal, which is a marvellous thing and great to see, but causing us to ‘adjust’ our travel pattern.
The crowds force us to re-think a bit, so instead of cramming like sardines onto boats, we decide to try to get a view of Wally Whale from the coast. There are a few spots known to be good feeding waters and we get extremely lucky at Cap de Bon-Désir. Here we sat on the rocks in the sun for just a few minutes before Wally and his mates gave us a marvellous display. We doubt the ‘sardines’ on the boat trips saw anything better than we did from the land. We saved $160 and as a Brucie-bonus, there are some who say it’s more ‘eco-friendly’ not to be out there disturbing the sea-life with boat engines. And as we head further east, there will certainly be more opportunities to catch up with Wally.
Gaspe and on
Crossing the St Lawrence seaway (after a ‘post-covid world’ ferry queue of over 5 hours amongst a million other tourists) we’re heading up the east side of the Seaway to the Gaspé Peninsula. The photos of this coastal drive really don’t do it justice. It’s stunning, so we inevitably find ourselves battling (again) with the ‘post-covid’ crowds. Gaspé is understandably very popular (for Brit readers, think sunny bank holiday weekend in Devon or Cornwall!!) and after doing a couple of short walks, we scoot through the region with indecent haste. Hike trails are crowded, cafes/restaurants are full, camp-spots are hard to find, and the price of an ice-cream or fish & chips is bonkers.
We struggle constantly with the new ‘post-covid world’ dilemma: on the one hand, it’s so good to see an almost ‘normal’ world again. On the other hand, when nobody else wanted to travel, we enjoyed having beautiful places to ourselves. The strange thing is that although most of Canada is getting back to normal, and Trudeau has now just relaxed the US border travel rules to allow fully-vaxxed Americans into Canada, Biden isn’t letting Canadians (or us) into the USA. The White House continues to be conspicuously schtum on the border issue. So who knows when overlanding will really be back to ‘normal’ for us. But the truth is, we really don’t care right now. Canada is awesome. We have plenty of visa time and there is still so much that we want to see here.
Moving onto the Maritimes
Leaving Quebec’s Gaspé peninsula, we’re moving into the Maritimes and are excited to have almost reached the far-easterly point of Canada. A couple of pertinent things have happened for us with the Maritimes recently: i) the first of the Maritimes on our route, New Brunswick has just dumped all covid restrictions, so we can enter there with no problem; and ii) the second province on our route, Prince Edward Island, has approved our application to enter, so we can go there too. Result!! Tune in next time to see if we can tackle the entrance procedures of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland/Labrador to complete our Maritime loop!