So after living for Vancouver for two years my second year visa was up and I had decided that going back to Scotland was the right thing to do right now.  A work mate suggested that I drive across Canada before I do.  At first I thought he was crazy because I only had a Toyota Yaris and it was winter…in Canada.  But the more I thought about it I realised, when will I have an opportunity to do this again, I do have A car and I’m in a position to make a one way trip….so I did!:-)

So starting in Vancouver, I filled a water bottle with water from the Burrard Inlet (as close to the Pacific Ocean as I was going to get) and the idea was to carry this over to the other side and empty it into the Atlantic just like Thomas Wiby and Jack Haney (except in reverse) on their trip from Halifax to Vancouver in 1912  .

The first part of the trip was magical driving through the BC mountains and the Canadian Rockies in winter.  I felt lucky enough to be in the Rockies during the summer but lucky doesn’t begin to explain how I felt to visit there the following winter as well.  We stayed in Jasper for a night and then driving down to Lake Louise the following day was just fricking incredible.  We then spent a few days in Lake Louise going on a few hikes taking in more staggering views.

Then it was time to say goodbye to the mountains and the first stop was Calgary where we stayed with a friend of mine from work for a night which was really nice to catch up with him.  This was followed by days and days driving through the prairies.  It was such a contrast compared to the epic Rockies but was kind of epic in its own way, I have never been somewhere with so much sky!  This was also the coldest part of the journey with temperatures getting as low as -40 degrees celsius brrrrr! We did pay a visit to the dinosaur museum in Drumheller which was pretty cool and had a massive collection of dinosaur fossils, 70% of which were from Alberta.  In Ontario, Lake Superior was beast in itself and is the largest fresh water lake in the world by surface area.  We spent 8 hours driving along its shore and that is just the Canadian side of it.

 

The last phase of the trip was through the east coast cities.  After days of endless driving though the centre of Canada we spent a few days in Toronto with a friend.  Of course a trip to Niagara happened which was pretty surreal to see in the winter.  Ottawa was a nice little city (surprisingly small for a capital) but skating on the canal was awesome.  Montreal had really nice architecture and no shortage of murals.  There was quite a choice of vegan restaurants to choose from as well.  Quebec City was sooo beautiful and we stayed in the old town which is surrounded by an old city wall and its stone buildings and small narrow streets really did feel like a European city.  We then travelled into New Brunswick which had recently received a lot of snow and was pretty crazy to see banks of snow piled up metres and metres high on the side of the road.  We also spent a couple of nights on Prince Edward Island and got there crossing the Confederation Bridge, the longest bridge in the world over ice covered waters at 8 miles long.

Then finally, we made it to Halifax on the other end of Canada, 3.5 weeks and 9 provinces later and we emptied our bottle (nicknamed Burrard) into the Atlantic at Peggy’s Cove.  Halifax was a nice little city to explore.  Unfortunately we didn’t get to explore it quite as much as we would have hoped as quite a bit of time was spent trying to sell Yaris L but we did manage to make a trip to the Alexander Keith’s Brewery!

It was an absolute epic adventure and we did actually get quite lucky with the weather.  When we were in the prairies the east coast was getting hit with a lot of snow and when we were on the east coast the prairies were getting the snow.  But there were quite a few precautions we took such as buying a good set of winter tyres, carrying lots of food, blankets, warm clothes, snow shovel, flares, first aid etc.  We also checked the forecast every morning and decided how far we were going to travel that day then booked that nights’ accommodation.  The one thing we didn’t do, and would recommend doing if you plan a similar trip, was install a block heater in your car that you can plug in overnight.  There were quite a few mornings where I wasn’t sure if the car would start but thankfully did.