Ralph Martin - Cross Canada Adventures: Time Travelling Across Canada

CROSS CANADA ADVENTURES

Two Journeys

A Lifetime Apart

Ralph Martin

Blueskies Press

Canada

Copyright Ralph Martin 2017

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher is an infringement of copyright law.

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 978-1-7750554-1-9 (Digital)

Blueskies Press

1083 Troy Place

Qualicum Beach B.C V9K 2G5

Printed and bound in Canada

For the little red-haired girl.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

Canada is big. By road it is more than 7,500 kilometres from Vancouver Island to St. Johns Newfoundland. If you could drive the same distance west from Victoria you would be in the suburbs of Tokyo and the same trip east from St. Johns would land you in the parking lot of the Great Pyramid of Khufu with enough left on the odometer to cruise around Cairo and find a Starbucks.

Canada is a land of big nature: big mountains, big rivers, big prairies, lakes and skies. Big bays, big islands, big rain, trees, and waterfalls. Everything from big oil in Alberta to big tides in the Bay of Fundy and just plain Biggar in Saskatchewan. Canada has all manner of weather, often in the same place at the same time, and Canada has big animals, like moose and bears and bison. Despite being surrounded by so much bigness Canadians are fond of raising monuments and statues that give gigantic dimension to even the small and commonplace. What Canadian hasnt heard of the Vegreville Pysanka, the Wawa Goose, or the Big Fiddle in Sydney? (What Canadian hasnt incorrectly, but understandably, assumed that the Big Fiddle must be in Ottawa?)

Canada is also a land of traditions: Hockey Night in Canada, Kraft Dinner, a new Chia Pet for Granny every Christmas, and Tim-Bits after the kids (insert sport of your choice) game every Saturday. Traditions change from place to place and from time to time but the one quintessential tradition that touches all Canadians is the road trip. And the grand-daddy of all road trips is the great 7,500-kilometre odyssey from one coast to the other. Its a big trip and while almost all Canadians have done bits and pieces of it in fits and starts few of them make it all the way all at once.

Ralph has done the complete trip, twice over, and here shares his engaging and humorous narrative of both journeys: a newly retired traveller in a camper van criss-crossing the path of his seventeen-year-old backpacking self hitchhiking his way across the country 40-odd years earlier. The places and people, details and insights of the parallel experiences will bring a knowing smile to the face of anyone who has made the same journey and a gentle pang of regret to those who always knew they should have. 7,500 kilometres to the other end of the country and 7,500 kilometres back amounts to more than half way around the world at the 49 th parallel. This book will take you both ways twice, put a smile on your face, and save you a ton of gas money, so crack a cold one and hit the road.

Bob Collins

I am not yet beyond hope; I am writing this in a campground in Hope, B.C., a place I have always considered to be the edge of the known world. To a westcoaster like me, Hope is the gateway to the rest of Canada. Tomorrow morning my wife and I will be off on our adventure across Canada. We will be definitely beyond Hope.

The first time I went across Canada was many years ago, in 1970, when I hitchhiked alone. Thumbing a ride was a thing young people did back then. Before I left home, my mother warned me that I would surely find myself in bad company: drunkards, drug dealers, lunatics, murderers, and loose women. She was right. The murderer part occurred pretty early on, but before I tell you about the killer I met, I should begin at the beginningor close to it.

I remember when I decided to go to the east coast. It was because of a hat. I made my decision during a great weekend spent on the west coast of Vancouver Island (the Island) at Long Beach near Tofino. In those days, it was much harder to get there. The road through the central mountains from Port Alberni was rough gravel and excitingly winding, including a particularly nasty batch of steep switchbacks.

I had been out there with two buddies earlier that year escaping a boring day at school at the tail end of winter. My friend had one of those old fastback Volvos that he dearly loved to drive. I had grown up on farm trucks and big old sedans, so was unused to Johns road rally car and road rally driving. A couple of times I was more than a little anxious as we raced out to Long Beach, but as soon as I realized I was in good hands, I settled in to enjoy the ride.

The road we had been travelling on was rough, and narrow, and snaked through thick, dark mountain forest for a long enough time for it to begin to feel tiresome and tedious. It was the first time I had been over that particular road and really didnt know what to expect. I was quite unprepared when suddenly we came out of the shadows and found ourselves on a cleared hillside. The bright world had opened in front of us. It was fantastic. The miles of beach and the Pacific Ocean stretched out in front like an awakening. I was absolutely astounded. It is a scene Ill keep forever.

We were so impressed by our visit to the place that a few weeks later, we organized an exodus from school to camp out on the beach. There were piles of driftwood all along sand at the edge of the forest. It was no large task to make a kind of lean-to settlement. We had plenty of polyethylene sheeting and a few tarps, and we staked our claim amongst the other hippies. With plenty of substances to abuse and basic foods like chili and bread, we were ready to party away the weekend.

You could drive on the beach in those days. We found that sitting on a stout canvas tarpaulin pulled behind a VW van made a great ride across the sand. Unfortunately, when driving on the beach, there was a real risk of losing your vehicle if you found a soft spot and the tide came in. I remember two vehicles that had gone to their rest in that sand. The discovery of the first came as a surprise when I heard a strange kabunk noise as my buddy Gord and I walked on the beach.

I said to Gord, Sand doesnt go kabunk!

I walked back and forth a couple of times to get an exact location and fifteen minutes digging with our hands revealed the top of what we reckoned was a VW bug. No wonder the west coast is called the Graveyard of the Pacific, although I think that name was more for ships than little cars. The second vehicles end was more dramatic and amusing.

As I said before, in those days you could drive on the beach. It was all kinds of fun. There were lots and lots of young people on the beach driving lots and lots of cars, so it should not come as a big surprise to learn that some of them were drinking beer while they drove. A lot of beer. Enough beer to make a nuisance of themselves and to encourage the local constabulary to bring their police car onto the beach and put an end to the drunk driving.

Now, most of those young peoples cars were not expensive. In fact, it was a wonder that some of them even managed to make the drive to the west coast. The one that the police were particularly interested in had no muffler because that bit was probably somewhere on the nasty gravel road from Port Alberni. That car also boasted lots of rust, a missing tail light, dents and scratches, and rough body repairs, resulting in a net value that was probably less than the beer it carried. Quite an audience gathered to watch as the police herded those hooligans to our end of the beach where large rocks blocked any further progress. When the occupants of the car saw that there was no escape those gangsters turned their car in the direction of China. Shouting, Youll never take this car alive, Coppers! they drove it straight into the sea until the water was halfway up the doors. They climbed out of the windows and sat on the roof laughing and finishing the last of their beers.