Pedalling Nonsense

Photo courtesy of Molly Bawn Whale and Puffin tours. We were so excited to see the puffins that we didn’t take any good photos of them on our boat tour.  This blog post is coming to you at 4:00 pm Atlantic Time, 4:30 pm in Newfoundland: We made it to Newfoundland, the final province! We’re on the final stretch of our journey before flying back to Vancouver. We’re still both enjoying ourselves, but also looking forward to seeing friends again. Even as we approached Newfoundland, it looked so unique compared to other parts of Canada we’ve seen. The coastline looks like it belongs in a fantasy novel or Treasure Island  — craggy headlands and exaggerated jagged cliffs. These rocks are over 1.5 billion years old, making them the oldest exposed rocks above sea level anywhere on earth.  If the Maritimes embody Canadian stereotypes of kind, polite, friendly, and stoic people, then Newfoundlanders seem to be an exaggerated version of those stereotypes. So many people stop us to ch...

Many people recommended that we cycle around Cape Breton Island, and the scenery delivered. In the last week we went to Halifax, spent several days there, then cycled around a bit of Cape Breton towards the ferry to Newfoundland.  In Halifax, Karen was eager to spend an afternoon at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. I was impressed by the museum. Seeing people’s stories of resilience, acceptance, and belonging made me proud to be Canadian. The museum also didn’t ignore Canada’s attempts to push certain groups away to keep them out of Canada. A few days after leaving Halifax we stopped at the Peace By Chocolate shop in Antigonish. The store’s owners were Syrian refugees who came to Canada in 2015, and their journey of overcoming hardships and building a new life in Canada is featured in a book and movie.  The Pier 21 museum also has an “Immigrant Journey” room with staff dedicated to helping museum-goers search their family’s immigration history. I told the staff t...

Seeing the Bluenose II sailing into the mist is a good reminder of Canadians working together to stick it to the United States.   Somewhat bizarrely, we’re currently slightly farther away from our final destination of St. John’s compared to where last week’s blog post was published from. When we entered Nova Scotia from Prince Edward Island on July 25th, I was expecting to point my tires North-East towards St. John’s. Karen is an unstoppable cycling machine and she had other ideas. She convinced me to turn South-West, away from St. John’s, and make our way to the UNESCO heritage site of Lunenburg. Lunenburg is the best example of a planned British colonial settlement in North America and it retains its original layout and appearance of the 1800s. We’ve had our best and worst camping in the Atlantic provinces. Camping along the coast in New Brunswick, PEI, and Nova Scotia with beautiful beaches and fish and chip shacks has been an ongoing highlight. Our worst camping was our first n...

This was the best camping of our cross-Canada trip so far  This week we unequivocally made it to the Atlantic Ocean—mission accomplished…sort of. We decided that because we don’t know when we’ll be in the Eastern provinces again we might as well take advantage of our time off and see all of them. Our end goal is now St. John’s. This past week we made it all the way through New Brunswick and onto Prince Edward Island. From the six days we spent in New Brunswick, the province appears to be a single congruent coastal town. A two‑day bike loop around the Acadian Peninsula led us to the Historic Acadian Village, where costumed interpreters demonstrated shingle‑making, bucket‑weaving, and other traditional crafts.  On our second-last day in NB, a stranger in a pickup truck pulled over on the highway to chat—and then invited us to stay at his home! This is the third offer we’ve gotten from random strangers to stay at their place over the last few months. He took us to the town’s Scal...

  I learned about the Plains of Abraham in history class but our visit to Quebec City taught me that the name is a misnomer. We climbed 398 steps to get from the lower town to the ‘plains.’ Karen and I made it through the Eastern Townships and took a few days rest in Quebec City. We explored the city and cycled around  île d'Orléans.   A highlight of our time there  was coming across a four person craft market in the basement of an old church. The elderly crafters consisted of a crocheter, a weaver, a stained glass maker, and a man playing spoons. No one else was there either buying or selling, and no one spoke any English, but it was amazing seeing their works. Karen chatted with the crocheter as best as she could and showed off a picture of a cowboy hat she crocheted last year for the Stampede.   I love flags, and it’s been fascinating to observe the changes in flags over the last few weeks. Leaving Ottawa the day after Canada Day there were Canadian flags eve...

Habitat ‘67 is a housing complex designed and built for the 1967 Montreal Expo. Seeing Montreal has been a highlight of our trip. We were planning on spending two full days in Montreal but we ended up staying an extra two days because there was so much to see. We had a generous host tour us around St. Eustache, Oka, and part of the Island of Montreal.  The bike infrastructure throughout Quebec, both within Montreal and between towns and cities, has been phenomenal.  I was surprised that there were so many festivals ongoing. I was sad to learn that we just missed Comic Con (where Sean Astin was a guest!) and we were too early for the Just for Laughs festival, but we caught the last evening of Jazz Festival as well as the Circus Festival. Another highlight was doing a few laps around the F1 racetrack that’s been converted into a 4.3 km bike loop. Verstappen may be able to beat us on four wheels, but I’d like to think Karen and I could give him good competition on a bicycle. Peop...