Throttle and Thunder: Finding Myself on the Road
A 9,200-kilometre ride across the Canadian landscape becomes a journey through memory, identity, and resilience.
What am I doing?
That was the question running through my mind on the third day of my journey — a lifelong dream to ride a motorcycle from my home in Ontario to the West Coast of Canada and back.
By then, I had already ridden more than 1,400 kilometres and was still a few hours away from the Manitoba border. Much of this journey had thus far been spent battling rain, with daytime temperatures barely reaching the low teens. Far from ideal for a motorcycle tour. I'm no stranger to challenges, having completed a marathon, but this was something else entirely.
At that moment, Vancouver seemed so far away.
How did I get here?
Just shy of 50, I craved excitement and wanted to shake up my everyday.
Six weeks before embarking on this trip, I had a full-time job I was content with, but felt like something was missing.
So I decided to purchase a motorcycle — not just any ride, but a dream bike I had lusted after for more than a dozen years: the Triumph Street Triple.
This bike is known for its simplicity and dynamic handling, ideal for short trips around my home in the Haliburton Highlands. Long rides? Possible, but not recommended, particularly without fairings and a windscreen to shield me from the elements.
I would learn this the hard way.
With decades of riding experience and a childhood fascination with motorcycles, I had always wanted to ride across Canada but hadn't seriously considered a long-distance trip until recently.
I started to reflect on how much my elderly parents have aged in the past few years, reaching points in their lives where my mother needs a wheelchair and my dad needs a walker to get around. Time slips away quickly.
Inspired by videos made by well-known YouTuber Itchy Boots, a Dutch globe-trotting motorcyclist, I decided it was time to make my dream a reality.
This trip wasn't about checking off landmarks — although I did see such national treasures along the way as the Husky the Muskie in Kenora, the Wawa Goose in Wawa, the Big Nickel in Sudbury, the second largest fire hydrant in the world in Elm Creek — but an opportunity to gain an intimate connection with Canada.
Unlike driving a car, where you're cocooned in a steel cage with climate control, riding a motorcycle is an immersive experience that engages your entire body and mind.
Some trips are about escape; others engage you so profoundly that they feel surreal.
I was moved to tears when I crossed the Prairies. It was about the twelfth hour of accumulated time of riding those plains, while somewhere in Saskatchewan that I could still see the horizon ahead. Most people I talk to know about the topography of the Prairies, but it was at that moment that I could see it and feel it through my body.
Motorcycle journeys offer unique encounters. Without the barrier of a car, strangers feel comfortable approaching, sharing, and connecting.
I expected nods and waves, common in small towns, but I was surprised by how many people struck up conversations, fascinated by my journey and concerned for my well-being.
There was the young man in his twenties from Toronto, selling car-cleaning products at a gas station near the Manitoba border. A retiree who shared a beer with me the night before reuniting with old friends at Lake Superior Provincial Park. Clint, the owner of Ox Motorcycles in Winnipeg, always makes time to help touring riders with repairs. And a former journalist-turned-mechanic in Vancouver, now changing tires and oil at Essential Motorcycle Services.
The most exhilarating and gruelling moments of my journey unfolded on the first day of my return trip from Vancouver to Revelstoke. The morning ride along the famed Sea-to-Sky Highway to Squamish was pure bliss — sunny skies, warm temperatures, the ocean to my left and towering mountains on my right. Fellow motorcyclists nodded in passing, sharing the unspoken camaraderie of the road.
My joy was briefly interrupted when I had to slam on my brakes to avoid a sudden traffic jam. Later, I stopped near Pemberton, eating a humble lunch of tinned fish while gazing at the lake and mountains ahead, savouring the moment.
The winding roads that followed were pure motorcycling nirvana. But near Lillooet, where the arid, rolling landscape resembled a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, golden in the setting sun, reality intruded — a bighorn sheep bounded across my path, jolting me back to full awareness.
Then night fell and the rain began. The temperature plummeted to near freezing. I struggled to keep warm, my visor blurred by steady streams of water. The only visible guides were the painted road lines. With an 80 km/h speed limit, I barely reached it, forcing transport trucks to overtake me when the road allowed. It was the hardest riding I had ever endured.
By the time I reached a gas station an hour from Revelstoke, my teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Seeing my friend's warm smile when I finally arrived after 10 hours of riding was a relief beyond words.
The final stretch home covered thousands more kilometres and included a fortuitous detour through a valley to avoid a snowstorm, two nerve-wracking days with a slackening drivetrain chain (without tools to fix it), and a restless night in a tent, enduring a thunderstorm with gale-force winds on Lake Superior's shores.
In the end, despite some brutal conditions and a slackening chain, there were no breakdowns, no flat times, no collisions. I was grateful.
After the 9,200 kilometre round-trip, I can still smell the salty air of the ocean, feel the warm and breathtaking bluster of the Prairies, the majesty of the Rocky Mountains and with how small I felt standing in their shadow, and I'll never forget the the time when a turkey vulture and eagle clashed a few feet above my head in a Northern Ontario corridor of coniferous trees.
This trip cost me a set of tires, two oil changes, and countless tanks of fuel, amounting to a few thousand dollars and 16 days of my life. But what I gained was priceless.
I discovered resilience, reaffirmed my belief that I can accomplish anything, and forged an intimate connection with Canada, not just through its landscapes, but through the people I met. This journey wasn't just about the miles; it was about the depths of my heart and became an experience that truly changed me.
Now it's time to plan the next adventure.
Canada. Crafted by Canadians.
