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This week's day trip was fascinating, meaningful, and so much fun. We went to Alert Bay, toured the U'mista Cultural Centre (us for the second time , my mom for the first), and participated in a traditional salmon barbeque through Culture Shock . Know before you go: residential schools and the potlatch ban On the drive down to Port McNeill, where we get the ferry to both Sointula and Alert Bay, we gave my mom some context for the U'mista exhibits -- both the residential schools and the potlatch ban . We have talked about it before, but I felt a review of sorts would make the day more meaningful. After taking the Indigenous Canada online course through the University of Alberta, I feel more confident summarizing the issues -- a concrete benefit of the course. If anyone reading this doesn't know about these two horrors of colonization, I encourage you to learn about them both. I'll briefly summarize the issues at the bottom of this post. U'mista Cultural Centre...

I thought it would be fun for my mom to see a different part of Vancouver Island. I didn't want her going home thinking the whole island is a sparsely populated rain forest! Plus it's more fun stuff to do together. I booked an Airbnb in Royston -- just south of the town of Courtenay -- and we did some exploring from there. Saturday: driving and eating First there was the drive down-island, which included our obligatory stop at Ideal Cafe . We contrive to eat there whenever we go to Campbell River or beyond -- which means anytime we go anywhere out of the North Island. After another great breakfast, we found the Airbnb, a two-bedroom cottage with a patio, surrounded by pear trees and blackberry bushes, and steps away from the water. Courtenay sits on an estuary, directly across from the town of Comox, and the cottage was only steps away from trails along the water. Estuaries are supposed to be paradise for birders: there was a bench hidden in tall grass, and our host leaves bino...

More photos from our drive west are now on my Flickr page: here . I'll also be adding to the sets vancouver island and vancouver island north as we explore.

We are here! At our new home! Very excited! We had a reservation on the 10:15 ferry from Tsawwassen to Nanaimo, but we had to get there super early. If you get a lower berth, you cannot stay in the car -- which means we'd have to stay in the designated pet area with Diego. (You can leave your dog in the car by itself, but you know that's not gonna happen.) We wanted to make sure we had a spot on the upper deck, but you can't reserve that. This meant getting to the ferry very early. We were the second or third vehicle to check in, and M & SIL were right behind us in the truck. Waiting to board, we listened to the end of the Westlake book and an interview with David Yaffee, who wrote the recent biography of Joni Mitchell. That was notable mainly for our disagreements with the author. Eventually the boarding began. We happened to be parked right near the pet area. Turns out that is a little glass enclosure, about the size of an elevator, with a few built-in crates and two ...

Sicamous looked like a sweet little town, nestled on the shore of the Shuswap River, with mountains visible on two sides. We had breakfast at Grandma's and Grandpa's Family Restaurant. Most of the customers -- seniors at that time of day -- seemed to know each other and were talking very loudly. When I went to pay at the front, the woman said, "So where are you folks bound for now?" I said, "Port Hardy." She said, "That's an interesting place for a vacation." I said, smiling, "Actually, to live." "To live ? Now that's really interesting!" She looked eager, so I thought I'd pile it on. "Yes, relocating from Toronto." Her face lit up. "Oh my! Everyone will be very interested to hear this !" What a riot. The drive out of Sicamous towards Vancouver started out very scenic and lovely. When we reached the Coquihalla Highway, it started to rain lightly and was sometimes icy. We had been warned that thi...

It's very exciting to be past the mountains and in BC! We're having a really good time. It feels like we're on some kind of weird vacation where we don't do anything but drive and eat, and when we're done, we'll go back to where we live -- in Mississauga. Yesterday we had breakfast at an IHOP, then hit the road. It was cold, bright, and sunny. I had been checking weather conditions regularly, and there was no snow in the forecast at any location on the route. From other people's photos, I knew at some point, leaving Calgary, we'd be on a straight, flat highway with the mountains in front of us. It was exciting to get our first glimpse of the Canadian Rockies! The drive through the mountains was spectacularly scenic. All the evergreens were laced with snow, or sometimes covered in ice. And the snowy trees seemed to go on forever in all directions, undulating hills upon hills of snow-covered trees. Behind the trees, huge walls of brown rock jutting into th...

Greetings from Mountain Time! I had a friend from Denver who always said Mountain was the forgotten time zone. He may have been right: we forgot about the hour time difference until we saw the time on a bank sign. On the way out of Swift Current, the highway was a bit slippery, not from recent snow, but from compacted snow and ice that hadn't been cleared. We saw a few trucks in the median that had slipped off the road; we did have to drive a bit more carefully, but nothing scary. The land looked more like ranch and grazing land than farmland, and we did see a lot of cows and some buffalo. I'm glad to see them out eating grass the way they should be. I spotted a few animal crossings, the tunnels built under highways. The land was also less flat, with low, rolling hills, but still unbroken to the horizon. There were looong stretches without a town in sight. We listened to more Dortmunder -- we're both getting a little bored and want the book to end soon -- and coordinated th...

Greetings from the prairies! Yesterday was a good day. I fell asleep super early the night before, had a great sleep, then another amazing breakfast, this one at Smitty's, next door to the hotel. Then we hopped in the car, put it in cruise control, and went back to the Donald Westlake book. In northern Ontario I couldn't listen to a book while driving, but in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, it's a breeze. Allan and I both find the landscape fascinating. The highway is a straight black ribbon in the middle of a vast expanse of land, stretching to the horizon in all directions. The sky is huge . For long stretches of time, the only buildings you see are grain elevators, and the occasional clumps of trees planted as a windbreak around a farmhouse. The fields are mostly covered in snow, although it doesn't seem deep. Sometimes on first impression, we couldn't tell if an area was a snow-covered field or a frozen lake, that's how flat everything is. It looks like we won...

If you are following along, you might want to check comments, too. Allan often has interesting notes that he adds as comments. From yesterday: So we passed the geographical centre of Canada today. Tomorrow morning (Friday), we will pass the halfway point in distance on the trip. That will be roughly in Fleming, a small town about 50 km across the border into Saskatchewan. The deer carcass was amazing. Diego was riveted to a big clump of fur in the grass. Once I saw a few clumps of fur, I realized they were everywhere. They had not been snowed on, so the deer had probably not been there more than a day. I did not see anything resembling a skull, but there was a bottom-half of a leg that looked untouched. Seeing that a few hours after the wolf was pretty cool. I love looking at maps and finding interesting town names. Here are a few from Manitoba: Overflowing River, Brokenhead, Tolstoi, Snowflake, Altamont. ... I found many more cool names in Saskatchewan, which I should save for tomorr...

We are finally out of Ontario! We had a lovely and eventful day -- including a visit with a friend and a wolf sighting! We got up and ready very early this morning, thanks to some insomnia on my part. Too much salt plus vodka before bed equals Laura doesn't sleep well. It's not like I don't know that. I just sometimes lack the discipline to do what I should. It was decidedly less freezing today, with a low of only -10 C and a high of +2. I scouted out a spot for breakfast, about an hour down the road (the TCH) in the town of Dryden. Allan got us tea and coffee and muffins so my head wouldn't explode during that hour. The local chain is Robin's Donuts. We saw them all through northern Ontario, too. The muffins are really dense and seem to be whole grain. The glazed donuts give you a toothache just by looking at them. I'm not into donuts, so I can't tell you how they compare to Tim's or Krispy Kremes. Right before we left Ignace, Allan remembered that Dieg...

Yesterday was notable for several reasons. We've made it to the Central time zone. We've never been here before -- once we passed Kakabeka Falls, we're further west than we've driven in Canada. This is the first night of five provinces in five days, something Allan loves, and I also think is cool. And it didn't snow! From Sudbury to Wawa was 488 kilometres and it was a long, grueling day. Yesterday we drove 706 kilometres and it was so much easier. Yesterday was also the longest planned leg of the whole trip. From now on the driving will be a little less each day. We started the day with a big breakfast at North of 17, the same place we had dinner the previous night. This excellent breakfast included toast made from homemade bread. As I said, the diner of my dreams. I was getting a bit stressed about the time. I woke up at 6:00, got Allan up at 7:00, yet somehow we were getting on the road close to 10. I was worried that we'd be driving at night again. A and M ...

I've retitled the last two posts. Original day one is now day zero, and day one is a new (different) post. I won't attempt to explain what I was thinking, but it's fixed now. Yesterday morning we woke up to a bright blue sky and freezing cold weather. It was -17 C with a windchill of -27 C. Everyone at the motel was talking about how cold it was. I was thrilled because it was sunny and bright. Who cares how cold it is when we're driving all day? We got off to a slow start, with so much of what we needed in the truck, including the damn netbook adapter (it wouldn't boot up without it), and various other delays. We thought that was fine because we had only 480 kilometres planned, so we assumed the whole trip would be in daylight. Ha! Allan and M went off on another M quest, while I hammered away at the keyboard. About 45 later, when I hit publish , the post disappeared. So now I have no post and I've delayed us for nothing. Yay. We finally hit the road around 11:...

I tried to post this earlier today but had some annoying technical difficulties. Truth be told, I had organizational difficulties: the AC adapter for the netbook was in the truck. Later I wrote in the Deluxe Hamburger in Sudb‌ury... then blogger crashed. Then I drafted it again in the car. Oy. Yesterday was a long, tiring day, but in the end, it was successful. We are happy! The movers arrived right on time, which was impressive... then things quickly went downhll. They may have been trying to set a speed record. Our stuff was being tossed and piled and generally thrown about. It was kind of scary! It doesn't help that we live(d) on the 19th floor, the apartment furthest from the elevator, so the elevator has to be packed and unpacked, too. So many opportunities for disaster. Allan and M were able to corral the guys a bit, and in the end, we hope it was better than it looked. It was a complicated process. We drive a very small car with minimal truck space, and Diego takes up the wh...