MacsTravel Blog

Robin and I have been married for 33 years (!), sharing three wonderful kids and one wonderful grandson, an incredible group of friends and extended family, one neurotic dog and a love of travel. We are still relatively new to retirement: in this “post-pandemic” (fingers crossed) time, our thoughts initially turned to international travel, an itch that was scratched with a seven week odyssey through Australia and New Zealand earlier this year. At the same time, however, we started thinking about exploring more of our own backyard.

The thing is, Canada has a huge backyard and we have only seen a small portion of it. A quick trip last December to visit Robin’s brother Stew and family in Kelowna got us thinking about making the epic road trip across the country this summer to BC. Stew, Betty and their girls Darcy and Jamie were also ready to explore their newly adopted province of British Columbia. A plan was made: immediately after I finished teaching my summer courses with OISE UT, we would drive out, exploring some of the places that were on our “to see” list along the way, and meet them in Kelowna before heading to Vancouver Island. We would be tent camping most of the way, with a few strategic stops in hotels. We set alerts on our calendars so we could book the best possible sites in some of the fantastic parks that we wanted to visit: Pancake Bay, Quetico, Spruce Woods, Grasslands, Dinosaur, Jasper, Tofino, Strathcona, Whistler!

The plan was to take about three weeks to get out to Kelowna, and then another two weeks touring Vancouver Island with the “Westies”. Reservations piled up, and an itinerary took shape. Adventure! Road Trip! Excitement! Anticipation!

Exhaustion. The past few weeks had been a whirlwind of activity and I was stumbling to the end of my July teaching term, trying to wrap up assessments. Packing for a six week camping trip involves a fair amount of gear and clothing for a wide range of weather considerations. We looked at the detritus of our camping supplies and clothing spread across the house, waiting to be packaged in a way that would fit into our five year old Subaru, and thought to ourselves: Maybe we only needed one night in Pancake Bay. Plans to leave the last day of term turned into the next day, then the next.

The drive north from the GTA to the north shore of Lake Superior, traditional territory of the Anishinabek Nation, is a long one: about 7 hours to Sault Ste Marie which sits at the confluence of Lake Huron and Superior, and another 7 hours along the north shore to Thunder Bay at the western end of Superior. Superior is massive: it holds more water than all of the other Great Lakes put together, plus a few more Lake Eries thrown in for good measure, That’s roughly 10% of the world’s surface fresh water! It is the world’s largest freshwater lake by surface area, so driving from one end to the other is no small trip! Fortunately there are plenty of “Roadside Attractions” to be found on the way.

There is something wonderful about the tendency of small towns in Canada to feature giant monuments of quirky objects or figures in an effort to stand out from the pack. Sudbury (which is a small city rather than a small town) was our first stop on the oddities side tour of central and western Canada as we stopped by the Big Nickel! This would be followed by our Goose-Pooh double: a pit stop in Wawa to see the famous Goose (added there to pull in tourists off Highway 17- like that works!) and White River to visit the namesake statue of Winnie the Pooh. The short story is that a Canadian soldier adopted an orphaned bear club in White River and named it Winnie. Winnie became the mascot of a calvary unit, which went to serve in World War I, eventually ending up in the London Zoo where A.A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin were regular visitors.

Even the roadside food huts are “World Famous”!

Our first overnight stop, which was to have been three days, was Pancake Bay Provincial Park.

We pulled in for one night only, with a long drive to Schreiber Ontario ahead of us the next day following a planned stop in Lake Superior Provincial Park. After setting up camp and a grabbing quick bite, we set off to explore.

Pancake Bay is an idyllic setting for a park: Caribbean coloured waters nestle against a 3 1/2 kilometre long sandy beach. If it wasn’t for the chilly Superior temperatures you could almost picture yourself in the tropics!

It was amazing that we were there the last weekend of July and the massive beach felt virtually deserted.

We woke up the next day and set out on the Pancake Bay Nature Trail, a pleasant 3.5 km trail along the shore of the lake which veers up into the woods along a ridge line before dropping down through a wetland and finishing back at the campground. We love loops, and it was a great way to start the day. There was an impressive conglomerate boulder, beautiful lake views, lots of wildflowers and berries, and Robin found the insect-eating purple pitcher plant!

We had planned to spend the next night in a quirky small hotel named “The Voy” in Schreiber, which would set us up nicely to push on to Quetico Provincial Park. Breaking the trip up this way allowed us to visit the Pictographs in Lake Superior Provincial Park. Lake Superior Provincial Park is massive: the TransCanada highway splits it in two down the middle and the drive through it is over 80 kilometres long.

There are numerous campsites (all full when we visited) and trails to explore along this route. This particular hike is a short but challenging trail leads to one of the only pictograph sites in the province that is accessible by foot. A culturally and spiritually significant place, it was incredible to view these very visible and detailed pictographs in person. Due to the cultural sensitivity of the location we didn’t take pictures of the pictographs themselves, but we did capture some of the beauty and challenge of the hike and the shoreline. Those of you who followed our adventures in Australia and New Zealand will appreciate the warning signs!

Next stop is Quetico Provincial Park and a visit with Dan and Christine DeSouza! Look for an update in a few days.