Last August, largely due to the pandemic, we crossed off one of the big items on our bucket list. We drove from Toronto to Vancouver through Canada. For those of you unfamiliar with the drive, it’s actually a bit faster to drive through the US. But, the boarders were closed this summer, so we took the slightly longer way through the Canadian provinces. I am so happy we did the drive this way as it gave me the opportunity to explore parts of Canada I would not have visited otherwise. We also got to travel on the Trans-Canada Highway.
The Logistics
The distance from Toronto to Vancouver is 4,365 km. Google Maps translates this into 41 hours of uninterrupted driving. We made it across in five days. The breakdown of each day’s drive and the cities we stayed in is as follows:
Day 1: Toronto, ON to Sault Ste. Maurie, ON. 700 km and just over 7 hours of driving.
Day 2: Sault Ste. Maurie, ON to Thunder Bay, ON. Another 700 km and just over 8 hours of driving due to a lower speed limit along the highway.
Day 3: Thunder Bay, ON to Regina, SK. 1283 km and nearly 14 hours of driving. This was our longest day. We did not want to add an additional day to our trip by stopping in Winnipeg — a major city along this route. Manitoba had the most stringent Covid-19 guidelines at the time and we figured that it would be easier to just drive through instead of worrying about self-isolating in a hotel room.
Day 4: Regina, SK to Banff, AB. 881 km and nearly 9 hours of driving.
Day 5: Banff, AB to Vancouver, BC. 850 km and just over 9 hours of driving. This stretch is extremely mountainous, which requires caution and slower driving speeds. But, we were able to make up the time on parts of the Coquihalla where the speed limit is 120!
Hotels
We wanted to travel in comfort so we opted for a hotel stay for all of our nights on the road. You can camp along the Trans-Canada Highway in provincial, federal, and private camp sites. There are many rest stations with shower facilities to accommodate long-haul truck drivers and road trippers alike. We had enough credit card points saved between us to book four hotel stays at the following:
The Hotel Saskatchewan in Regina
These were all fairly pricey hotels. The prices ranged from $175 to $240 a night. Hotels were located centrally in each city, were easy to get to from the highway without requiring a detour, and included parking. Our biggest frustration was that all of the parking spots were outdoors. We traveled with a backseat full of personal belongings and were worried about leaving our stuff in the car overnight. We did not want to risk a break in, so every morning and every night (after an exhausting drive!) we made several trips from our room to the car with a hotel trolley filled with luggage.
Eating on the Road
We did not take much time off work for the road trip and our goal was to get across the country quickly and efficiently. We also wanted to enjoy each destination a bit and give ourselves a chance to sleep well, so we hoped to make as few stops as possible during each day.
We managed to eat while driving during the day. We travelled with a small cooler of prepared foods from home — hard-boiled eggs, fish cutlets, cheese, and simple fresh fruit and vegetables — that lasted us for days. I froze the icepacks overnight at every hotel. In Thunder Bay and Banff, we added some fresh groceries to our ration. My goal was to make sure we had access to a simple breakfast and coffee every morning so we could get ready to drive right away instead of wasting time sourcing food locally.
The food supply was also unpredictable. For example, in Regina, a lot of centrally located restaurants and coffee shops were closed due to Covid-19. None of our hotels offered in-house breakfast either due to the pandemic. There was not a single Tim Hortons between Sault Ste. Maurie and Thunder Bay. The pit stops with coffee in this part of Northern Ontario are few. After that day, we made sure to fill our thermos with coffee in the morning to last us the full day.
Relying on our own meals saved us a lot of time and money. The only time we “ate out” on the road was a sushi order to our hotel in Regina and a Subway dinner in Banff.
Favourite Moments
The drive along the shore of lake Superior from Sault Ste. Maurie to Thunder Bay is one of the most picturesque stretches along the Trans-Canada Highway. I did not realize Northern Ontario could look like that!
There was this stop at the Chippewa Falls that had a plaque designating it as the half-way point of the Trans-Canada Highway. This made me reflect on the sheer size of this wild country and what it must have been like for people to get across before the railway and the highway were an option.
Speaking of the railway, a set of train tracks ran parallel to us for the entire trip. It’s expensive, but I would highly recommend experiencing this trip on a train.
Wild flowers were blooming along the highway. I asked to stop multiple times to wander through their blooms.
The fields of blooming sunflowers in Manitoba. There were never on the right side of the road for us to pull over for a proper photo.
The Hotel Saskatchewan in Regina is one of the original railroad hotels in Canada. It was such a beautiful historical space. Too bad that we did not get to experience it to the fullest due to various closures and restrictions that the pandemic has brought on.
The fragrant dry grasses and the intense visibility of the prairies. Our hotel had a small poster up in the bathroom with a joke that if your dog runs away in the prairies, it will take you three days to lose a sight of it.
I loved experiencing the Canadian Rockies for the first time. We were entering the mountains on a hot hazy day at the end of July and the mountains appeared in faint layers about 30 minutes past Calgary. Banff has completely won me over. I knew that it would be beautiful but I was surprised to see how down-to-earth and well organized the national park was. I cannot wait to go back in the future to camp or enjoy a vacation there.
I enjoyed listening to an audio book of Leonardo Da Vinci’s biography. When we were not listening to the audiobook, I was reading out loud the Wikipedia pages of each location we have visited or noted on a sign.
We saw and photographed our first moose along the highway in Ontario!
We made a point of noting when we crossed a boundary for each province or a time zone.
As we drove further north, we enjoyed later sunsets at each destination.
I loved how it felt decidedly like summer everywhere we went. Nights were warm, I wore shorts, smelled fragrant grasses, and listened to the buzzing of crickets and grasshoppers.
I ended the trip with a dip in the Pacific Ocean at Kitsilano beach in Vancouver.
The drive made me aware just how different life is for Canadians outside of the top five major cities in the country. It made me appreciate the vastness and diversity of Canadian wilderness. I saw the landscapes that the Group of Seven painted, now protected by federal and provincial parks for everyone’s enjoyment.
The north felt mystical and I thought of all of the struggle and survival of generations before me out there. How many different landscapes people call home and how different our bodies can feel in them. I watched for signs announcing the unfamiliar places along the highway and whispered their strange names: Rabbit Blanket Lake, Old Woman Bay, Wawa, Whispering Pines, Dead Horse Creek… I imagined all of the wildlife that must be populating these areas. I thought of Indigenous Peoples that called these spaces home for centuries and of the settles who misplaced them and had to learn to survive in this vast wilderness.
If you live in Canada, make a point of exploring it by car. I know that the country feels too large and overwhelming and often it is cheaper and faster to travel to Europe than across this great continent that we call home. But a road trip across at least a part of it at a time will make you appreciate Canada and its diverse landscape and history so much more.
