The last section of the Canada Coast to Coast cycling adventure, ‘Atlantic Way‘ stretches 1320 km from Montreal to Halifax, passing through the provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Here are 5 reasons to ride along:

1 – Québec City

Vieux Québec

Québec City is a little piece of Europe in North America. It is situated high up above the St Lawrence River resulting in some amazing views and its skyline is dominated by the historic Chateau Frontenac hotel. Founded in 1605 by Samuel de Champlain, its old town (Vieux Québec) is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is a warren of cobblestone streets lined with charming restaurants and shops. During the summer months, the streets are filled with buskers and musicians and in the winter it is the centre for the city’s world famous Winter Carnival. The old city is surrounded by fortified walls and features a number of architectural gems including the Citadel de Québec and the Notre-Dame de Québec Basilica-Cathedral.

2 – St Lawrence River

Whale watching

The mighty St Lawrence River runs about 1200 km from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Ontario. Until the 1950’s the river was only navigable up to Montreal but the creation of the St Lawrence Seaway by the end of that decade allowed shipping to continue past that city and on into the Great Lakes. One of the most interesting things about the river is the presence of a large number of whales in its waters. There are 13 species including belugas, right whales, humpbacks and even the immense blue whale, the largest animal on the planet. Some of the first Europeans were Spanish Basques who sailed in the St  Lawrence to hunt for these creatures. Nowadays whale watching is a very popular activity and local and national governments are working to save the endangered right whale from the hazards created by the shipping industry.

3 – Bay Of Fundy

Hopewell Rocks

Measuring in at up to an incredible 16 m and occurring 4 times a day, the Bay of Fundy has the highest tides on Earth. Unbelievably, according to Wikipedia, “In one 12-hour tidal cycle, about 100 billion tonnes of water flows in and out of the bay, which is twice as much as the combined total flow of all the rivers of the world over the same period.” They create vast mudflats at low tide, allowing people to explore the Bay’s floor and leaving lonely flowerpot islands high and dry…until the tide returns. The tides also create the ‘reversing falls’ on the Saint John River where the water actually is forced back up over the falls – a rather incredible sight. The Bay is also well known for its resident whales and for its abundant fossils, the latter best explored at low tide, as you can imagine!

4 – Seafood

Digby scallops

Fresh, straight from the sea, lobster, crab, cod, mussels, halibut and salmon are all something for cyclists to eagerly look forward to at the end of a day’s ride as they pedal through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. But the seafood highlight has to be scallops, and not just any scallops, they have to be Digby scallops. Now anyone who has watched one of Gordon Ramsey’s cooking shows certainly knows that these appear to be very tough (pun intended) to cook. However, when the cyclists arrive in Digby for lunch after ferrying across the Bay of Fundy, they will be able to enjoy what are probably the world’s best scallops. They could be seared at Ed’s Take Out or fried at the Crow’s Nest or in a chowder at the Sydney Street Pub but whichever restaurant they choose, the riders are in for a rare and delicious treat!

5 – Halifax

Halifax harbour

The Atlantic Way comes to a close in Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia. This port city has a long and varied Maritime history. It was from this city in April of 1912 that the first search and rescue ships where dispatched when the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic went down. In December of 1917, two vessels, one of them carrying munitions, collided just outside the harbour. The resulting explosion, the most powerful in the world before nuclear weapons, killed over 2,000 people and devastated parts of the city. Today, the peaceful harbour boasts a wonderful 3 km long wooden boardwalk allowing people to stroll along the scenic waterfront while exploring a couple of fascinating sites – the Pier 21 Immigration Museum and the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.

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The ‘Routes des Voyageurs’ section of the 2021 Canada Coast to Coast cycling adventure explores the history of much of modern Canada as it follows the routes of the early fur traders, the voyageurs, on their travels to the west from Montreal and the St Lawrence River to Sault Ste Marie and Lake Superior.

Here are 5 reasons to join this section:

1 – Ottawa River

Credit: C.P.Storm CC BY 2.0

For many years before the arrival of European colonists, the Ottawa River, called ‘Kitchissippi’ in the local Algonquin language, was an important trading and communications route amongst the local indigenous communities. Once the British and French arrived however, the river was transformed into a major trade route for the new settlers. In the early 17th century, two French explorers, Samuel de Champlain and Étienne Brûlé, followed the river westwards and eventually arrived at the Great Lakes, creating one of the most popular and successful trading routes for the fur-trading voyageurs. Over the years the dangerous rapids and wild waters that once characterized the river have been tamed by hydro dams but white water rafting remains a popular pastime for visitors.

2 – Parliament Buildings

Ottawa’s Gothic parliament buildings, home to Canada’s government, are beautifully situated overlooking the Ottawa River. Construction on the original buildings began in 1859, a year after Ottawa was officially confirmed as Canada’s permanent capital. Largely completed by 1866, they were considered an architectural marvel. When English novelist Anthony Trollope visited he exclaimed that “I know no modern Gothic purer of its kind or less sullied with fictitious ornamentation.” Unfortunately, in 1916, a fire engulfed the Centre Block and completely destroyed it. Its reconstruction took over 10 years, finally reopening in 1928. The grounds in front of the buildings is used for a variety of purposes including national celebrations and occasional protests. (Note: the Centre Block is currently closed to the public due to renovations.)

3 – Montreal’s Food Culture

Montreal is a foodie’s dream destination. The culinary scene is a mix of innovation and tradition influenced by a wide variety of cultures – from French to Jamaican, Chinese to British, Haitian to Polish and everything in between. You can chow down at a funky food truck, a Parisian style bistro or a 5 star French restaurant. In the morning be sure to snag a wood fired Montreal bagel, then for lunch grab a smoked meat at Schwartz’s famous deli on St Laurent. For dinner the options are endless – classic moules frites in Vieux Montreal, veal meatballs from the highly rated Joe Beef or the nightly special at any of the city’s endless food options. After dinner, visit one (or more!) of Montreal’s incredible brewpubs for a pint before heading out to sample the city’s justifiably famous nightlife.

4 – The Big Nickel

Credit: FW42 CC 2.0

The city of Sudbury is the site of an incredible amount of mineral wealth, due to an asteroid that crashed nearby many, many millions of years ago. Most of it is found in nickel but there are other valuable metals also present. In fact, one of the city’s nearby towns is appropriately named Copper Cliff. The area is likely best known as the place the Apollo astronauts trained for their moon landings. At that time the pollution from the mines and smelting created a very unhealthy environment that really did resemble a moonscape. That all changed in 1970 with the construction of the Inco Superstack which, at 381 m high, sent the nasty fumes much further away. The big nickel was built in 1964 to commemorate the contribution of nickel to the local economy and is considered the largest coin in the world.

5 – Lakes, Lakes & More Lakes

Ontario is home to over 250,000 lakes that are estimated to contain about 20% of the world’s fresh water! They range in size from Lake Ontario’s 18,960 square km to bodies of water the size of a backyard pool. Even the province’s name is derived from the Indigenous word Ontarí’io, which translates to ‘great lake’. You can visit Go Home Lake, Applesauce Lake, Crotch Lake or Opeepeesway Lake, amongst others. These lakes provide many benefits: great fishing (there are over 150 species including salmon, pickerel, bass, pike, trout, walleye & muskie), amazing swimming and invaluable environmental benefits both for the nearby communities and the province as a whole but also for the wildlife that makes their homes in and around them.

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Want to explore the geographic heart of Canada? Then ride the ‘North of Superior‘ section of the 2021 Canada Coast to Coast Cycling Adventure.

Here are 5 great reasons to ride from Winnipeg to Sault Ste Marie:

1 – Lake Superior

Lake Superior, known to the local Ojibwe peoples as ‘gitchi gami’ (meaning ‘great sea’), is the largest of North America’s Great Lakes and is the largest lake in the world measured by surface area. It is known for its great beauty – clear waters and rugged tree-lined shoreline – but even more so for its capricious nature. The waters are icy cold, even in the height of the summer, and its storms are legendary, none more so than the one that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975. Immortalized by Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot in his song ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald‘, the ship, caught in a sudden November gale, was split in half and all 29 crew members died. As Lightfoot eerily sings, “The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead.”

2 – Nanabijou, the Sleeping Giant

Directly across from the city of Thunder Bay sits the Sibley Peninsula, the remnants of an ancient volcano. Today it is a popular provincial park offering great hiking, camping and swimming. However, if you look closely at it from the city it appears to be a a giant sleeping on his back. This gave rise to the legend of the great spirit, Nanabijou. Essentially, this spirit offered to tell the local Ojibwe tribe the location of a secret silver mine at the end of the peninsula but he warned them that if the white man should find out he, Nanbijou, would be turned to stone. The tribe found the mine and soon became famous for its incredible silver jewelry but, alas, soon the white man found out, the Nanbijou was turned to stone as the Sleeping Giant and the silver mine was flooded by a huge storm, never again to yield an ounce of the precious metal.

3 – Canadian Shield

The bleak majesty of the Canadian Shield can be simply overwhelming. It covers a large part of the country but is especially prevalent in Northern Ontario where its windswept bedrock and craggily trees create an iconic Canadian scene. The rock itself is some of the oldest on the planet, dating back as far as 4 billion years. There is very little soil but endless bogs and swamps. Despite this, many creatures call this area their home – black bears (the blueberries here are legendary), beavers, otters, wolves, moose and many others. And bugs, lots of bugs! It is also the source of much of Canada’s mineral wealth, the land containing vast amounts of diamonds, uranium, nickel, iron ore, diamonds and copper.

4 – Boreal Forest

Much like the Canadian Shield, Canada’s vast boreal forest stretches across large parts of the country, in fact, over 50% of the land area. It constitutes about one third of the world’s boreal forest and, most importantly, unlike in other countries, large parts of it are essentially untouched. It is a vital breeding ground for many bird species and plays an important spiritual and economic role for the various indigenous communities that call it home, especially with regards to the woodland caribou. Similarly, it exists in the modern Canadian imagination courtesy of the Group of Seven’s paintings and the Canadian one dollar coin, the ‘Loonie’, named after the loon, an important boreal species.

5 – The Canoe

Famous Canadian historian Pierre Berton once quipped that the definition of a Canadian was “someone who could make love in a canoe“, not an easy task as you can imagine! The image of a canoe on a lake or river is an iconic Canadian scene. And, of course, there is a Canadian Canoe Museum with over 100 canoes on display. The water craft itself was invented by the Aboriginal peoples, long before the Europeans arrived but the colonists soon discovered the usefulness of the canoe for following wild rivers and shallow lakes along the emerging fur trade routes. Pierre Trudeau, perhaps Canada’s most famous Prime Minister, once wrote, “Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute, pedal five hundred and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature.”

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The TDA team has recently been very busy working on finalizing our 2021 Tour Calendar. After a disappointing, to say the least, 2020, we wanted to make sure we had something for everyone. We also intended to cover all our bases. Let’s see – Asia has the Bamboo Road, Journey to the East & Trans-Himalaya, Africa has the Tour d’Afrique & Magical Madagascar, South America has the South American Epic, Europe has the Pub Ride, the Odyssey, Orient Express & Trans-Europa, Oceania has the Trans-Oceania…hmmm what are we missing here? Oh, right, North America!

Which brings us to our newest cycling adventure – Canada Coast to Coast. We believe this tour, running over 6,000 kms from Vancouver to Halifax, from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, from Beautiful British Columbia to Historic Nova Scotia, really does have everything you could want in a cycling experience…

You want exciting cities?

Vancouver, British Colombia

You want mountain scenery?

Lake Louise, Alberta

You want open skies?

Canola field, Saskatchewan

You want snow?

Sorry, no snow. The tour takes place during Canada’s admittedly brief summer!

You want wildlife?

Brown bears, Alberta

You want lakes?

Lake of the Woods, one of Ontario’s 250,000 lakes

You want history?

Ottawa – Canada’s capital and home to 7 national museums

You want delicious cuisine?

Poutine – Canada’s national dish – fries, gravy & cheese curds

You want Europe?

Quebec City’s old town – a taste of Europe in North America

You want high tides?

Bay of Fundy – home to the world’s highest tides

You want to join us?

Yes, please. Register now!

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