Articles in the Ducati: Many Roads of Canada Category
Clear, the morning starts at freezing and is slow to warm, as I ride into the jagged boundary between Alberta and British Columbia. The ying to Newfoundland’s aged, rounded and spare yang, the Rockies complete …
It’s the West, home’s backyard, and Alberta feels like an old friend. The border between provinces continues to be startlingly accurate. Behind me is the wide sky and roll of the prairies, ahead the dinosaurs, oil and ranches, the Rockies, British Columbia and finally home.
The sign for Saskatchewan is a harbinger of prosperity. Pump-jacks line the roadside fellating like 50’s cartoon mosquitoes pulling congealed crude from the earth. David & David’s “Welcome to Boomtown” drifts through my mind. If …
Pickups charge down side-roads towards the highway, plumes of silica fog hanging in their wake. They are driven with the impunity of those who know they will never come across an unexpected corner. Those drivers …
My original plan was to push through Winnipeg, but my blind servitude to the Garmin Zumo GPS carries me into the downtown core. Then architecture grabbed me, the Bank of Montreal, the Royal Bank, the …
Just for reference, Ontario is large enough that when the provincial government decided to protect 222,000 square kilometers (56 million acres) of boreal forest from development in July of 2008, comparisons were drawn. For example, …
That’s the last Inukshuk, Highway 17 has been lined with them the past two days. These human forms, some classic in design and others more avant-garde, have been my constant companions as I cross Ontario. …
Sometimes a ride is just a ride, there’s no deeper meaning or context to be provided. These are the rides magazines never show you, the hard slogs. Magazines are all about peak experiences, not the …
Mattawa, Ontario – At the Valois Restaurant and Motel, in Mattawa Ontario, churchgoers have flowed in, nearly filling the restaurant. Worship done they sit at tables craving cold meats on over-processed bread, served with a …
Heading out of Trois-Rivieres, the Ducati Multistrada and I arc slightly south and skirt the edges of Montreal. The morning starts with something novel and surprising for a wet-coaster like myself, a new type of …
On the back roads of New Brunswick, the fall colours are gathering; greens transforming to oranges, yellows and golds. They would make a tremendous backdrop, except right now they’re making a tremendous blur. The road …
Nova Scotia is built for motorcycle touring. I’m sure of it, provided you hit the right speed to skim over the roads of the Sunrise Trail, which run from smooth to brutally potholed. They are gently winding and combined with late fall light and a warm day the ride makes for motorcycling satisfaction.
Under pallid florescent light and surrounded by clinical décor, people pace; sallow, tired, arms folded and tense. In the corner a man braced against the wall rocks to-and-fro. Elsewhere, another sits on a metal bench, …
This is the Newfoundland you’ve seen on every postcard ever sent, craggy red rock coasts, crashing blue waves, white foam, and seabirds mid-glide…
This is it, the end of the road. Literally. After 4801kms of travel from Toronto, the Multistrada is the eastmost motorcycle in North America. Cape Spear is (arguably) the most easterly point on the continent. In the mute of the overcast it is also barren, peaceful and contemplative.
Sepia tones of sunset have given way to the purples of dusk, casting the rugged moraine into subtle relief. One hundred and seventy kilometers from St. John’s on the highway one, Newfoundland becomes a heartbreakingly and beautifully desolate terrain of glacial erratics and tolts.
Channel-Port-aux Basques, NL – In the deepening dusk light, women shaped like baking-powder biscuits look on disapprovingly, while children on bicycles wave and give a thumbs up. The Multistrada’s basso exhaust note reverberates through the tight winding streets, which serpent across each other in a tangle never un-knotted by city planners.
Thwack! Something hits me in the neck, hard. Happens all the time riding, whatever it was probably just bounced off. Three minutes later the rain starts, and I hunch my shoulders against the onslaught and …
