Victoria–Nanaimo: a Transcanadense

Behind you, at the corner of Douglas Street and Dallas Road, in Beacon Hill Park, there's a marker at the edge of the water that says Mile 0. That's the western end of the Trans-Canada Highway. From that curb, the road runs roughly eight thousand kilometres, across this island, across a strait, across mountains and prairie and shield and forest, all the way to the far side of the country. Every kilometre of the longest highway in Canada is measured from a spot you could throw a stone into the ocean from. We're going to drive the first hundred and ten of them, and I'll tell you now, those first hundred and ten are strange and good. You'll pass a working ferry terminal and a summit where the whole inland sea opens up beneath you. You'll go through a valley that grows wine grapes because the summers are genuinely hot, past a town that painted its entire downtown when the sawmill closed rather than quietly disappear, past a marsh where a thousand trumpeter swans spend the winter, and into a harbour city that came into being because of a single load of black rock. The places along this stretch have one thing in common that only shows up when you string them together: each of them was built for a reason that no longer exists. The coal ran out. The mill shut. The rail line stopped. And every one of them is still here, doing something else, which is a harder and more interesting story than the one about how they started. This is also Coast Salish territory, all hundred and ten kilometres of it, and there are nations along this road who have been here for thousands of years and are here now, running fisheries, forestry, hotels, treaty negotiations. Their story isn't a preamble to this highway. It's the spine of it. The route continues straight ahead from here. Give me the next two hours and I'll show you the whole thing.