AWhen Mason was introduced to me at the end, I finally knew that I could do the tour. Tall, muscular, wide awake, and with amber eyes that seemed to reflect the vastness of his native Ontario, you can go anywhere with a team like Mason. And also back without a scratch, which was very important to me personally, but more on that later. Mason, in turn, fixed me with his eyes. As if he wanted to check what kind of person it was that was being presented to him. As if he were looking deep into me. We looked at each other without speaking for a long time, then shared the bagel I’d just unpacked when the others pulled into the parking lot. “Are you coming? Let’s go!” Shana called, and Mason sauntered over to the canoe and climbed into his seat. For a forty-pound Malamute Husky mix, he was exceptionally gentle.
Northern Ontario is Instagrammable Canada. Dense forests, steel-blue lakes, lots of space, lots of emptiness, lots of sky. It’s 700 kilometers between Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay, 700 kilometers, along which the Trans-Canadian Highway wraps around the north shore of Lake Superior like a long loop. Between the two towns there are two or three handfuls of motels, a few places with names like Wawa or Nipigon, regular moose warnings and – nothing else. Nothing but forest. Nothing but lakes. Nothing but Canada. Every now and then narrow slopes branch off the highway, which end in nothing after a few kilometers of rumble. Petrol stations announce their existence hours in advance: 185 km to go, on the left-hand side of the road.