this drive. Imagine a Honda Civic packed
with two grown adults, two dogs that took
up the entirety of the backseat, one cat
that also needed a litter tray, and our be-
longings that filled the trunk and the floor
of the car.
We had planned for the trip to take us
approximately ten days with a stop in
Montreal to visit my family. I must say, we
ended up getting very lucky. Our pets are
great travellers and although we lacked
space and oxygen in the car during the
hot summer days, the drive could have
been a lot worse. Gunner soon accepted
his fate as co-pilot and spent most of the
long days curled up on our laps or staring
out the window at the beautiful Canadi-
an landscape. Our dogs remained quiet
and behaved until we got to the rest stops,
which allowed them to break free of their
travelling cage. They got the chance to run
among Alberta’s Rockies and on the san-
dy shores of Ontario’s Great Lakes. What
lucky boys!
We reached Nova Scotia as planned
and were ecstatic as the Atlantic Ocean
came into view. It had been a trying cou-
ple of weeks, but we’d achieved what we’d
set out to do.
This is where most stories would come
to an end, but this isn’t like most stories.
Although Nova Scotia held beauty beyond
what we could’ve imagined, a part of us
missed the wild West Coast from where
we’d come. Sometimes it takes leaving a
place to realize that that’s where you were
meant to be all along. So only four months
after arriving in Nova Scotia, we packed up
and headed back to Vancouver Island, but
lucky for us, this time we were driving a
roomy Jeep Wrangler!
We now reside in the small town of
Nanaimo, B.C., where we are able to live
among mountains and by the ocean. I
think our pets are glad to have a place to
call home for a while. Our life has always
been an adventure and, yes, maybe even a
circus at times, but some of the greatest
memories I have of our little family were
made along that Canadian highway. Caroline, along
with Gryn and
Zak, enjoying
the view at Lake
Nipissing in
North Bay, Ont.