Back to School: Traveling across Canada in the 2021 Chrysler Pacifica Pinnacle Hybrid 

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Last month, my daughter Justine and I drove across Canada. From B.C. to Ontario, we’ve covered quite a stretch of this vast country and wanted to share our travel experiences with you. I’ve broken down this 10-day journey into four parts; the first part covered our route across B.C ., until we safely made it to Alberta.

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Between August 18 and August 23, we went from Canmore, Alta. to Ontario’s western border, the second leg of a significant move from my daughter’s full-time employment and her own apartment in Victoria B.C. to postgrad studies at Placeholder University (aka the soon-to-be-renamed Ryerson) in Toronto, Ont. The conveyance was a fancy minivan supplied by Chrysler Canada, the Pacifica Pinnacle Hybrid.

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For many Canadians, such a trip would justify spending extra days in Canada’s wantonly beautiful mountains (see part 1 ) and the less-appreciated prairies would be treated like some rom-com montage, torn through, and flash-cut to an Adele song.

But this year, the continent’s entire western cordillera was smoke-drenched, much of it under constant evacuation alert. Rather than test our luck, we elected to power through the mountains in 48 hours (including sleeps) then dawdle the next five days through the prairies.

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The stereotype of boundless billiard baize interrupted by the odd cow or bison is false. The prairies’ topography, fauna and flora are varied spectrums. Mind, the popular image of unending sky and magnificent light is spot on.

Day three: Canmore, B.C. to Drumheller, Alta.

This drive was short, just 230 km, but after two extended days, snaking through B.C.’s smoky mountain passes, we didn’t mind.

Canmore sits at the eastern edge of Banff National park. Within a half hour of leaving the physical melodrama of its mountainous surroundings, the land rapidly smooths like the remaining bits of a carpet that’s been pushed towards a wall before a party.

Our 2.5-hour route splits from the Trans-Canada highway about halfway, to zigzag northwest to Drumheller, a town famous for its collection of dinosaur bones. What’s less celebrated, but at least as noteworthy to me, is Drumheller’s setting in Alberta’s lunar Badlands. Sunken dozens of metres into a valley, therefore invisible from the surrounding prairie, the Badlands are arid desert, decorated by round proto-pyramid hills whose brown, tawny, and tan geological layers stack like a tiramisu.

Indeed, we came for the dinos, but stayed for the Badlands. Literally. Freaked out by the masses of maskless hordes, we left the Tyrell Museum after an hour and, instead, hiked around the area’s collection of hoodoos.

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“Hoo dat?” you’re wondering. Sculpted by winds over time, hoodoo are bizarre, natural rock formations, each typically a narrowing column with a flat plate capping it. Anywhere but the Badlands, they’d look faked. Throughout the hike, we expected a roadrunner to sprint past, followed by a gormless coyote.

That evening, we unloaded several boxes at our little campsite to watch a DVD of Jurassic Park — when in Drumheller, do as the Hellish — from the Pacifica’s second row of captain’s seats. It came with three rows and, normally, with a push of a button and flurry of folding, the back two — “Stow and Go” seating — disappear into the floor.

However, this was a plug-in hybrid and its extra-large battery resides beneath the floor where the second row would cache. The backs of our two second row seats folded down but, short of removing them entirely, couldn’t be disappeared. That provided a small engineering challenge for the initial packing four days earlier but now, with the yank of a lever, it granted front-row theatre comfort for dino-weenies with a DVD. With the Pacifica in park, we inserted the DVD then watched it on the screens adhered to the backs of the front captain’s seats.

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Obviously, you can’t watch a DVD from the front row. If you’re wondering why, I hope never to meet you in traffic. But without occasional taps on the accelerator, the Pacifica would play its power out and gradually turn itself off after intervals of around twenty minutes. The second time that happened, the skies were almost dark and we could feel the resentful stares of nearby campers when our headlights brightened their tent walls.

We decided to stop watching, not wanting to drain the battery. Such a boneheaded dad move would make great copy for you but that’s about the only upside. (In the comment section below, please don’t tell us the ending to the first Jurassic Park .)

Day four: Drumheller, Alta. to Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, Sask.

Another shortish drive of just under 400 km, which is good because we’re not really heading westward as much as southwest. Justine and I both remember visiting the Cypress Hills earlier in our lives — for her, it was five years ago; for me, five decades — and wanted to re-experience this region’s gentle rolling beauty.

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During the drive, the highways are underpopulated and pristine. Without even employing cruise control, the Pacifica achieves fuel efficiency in the 7.5 L/100 km range. Fully compatible with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, it plays podcasts and what I can’t stop calling “books on tape.” We suffer a Stephen King that hasn’t aged well, narrated by Joe Mantegna, aka The Simpsons’ Fat Tony. We learn the lesson of sunken cost fallacy the hard way.

Cypress Hills, Canada’s only interprovincial park, is vast and feels alien. How? After three days of driving through an unending tinderbox, we’ve entered a province that allows campfires. This Saskatchewan side even supplies your wood. (In south Ontario they’d charge you $10 for a meagre stack then tell you fires are banned.)

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Before setting up camp, we do a five-km hike. Is this the prairies? To us, the Cypress Hills look more like southern Ontario’s Bruce Trail regions than some outtake from Who Has Seen the Wind? Lush forest surrounds the thriving lake we walk to, down a long, winding hill reminiscent of the Niagara Escarpment. This place is heavenly. After sunset and a small fire safely contained within a repurposed truck rim, we’re impressed by the almost perfect silence, occasionally interrupted by a lazy blackbird.

Day five: Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park to Saskatoon

It’s roughly a 450 km drive. Prairie folk are different. Take distance. If we’d come straight from Drumheller, we could’ve cut around 300 km but such distance isn’t half of what many Roughriders fans would drive for a tailgate party with free t-shirts. And pretty much every prairie transplant I’ve ever met openly aches for the open skies and unflaggingly bright daylight.

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We’re booked to stay with friends Mairi and Trevor, who recently moved to Saskatoon from down our very street in Toronto, ostensibly to be near her ailing father. Though she left Saskatchewan in the ‘70s, Mairi still notices her shoulders subside when, whether by plane or car, she arrives on the prairies. They moved here just before winter. Recalling her trip back home, Mairi mentioned, “You can see the point where suddenly, you’re out of woodsy terrain and onto the plains. I noticed that subconsciously I’ve been carrying traveler’s stress for decades.”

When we arrive around 4 p.m., we plug in the hybrid for the first time since Vancouver. The juicing will take 14 hours and last barely 50 km next day (but what lift-off full torque offers; for 50 km, you’re the Minivan Dad to rule them all).

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Proud ambassadors for their old/new hometown, Trevor and Mairi appealed to my daughter’s and my tastes. Mairi directed Justine to a 30 km bike route, much of which follows the South Saskatchewan River. (Justine became thoroughly Pacifica Northwest during her five-year residency in Victoria.) Meanwhile, Trevor walked me to a liquor store the size of a Walmart — bless those wide-open prairie dimensions. “When I agreed to move here, there had to be, among other things, a good liquor store within walking distance.” Trevor and I have known each other since attending Ryerson ourselves, over thirty years ago. He hasn’t changed.

In Cypress Hills the night before, the skies had opened and drenched our tent. Today, the clouds followed us up to Saskatoon. Such weather is an anomaly. Trevor quotes a stat about this city enjoying around 320 days a year of sunshine. I apologize for dragging the gloom up here with us. Turns out, it’s nothing some decent wine and Irish whiskeys from my new favourite liquor store can’t remedy.

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Day six: Saskatoon to Riding Mountain National Park, Man.

By morning, the cloud covering has disappeared. Light floods in and the seemingly random, almost eccentric, placement of windows in Trevor and Mairi’s Saskatoon house makes sense. Every few minutes, new shadows and tinges play differently. Meanwhile, their south-facing back patio is brighter than centre stage at an Osheaga Festival; our tent’s completely dried. We pack up, unplug the charger, bump elbows sadly, and hit the road.

The next 550 km drive flies by. Have we become honorary prairie people? Towards the end of the ride we cross into Manitoba. The surroundings are gradually being interrupted with scrubby bits of woods, spotted with delightful little lakes that someone from southern Ontario would call ‘up north’ or ‘cottage country.’

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Hurray! Moon Lake Campground in Riding Mountain Park also allows campfires and also supplies firewood. Picture this: It’s a warm, clear Saturday night. The campsites are generous and private. And, yes, there’s a lake for swimming with an ample sandy beach.

In southern Ontario, you’d need to book eons in advance to secure a campsite and the drive there would be so crammed with idiots, it’d be almost enough to make you want to just stay home.

Justine unpacks her bike and does a shortish ride while I set up camp. A novice who wouldn’t know where to plug in the campfire and only days ago bought the tent and inflatable mattress for this trip, I’m becoming adept. I start the fire, something I have years of experience doing.

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Moon Lake is down the dirt road about 800 metres. It’s dark but its moon lights our way, even in the passages through light evergreen forest. We lie on the dock, look up and take in the stars, so bright you could almost pluck them. From Toronto, you’d have to drive hours for such a sight.

Life is good on the prairies. But brace yourself.

Day seven: Moon Lake to Winnipeg

It’s a miserably wet 300 km slog southwest. Before we pass the town of Minnedosa, the skies have opened and released Poseidon’s angriest vengeance on humankind. Much of Manitoba, like much of Canada, had endured a suffocatingly dry summer but that came to an end the previous week. A weather system had settled overhead and was cycling in place.

On CBC radio, farmers kvetch it’s too little too late. We’re not farmers.

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By the time we arrive in Winnipeg, we’re nearing the eye of a hurricane. The sign for Portage and Main, Winnipeg’s iconic crossroads of Canada, is hidden behind the biblical deluge. A few blocks away, Winnipeg’s other icon, the Museum of Human Rights, is closed this day and the next. I can live with the Monday, but why do museums close on Sundays, especially wet ones?

My friend Willy, himself a cyclone of energy and legend in Canada’s automotive journalism community, owns a hobby farm outside of Winnipeg and we were supposed to camp there. But with the blinding rain, I’m afraid we’d be washed all the way into Hudson’s Bay. Instead, we arrange to meet for a dinner in town.

Wishing to be polite in front of the middle-aged folks, Justine observes how charming she finds the province’s license plate slogan, ‘Friendly Manitoba.’

“ Friendly Manitoba?’ Ha!” mocks Willy. “You could sue this place for false advertising but then they’d fix it so no one would ever find the body!” Joking, his tongue practically filling his cheeks, Willy advises, “In ‘ Friendly Manitoba’, you just keep your nose clean, your head down and your eyes straight ahead.”

Stay tuned for the part 3 of this cross-country road trip.