Don’t go hitchhiking in Canada without reading this first

“Stop the car—I’m not fucking joking, mate!” I screech.

He stomps on the brakes, the car slides onto the soft shoulder, lurches to a halt. He releases the central-locking, pops the trunk, no words, eyes ahead still. I bail out, snatch my bag, and slam the trunk shut so hard that the car’s back window almost shatters. He floors it, aerosols me with gravel. I unleash righteous profanity, a spasm of relief, missing the chance to get his licence-plate number.

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I stride back to the highway, Coke bottle trembling in my left hand, and stick out my right thumb again. It’s all I can do.

Not the perfect anecdote to spruik Canada as a free, easy and safe place to hitchhike, eh? But this cautionary tale has a dual purpose. First, newsflash!: Hitchhiking anywhere comes with its risks, but you can make better decisions than I did to mitigate them (more on that later). Second, despite the anomalous nightmare, I sincerely recommend hitchhiking in Canada. Done right, it is utterly rewarding to roam its incredible wide-open spaces.  

I accepted 33 rides in total, zig-zagging the eastern provinces for a couple of months: Newfoundland, Halifax, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Ontario. Of them, 32 came from uber-altruistic mortals.

On the city limits of Newfoundland capital St John’s, lift one materializes from the mist, a people-mover full to the Jesus-handles with humanity. Some human Tetris clears a space for me in the backseat, next to a sweet three-year-old girl. We play pat-a-cakes endlessly.

Mum and dad are affable and inquisitive; although astonished anyone would choose to “holiday this way”. When I reach this family’s fork-in-the-road, I un-Tetris out, to my pat-a-cakes partner’s uncontrollable wails. I think she wants to come along. Both our bottom lips swell. Bless your gypsy heart, darling, travel well and far in your life.

Hitchhiking is not for the time-sensitive traveler. It’s a long-game: Find your rhythm; devise your own techniques and rules; make your own observations (fun fact: people in brand-new cars are way less likely to pick you up).

Politics intervenes for lift number three; specifically, the mayor of a munchkin town on the stark fells of Newfoundland’s southern coast. He drives me to a diner he knows, and orders food enough for a professional hockey team. I dare to suggest splitting the bill. “What do you mean?” he says, confused, as if I speak Aramaic. “Oh no, you won’t be doing that.”

He directs the waitress to brown-paper-bag-up the ‘leftovers’ for me, pins his town’s coat-of-arms on my shabby fleece then makes me swear I’ll visit one day and meet three generations of his family. I solemnly swear.

By lift five, I suspect I’m in a hitch-hiking sequel of the Truman Show, such is the unrestrained generosity of spirit. An ever-sunny middle-aged couple dressed from an early-‘90s department store catalogue substantially detour from their journey to drop me in a national park that, coincidentally, “we’ve always wanted to see”. 

Just as their engine fades to nothing, I notice bear-in-the-area warning signs. Lots of them. I pitch my tent in the deserted campground, the light fails, the rain haemorrhages. Every heavy raindrop on my tent mimics the resolute thud of a black bear’s paw. Sleep does not visit me this night.  

In Newfoundland’s northwest, lift nine, an off-duty ranger drives me an hour out of her day to a hike trailhead. Six hours later, after a life-invigorating trek high up into Gros Morne National Park, where a moose taller than a Clydesdale shadows me briefly, my ranger angel miraculously reappears in the deserted carpark. “I was just up this way again”. No, you weren’t, but thank you.

Over on the mainland, lift 14 comes from a spruce older gentleman, freshly retired from a job he can’t talk about (spy, definitely). His “business down in Nova Scotia can wait ‘til tomorrow” and he proceeds to give me a personal driving tour around Prince Edward Island (PEI), Anne-of-Green-Gables territory. He pays my way all day, then refuses a single thank-you neat-whisky with polite-offense.

A glam mid-20s New Brunswick couple in a recently polished red sports car, lift 22, seem certain I would love their folk’s lake house. I do, as it turns out. Canadian beer and tunes I’ve never heard before flow long into the night. Come morning, my aggressive hangover appreciates my first hot shower in days as, no doubt, will today’s potential hitch-ees. 

Yes, most days rides cascade sweetly in Canada, like maple-syrup waterfalls, but then some days, inexplicably, they dry up—nada. After about half-an-hour of rejection, the is-it-me-or-them? psychological battle begins. Too close to town? Too far down the on-ramp? Smiling enough? Or too much?

Long days thumbing through Canada’s remote areas crystallizes life into its simplest components: Eat, sleep and, where to do number-twos.

On my most stagnant day, I stand beside a New Brunswick B-road for seven hours. The heavens unload; car after car whooshes by. I can’t shelter in the roadside woods because then I must run out to hail cars, like an ambush from a desperate jungle critter. I compromise and shiver under a tree that catches half the deluge.

After a few hours, I begin to walk (bad idea because eye-contact is lost), then misjudge the narrow shoulder and tumble down a muddy bank meters into an oily puddle. I’m filthy. I mutter to myself. I wear the sneer of a victim. And I fail the classic hitchhiker’s test: “Would I pick me up right now?” Not one chance in hell! 

Long days thumbing through Canada’s remote areas crystallizes life into its simplest components: Eat, sleep and, where to do number-twos. I visualize the reaction of the hunter, hiker or coyote who, one day, stumbles upon my smalls from that day when I didn’t quite ‘make it’ to my forested convenience after a long lift (long story). Thankfully, I don’t think mum sewed my name into that pair.

All part of the adventure, lessons learned, like those from ‘the scary-guy incident’. When he pulled over for me, my gut squawked that something wasn’t quite right. I ignored it. Now, I happily say no to lifts—like I did to a friendly bloke in Ontario who was catatonically wasted. White lies save lives.

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Hitchhiking is not for the time-sensitive traveler. It’s a long-game: Find your rhythm; devise your own techniques and rules; make your own observations (fun fact: people in brand-new cars are way less likely to pick you up).

Then there’s the one lift that lifts you up. For me, it was ride number 31: A handsome thirtysomething guy; military shoulders, jawline and cropped-hair; face a touch manic, in an over-caffeinated way. Off we set, Quebec City his destination and, by default, mine. The chat starts shallow, but deepens quickly. His long-distance girlfriend is sick of him not committing. She’s done.

“Is it over?” I squeak.

Maybe/maybe not. Turns out, after ‘the phone call’, my guy sprinted out of his navy base (a looooong way away), jumped in the car, and has been on the road since. She has no idea he is coming, ringed-up, ready to pop the question.

“Think I’m doing the right thing?” he asks, eyes glassy. “Damn straight you are,” I say, as sincere as a stranger with no way of verifying the facts can be. He drops me in downtown Quebec City in twinkling late-evening darkness. “Go for it, mate,” I say. “Thanks, buddy,” he says, as he accelerates towards his fate, 15 minutes away, and leaves me to mine.

More than a spectator, less than a friend, that’s what hitchhiking relationships are all about, or aboot, as Canadians might say. Tell your story (weirdly therapeutic), listen to his or hers with equal intensity; then repeat process. One psychotic apple could never spoil this warm-spirited bunch of tender-souled humans.