Committing an Act of Essential Travel

I never thought of myself as an outlander, an alien-migrant, a provincial trespasser. I never thought eying car bumpers would become a habit to break. (My name is Stephen Berg and I’m a license plate spotaholic.) It’s a reaction to hearing two stories. One: a van spray painted, “Get the F-k out of our province;” two: a cross-border car “keyed” — badly I heard — an image of eagles attempting to rescue their young from within comes to mind. Granted, the unglued will always find goats-to-scape — only more so, here in the soft apocalypse of Covid.

So no, we did not take the phrase essential travel lightly. We poured over provincial government websites, monitored the “opening stages.” And we debated. I did take note of a National Post article by Michael Bryant arguing that the residency criteria is disproportionate to density, meaning, I guess, that Canada is big and empty and lines are meant for crossing — further, that provincial border closures are an affront to our history and Constitution. Not entirely convincing, but I did stick it in my mental quiver.

Thus, socially aware, small-circle vigilant, and armed with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution Act of 1867, which guarantees mobility, “as if provincial boundaries did not exist,” we packed our new-to-us B-class RV with bunker gear: candles, Kindle, laptops, cooking pots, paperbacks, hiking poles, staples for three weeks and set out to commit an act of essential travel.

Oh yes, face masks too (required, among other places, to cross the Georgia Strait on the Queen of Alberni) stayed within reach. My own mask, purchased by Deb, is covered with tiny marijuana leaves, which on first pass I thought were palm leaves — so distant am I from those dime-bag 70’s.

Vancouver, Hope, Clearwater, Valemount — the overhead highway signs light up with the avoid non-essential travel message. We are not alone. On our way east past Mount Robson, we meet numerous vehicles sporting, or in this case, not sporting a front plate — an identifying trait of at least two neighbouring provinces.

At a lonely liqour store (because one does need icy-beer in alt-times), east-side of Alberta’s capital, an older gentleman rolls across the parking lot in his chair and says, “I see you have B.C. plates.” While I prepare my rehearsed but true explanation of needing to see our son before his Gamma Knife radiosurgery, he adds, “Where do you live?” I answer and he says, “Ah, I do miss the Island, I used to live in Victoria.” And so we talk in a wonderfully banal way about Canadian landscapes, the cost of living, retirement, the Oilers, the oddness of these days, wish each other safety and good health and part.

Crossing another border we enter the province that is “hard to spell but easy to draw.” We drive through the heart of Palliser’s Triangle to Regina, loop back north to the “City of Bridges,” turn the hood ornament northwest to the lakes above the Battlefords, then diagonal down across the Red Deer river, cut through the Badlands and into the Rockies and by the time we’re back in B.C. we’ve seen almost all of our family.

From Kamloops to Horseshoe Bay ferry we take the winding mountainous route through Lillooet. At the flooded mouth of Cayoosh Creek we spot the place where 20 years ago, with not a pandemic in sight, our kids ran skipping across a broad log jam.

Home now, quarantining, I’m lifted by familial memories, and unexpectedly, a small conversation in a parking lot.