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There’s barely a Canadian alive who has not pushed alongside a part of the freeway. It has seen pleasure and disappointment, dying and births. Here is its story
Printed Could 07, 2025 • Final up to date 2 minutes in the past • 17 minute learn
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Aerial view of Trans-Canada Freeway throughout a vibrant sunny summer season day. Taken close to Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Photograph by iStock/Getty Pictures
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Set for launch on Could 13 with Sutherland Home Books, Canada’s Important Avenue: The Epic Story of the Trans-Canada Freeway by Craig Baird lastly offers this nation-shaping infrastructure mission its due. On this excerpt, Baird introduces the bold, messy and missed saga of the coast-to-coast freeway that’s the true backbone of contemporary Canada.
The Trans-Canada Freeway. We stay by it. We drive on it. We rely on it for the products we use. And but, we barely give it some thought. Why?
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Is it as a result of, for many of us, the Trans-Canada Freeway has all the time simply been there? One thing we take as a right and don’t take into consideration? With success has come invisibility.
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Perhaps it’s as a result of the Trans-Canada appears like historical past that’s too latest. Perhaps it wants one other century, just like the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), to present it historic context.
Photograph by Sutherland Home Books
What a distinction after we take into consideration the CPR — the opposite cross-country, nation-building transportation system. In 1970, Pierre Berton launched his magnum opus, The Nationwide Dream. The e book informed the story of the planning and inception of the CPR, overlaying the years 1871 to 1881. The next yr, he adopted up with The Final Spike, which coated the years 1881 to 1885. These years noticed the development and completion of the CPR.
The books galvanized the general public. They offered historical past in a manner that was not dryly tutorial, however one thing any common Canadian, even one who thought they weren’t fascinated by historical past, may get pleasure from. They each turned prompt best-sellers and impressed the CBC’s TV docuseries, The Nationwide Dream, which attracted a document three million viewers at a time when Canada’s inhabitants was solely 22 million. Each books have been additionally critically well-received, with The Final Spike profitable the 1971 Governor Normal’s Award for English-language non-fiction.
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It appears becoming one way or the other that the definitive work on the CPR was launched on the similar time the Trans-Canada Freeway was (lastly) being completed.
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Overpasses designed to present wildlife a route over the Trans-Canada Freeway in Banff Nationwide Park. Photograph by iStock/Getty Pictures
The development of the CPR was an incredible mission that modified the historical past of Canada endlessly. It was a story of scandals, greed, useless dying and wonderful triumphs. It simply overshadows the importance of the Trans-Canada Freeway within the eyes of Canadians. There have been no large productions for tv or movie in regards to the Trans-Canada Freeway. Only a few books have been written about it and most targeted on what you might see travelling it, moderately than on how the highway was constructed. Again in 1967, Gordon Lightfoot wrote a track in regards to the CPR, “The Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” one in all his biggest works. Has anybody ever written in regards to the Trans-Canada Freeway? Perhaps the closest we have now is “Life Is a Freeway,” by Tom Cochrane.
To those that created it, nevertheless, constructing the Trans-Canada was each bit as necessary because the CPR. The development took longer than the CPR, value extra, and concerned negotiations with the provinces that resembled nothing a lot as cat herding. It took a yr simply to get a few of the provinces to signal the settlement on the freeway and begin deciding on their routes. A number of didn’t signal straight away, and Quebec held off for a full decade. The constructing of the CPR was no simple activity politically. There was no single, massive firm, just like the CPR, to supervise the development of your entire Trans-Canada from coast to coast — simply premiers in every province, all wanting to make use of the freeway for their very own political ends. Perhaps that’s the reason we don’t see the freeway for the engineering marvel that it’s. It doesn’t even appear a lot compared to the story of the Alaska Freeway, inbuilt solely months throughout a time of conflict. But, it was constructed — far not on time and effectively over finances, however it obtained executed.
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To those that use the freeway, it has been enormously consequential. Folks say that the US is a rustic constructed by the auto, however Canada could make that declare as effectively. We’re a lot bigger, and way more sparsely populated, and the highways we construct really join all of us, and none extra so than the Trans-Canada. It tied the nation collectively as the auto overtook the railroad because the dominant type of journey through the freeway’s building. As we’ll see, the freeway could have altered the nation much more than the railway did.
On Sept. 3, 1962, then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker formally opens the Trans-Canada Freeway at Rogers Cross, B.C. Photograph by Library and Archives Canada
When the settlement to construct the freeway was signed in 1949, Gordie Howe was three years into his legendary profession. Bobby Orr was a toddler. When the freeway was lastly completed, Howe had retired (at the least briefly), and Orr was the best NHL star the world had identified and a Stanley Cup champion. Medicare, a brand new Canadian flag, the Trans-Canada Pipeline, and the St. Lawrence Seaway — none of these items existed when work on the freeway started.
The freeway was imagined to be accomplished in 1957, however solely Saskatchewan met that deadline. Most provinces completed within the Nineteen Sixties, whereas others accomplished it within the early Nineteen Seventies. At occasions, it should have felt as if it was by no means going to be completed.
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In a half-true act of political showmanship, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker tamped down asphalt on the Rogers Cross in September 1962 to announce the freeway formally accomplished. In reality, it was nonetheless beneath building in locations similar to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Within the latter, the vast majority of the highway was nonetheless gravel, and it might be one other three years earlier than somebody may drive clear throughout the province alongside the freeway.
As soon as all of the items have been constructed and paved, the Trans-Canada ran coast to coast, overlaying 7,821 kilometres. For a lot of its historical past, it was a two-lane system. Even right this moment, a lot of the freeway stays two-lane. The longest stretch of divided freeway runs from the Manitoba-Ontario border to the Rocky Mountains, overlaying a distance of over 1,500 kilometres.
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HMCS Ville De Quebec sails beneath the Confederation Bridge between New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Photograph by Grasp Cpl. Anthony Laviolette/Canadian Armed Pressure
Figuring out simply how many individuals use the Trans-Canada Freeway right this moment is tough. In locations like Calgary and Vancouver, it runs instantly into the town and is utilized by tens of hundreds of individuals every single day to go to and from work, purchasing, hockey video games, and a mess of different occasions. Every year, 4 million folks go to Banff, solely accessible from the east and west alongside the Trans-Canada Freeway. In response to Statistics Canada in 2021, 77 per cent of products moved in Canada have been transported by truck. Not each truck will take the Trans-Canada Freeway, particularly by way of northern Alberta and Saskatchewan, the place the Yellowhead Freeway is the primary route. However virtually all items that arrive in Canada at any of our principal ports, excepting Prince Rupert, British Columbia, are going to be on the Trans-Canada at the least a part of their journey. It doesn’t matter whether it is apples and oranges or computer systems and automobiles, if a truck is hauling it, it’s touching that freeway in some unspecified time in the future. Of the 15 largest cities in Canada, seven are alongside the Trans-Canada Freeway route. All of that began with the signing of a chunk of paper a long time in the past.
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Statistics apart, virtually each Canadian you meet can have indelible recollections of the Trans-Canada. There’s probably barely a Canadian alive, well-known or not-so-famous, who has not pushed alongside at the least a part of it. Definitely, way more of us have been on that highway than have taken the railway anyplace in Canada. It’s the freeway on which thousands and thousands of us have loved household holidays and bold highway journeys, or pushed to school for the primary time, or moved for a brand new job. It’s the freeway that many took to see Expo 67 in Montreal, Expo 86 in Vancouver twenty years later, the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, and the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. It’s the highway that Terry Fox ran on his Marathon of Hope. It’s the path Rick Hansen took on his Man in Movement Tour. At relaxation stops, rock outcrops, and roadside points of interest, the Trans-Canada supplies recollections to these on their very own voyages of discovery. It has seen pleasure and disappointment, dying and, probably, a couple of births.
The freeway touches two oceans and repasses by way of many cultures, and much more cities. And because the CPR did within the nineteenth century, it affirms the thought of a united nation. Lengthy gone are the times when a Canadian needed to drive by way of the US to cowl the gap from one Canadian coast to a different.
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I’ve travelled stretches of the freeway extra occasions than I can depend, however solely as soon as all the best way from west to east in a single nice journey. Alongside the best way, I noticed cities that handed within the blink of a watch, took photos on the oddest roadside points of interest, and drove by way of a few of the most necessary cities within the nation. I’ve all the time been fascinated with each side of the Trans-Canada, from the pioneers who drove throughout the nation alongside the freeway’s route (or elements of it) earlier than it was constructed to its essential position as the primary financial and cultural artery of our nation right this moment.
That is the story of the freeway that modified Canada endlessly.
What does the freeway imply?
No matter whether or not you contemplate the Trans-Canada Freeway to have been completed in 1962, when it was formally opened, or in 1971 when Newfoundland and B.C. lastly completed their final items of building, it was then the longest freeway on this planet at 7,476 kilometres. That title has lengthy since handed to different roads. The Trans-Canada sits seventeenth on this planet right this moment, having been eclipsed by highways in Africa, Eurasia, China, Russia and Australia. The Pan-American Freeway, stretching from Alaska to Argentina, is 30,000 kilometres lengthy, for those who ignore the impassible 160-kilometre Darien Hole between Panama and Columbia. Australia’s Freeway 1 is nearly double the size of Canada’s Freeway 1, though it’s a system of highways moderately than a single highway. The Trans-Canada stays the longest single freeway in a single nation on this planet and, in fact, it is usually the longest freeway in Canada.
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The Trans-Canada Freeway winds round Lake Superior in Ontario. Photograph by iStock/Getty Pictures
Since these early years, the Trans-Canada Freeway community has expanded. Immediately it’s a lot multiple highway throughout the nation. The place as soon as there was a single route alongside the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, now you’ve got a selection of three routes to take you into Ontario: You’ll be able to drive the northern route by way of Ontario; cross by way of Toronto and the opposite bigger cities of Southern Ontario; or go to the nation’s capital. Just one route goes into Manitoba, however within the province, the freeway splits into the Yellowhead and principal Trans-Canada Freeway route that may take you throughout the prairies and onto the coast of British Columbia.
Moreover, the Trans-Canada has been present process virtually fixed enhancements since its preliminary completion. It has been twinned and divided in lots of high-traffic areas. It has been realigned in some locations and bypasses have been constructed round cities alongside the route, together with Calgary, Winnipeg and Thunder Bay. Security pullouts and relaxation areas have been constructed. There are new avalanche controls and snow fences, particularly within the Rogers Cross area. Signage has improved. Wildlife fences, overpasses and underpasses have been constructed to reduce the environmental influence of the freeway.
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All these statistics and information are necessary to an understanding of the Trans-Canada achievement, however they don’t reply an even bigger query: What does the freeway imply?
Why doesn’t the freeway elicit the identical surprise in our historical past because the trans-continental railway? Why isn’t the picture of John Diefenbaker tamping down the final little bit of freeway within the Rogers Cross on the identical stage because the Sir Donald Smith driving within the final spike on the freeway?
Pipers march throughout the Canso Causeway — becoming a member of Cape Breton Island to mainland Nova Scotia — throughout its official opening on Aug. 13, 1955. Photograph by NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA
Some could say it comes all the way down to nation-building. The CPR is seen as one thing that linked your entire nation for the primary time. It spurred the motion of individuals into Western Canada, on the expense of the First Nations, who have been pushed to reserves. The railroad actually created communities on the prairies and made it doable to journey throughout the nation in days, moderately than weeks or months.
But the Trans-Canada Freeway has executed its share of nation-building. It has modified the form of Canada, stimulating progress in communities and serving to them prosper, whereas dooming others to vanish as a result of they didn’t sit alongside its route. The Canso Causeway part of the freeway related Cape Breton Island to mainland Nova Scotia for the primary time. Confederation Bridge offered the primary fastened hyperlink between Prince Edward Island and the remainder of Canada — one thing that may not have occurred with out the Trans-Canada community. Freeway 1 by way of Northern Ontario introduced communities similar to Wawa out of the wilderness, and the Rogers Cross part of the Trans-Canada made it simple to cross from B.C. to jap elements of Canada.
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The freeway modified how Canadians journey, and the way they expertise the nation and its scattered communities.
There could have been ferries or railways or rudimentary roads and trails that crossed these similar elements earlier than the Trans-Canada, however it introduced the entire of Canada inside attain of anybody with a automobile or a bus ticket. It gave folks the liberty to go the place they wished. They have been not sure by a single monitor between cities. They might department off and discover. The freeway has been important for distant and rural communities, connecting them to bigger financial centres. Areas that have been as soon as remoted gained higher entry to well being care, schooling and improved high quality of life.
The Trans-Canada has been crucial for commerce, connecting Canada’s main ports, cities and rural areas, enabling the environment friendly motion of products throughout areas. It has offered a sturdier basis for nationwide and regional economies, supporting sectors like trucking, agriculture and manufacturing by lowering journey occasions and prices. It additionally facilitated useful resource growth in areas wealthy in pure assets, permitting for financial progress in beforehand inaccessible areas.
The freeway has made Canadian landmarks, nationwide parks and pure points of interest extra accessible, encouraging Canadians to discover their very own nation and drawing worldwide vacationers. It has enabled folks from completely different elements of Canada to expertise the distinctive cultures, landscapes and histories inside their very own borders, fostering a shared nationwide heritage. There have been no roadside points of interest within the days of the railroad. Immediately, you may hit a whole lot of them alongside the freeway. Some, such because the Wawa Goose or Mac the Moose, are large; others, together with the world’s largest Coca-Cola, are unusual. All have their followers.
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Mac the Moose in Moose Jaw, Sask. Photograph by Mark Taylor/The Canadian Press
The nation wanted a common highway that may enable somebody from Newfoundland to drive straight to British Columbia with out leaving the nation, and vice versa. It was wanted as a lot psychologically because it was economically. The Trans-Canada Freeway turned a logo of the nation’s progress throughout a transformative time. When work began, Canada was solely 5 years out of a world conflict, and already diving right into a conflict in Korea. Throughout its building, Canadians noticed the daybreak of the tv age. Quebec went by way of a fast transformation, spurred on by opening itself to the world by way of Expo 67. That memorable truthful was visited by thousands and thousands of Canadians and for a lot of, it was the Trans-Canada Freeway that made it doable.
Canada was coming into its personal because the freeway’s work was ending. In 1967, because the nation lastly celebrated itself for presumably the primary time in its historical past, folks wished to find out about their nation. And in a transfer, we could be positive nobody planning the freeway ever foresaw, that centennial yr was full of people that have been able to discover the nation by strolling alongside the freeway. Hank Gallant, a 24-year-old dwelling in British Columbia, had spent the previous couple of years working in mines, studying to weld and function heavy tools. With the centennial yr beckoning, he determined he wished to do one thing to rejoice it. He selected a comparatively simple activity. He was going to stroll throughout Canada.
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On Feb. 6, 1967, Gallant dipped his toe within the Pacific Ocean, turned to the east and began placing one foot in entrance of the opposite. He informed his buddies about his plan, and so they informed him he’d by no means make it. When he requested native companies for help, they didn’t take him significantly. Ultimately, Gallant stopped telling anybody, however he saved strolling towards the place the solar rose over Canada. He had some meals and a few garments in a backpack and a Gibson guitar coated by a flap of canvas to maintain it dry. His pack had a hand-lettered signal saying, “Victoria to Bonavista, Centennial 67 Walker. No Rides Please.”
The Massive Goose in Wawa, Ont. Photograph by Colin Perkel/The Canadian Press
Proper from the very starting, Gallant skilled the kindness of strangers. He pulled a ligament in his leg even earlier than getting out of British Columbia. A rancher handled it for him. Close to Creston, a pair gave him a homecooked spaghetti dinner. When he reached the outskirts of Cranbrook, 40 folks welcomed him. It snowed from there all the best way to Alberta, which he reached on March 9.
The mountains have been removed from a simple stroll for Gallant, however he refused to surrender. He swore to himself he would full the journey or die attempting. To maintain his thoughts occupied, he wrote songs in his head as he walked.
By early April, he had reached Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and newspapers have been beginning to take discover of his journey. By Oak Lake, Manitoba, the principal of the native faculty cancelled all lessons so college students may greet Gallant as he walked into the neighborhood. On Could 1, he arrived in Winnipeg and endured his ninth blizzard since leaving Vancouver. He informed the Winnipeg Free Press, “I can’t provide any centennial mission a thousand bucks. That is what I’ve to supply as a person centennial mission. It proves to the surface world that Canadians themselves are doing one thing about centennial, not solely governments, with their libraries and statues.”
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After a couple of days of working at a meat packing plant in Winnipeg to place some money in his pockets, he set off once more towards the east coast. As he made his manner by way of Northern Ontario alongside Lake Superior, drivers would go to the following city and purchase him a meal at a restaurant to get pleasure from upon his arrival.
When he stepped foot in Montreal, he was given a particular tour of the Expo 67 grounds.
In late September, he reached New Brunswick, took a ferry to Prince Edward Island, then one other to Nova Scotia. On Nov. 13, his twenty fifth birthday, he walked into St. John’s, Newfoundland, and completed his journey after 280 days of strolling. “I went to the harbour,” he stated. “I took off my boots and my socks and did what I had executed on the Pacific Coast at Beacon Hill Park. I dipped my toe within the Atlantic.”
Its legacy is that it permits Canadians to drive from one ocean to a different, to see at shut vary Canada’s scale and sweetness …
Craig Baird
Gallant was removed from the one particular person to take a journey throughout the nation that Centennial Yr. Filip Moen walked from Halifax to Vancouver together with his German Shepard, Bruno. That journey took solely 131 days. Stan Guignard took his household in a 1915 Mannequin T from North Bay, Ontario, to Montreal, a distance of 550 kilometres.
Kurt Johnson, a 24-year-old gold mine surveyor from Timmins determined 1967 was the perfect yr to see the nation. On June 20, in Vancouver, with a scroll that introduced greetings from Timmins’ Metropolis Council and 1,000 enterprise playing cards to thank drivers for rides, he caught out his thumb and obtained able to hitchhike throughout the nation.
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Scarcely a yr glided by with out somebody attempting to make it throughout Canada with no automobile. Way more, in fact, made the journey in a automotive or truck. It’s estimated that the freeway helps greater than 20 million automobile journeys yearly.
No human being has ever been extra carefully recognized with the Trans-Canada, nevertheless, than Terry Fox, a Canadian athlete, humanitarian, and most cancers analysis activist who turned a nationwide hero for his exceptional try to run the total size of the Trans-Canada Freeway on one leg to lift cash and consciousness for most cancers analysis. Born in 1958 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and raised in British Columbia, Fox misplaced his proper leg to osteosarcoma in 1977. In 1980, he launched into the “Marathon of Hope,” aiming to run from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to the Pacific Ocean in Victoria. Fox ran practically a marathon (26 miles) a day for 143 days, overlaying 5,373 kilometres, earlier than his most cancers returned, forcing him to cease close to Thunder Bay, Ont. Though he couldn’t full his journey and handed away in 1981, his legacy endures, with thousands and thousands raised yearly worldwide for most cancers analysis by way of the Terry Fox Basis and annual Terry Fox Runs held in his honour.
Terry Fox was the one man who really linked the freeway collectively from begin to end together with his dream of elevating cash for most cancers. The picture of him shuffle-hopping alongside the freeway is firmly entrenched within the minds of Canadians. Immediately, a statue marks the beginning of his journey in St. John’s, and one other marks his vacation spot, the terminus of the Trans-Canada in Victoria, B.C., and a 3rd overlooks the freeway close to Thunder Bay the place the Marathon of Hope got here to an finish.
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The Terry Fox monument outdoors Thunder Bay, Ont., near the place he was pressured to cease his run. Photograph by JIM BYERS/Postmedia Information
Fox impressed many individuals, together with British Columbia Paralympian Rick Hansen. He not solely accomplished Fox’s journey down the Trans-Canada in a wheelchair however went on to wheel over 40,000 kilometres by way of 34 nations between 1985 and 1987, elevating cash for spinal twine analysis and accessibility packages. The final leg of his journey noticed him wheel throughout Canada once more, this time east to west, culminating in a grand end in Vancouver.
One thing particular
For me, the freeway has all the time been one thing particular. I used to be born close to it within the Foothills Hospital in Calgary. I’ve lived alongside it in numerous locations throughout my life.
Within the early 2010s, I lived in a neighborhood referred to as Gull Lake, Sask. It sits proper alongside the Trans-Canada Freeway. I bear in mind listening to from seniors locally how the freeway was as soon as simply two lanes of gravel, so a few years in the past. By my time, it was a double-lane freeway, with automobiles driving towards Swift Present in a single course, or Drugs Hat within the different. I might stand out in my entrance yard at evening and take a look at that freeway. Once I noticed the lights transferring alongside the highway, it all the time felt comforting. It was one thing to inform me that the whole lot was OK — that so long as that freeway existed and folks drove alongside it, the world was OK.
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I don’t stay alongside the freeway anymore, however it’s nonetheless an necessary a part of my life. Not a yr goes by that I don’t make a journey someplace in Canada alongside it. And as I drive alongside, I do know that for a whole lot and hundreds of kilometres in every course, there are lots of others doing the identical as me. Some drive alongside the Trans-Canada for work. Some are driving residence. And a few are simply driving the freeway to see what the nation has to supply.
That’s the nice legacy of the Trans-Canada Freeway. It’s greater than the sum of the political wrangling and the spectacular engineering feats that constructed the highway and related the nation. Its legacy is that it permits Canadians to drive from one ocean to a different, to see at shut vary Canada’s scale and sweetness, to study extra of its range and its folks, and possibly, I hope, to really feel much less divided and distant from those that stay over the following hill, across the subsequent bend, or far over the horizon.
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