On July 20th, Karl wrote to sister Mattie from Chatham Ontario: “I am getting along slowly, have had a few delays, but will travel faster now. I will write you from Chicago or Milwaukee. I ride a model of the famous Red Bird now, which seems to be the favourite wheel in Ontario.”
Karl’s new Red Bird bicycle seemed to propel him much faster through Ontario. After leaving Chatham, he travelled to Windsor, took the ferry for Detroit, and started biking on Michigan Avenue, continuing the 285 miles heading straight for Chicago. Before crossing the ferry, Karl had travelled from Nova Scotia over 2,000kms through the Maritimes then completed this leg of the journey from Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec to Windsor, Ontario.
When Karl left the Atlantic provinces and entered Quebec, it was the first time he experienced the challenges of travelling when you can’t speak the language. Yet, when he arrived in Quebec City, Karl had a typical tourist experience that I could replicate on my visit and supplemented with the behind-the-scenes tour of the Château Frontenac. Conversely, Karl and I had very different experiences and impressions of Montréal, the first location on this journey that had truly transformed over the 120 years between our respective visits. In Ontario, we both paid a visit to the memorial at Crysler’s Farm, acknowledging that the battle won here by the British / Canadian troops meant that we were travelling in Canada and not the United States. But this was about to change.
Next week we will start Leg 5 of our travels to Chicago and through the MidWest. I hope you will continue to join me and would greatly appreciate if you could forward this email to other intrepid adventurers who would subscribe to the blog of this journey.
But first, let’s enjoy the following photographs documenting where we went and What We Saw On The Way on Leg 4 of our adventure following Karl through Quebec and Ontario.
