A Northern Adventure

Realizing a dream that was 25 years in the making

- Catherine Sands Unruh

Hello, Arctic Ocean! Our visit to Canada’s North, including experiencing 24-hours of daylight above the Arctic Circle, was 25 years in the making and was finally realized in 2019.

In June 1994, my husband John and I quit our jobs in Toronto, packed up our 1975 Volkswagen Westfalia camper and headed east to visit Newfoundland and Labrador, before turning around and heading west.

We’d driven west from Toronto many times before, but travelling from coast to coast in the course of one summer made the 1994 trip special. In Vancouver, we told our then seven-year-old nephew, Matt, that we’d driven across Canada. He asked if we’d been to the Northwest Territories. When we said no, he politely informed us that we hadn’t been to all of Canada. Ouch, a geography lesson from a seven-year-old!

Last year, an ad for an airline seat sale pushed our plan to visit Canada’s North into action. The flight from Vancouver put us in the Yukon in just over two hours. We rented a car at the Whitehorse airport and set about seeing as much as we could in two weeks.

About 150 kilometres east of White-horse, along the Alaska Highway, is Haines Junction, and Kluane National Park and Reserve. Much of Kluane is not accessible except for multi-day backpacking trips or sightseeing flights. We satisfied ourselves with short hikes from trailheads near the highway.