In August, I drove across half of Canada with my friend Paula.

This was not something I had ever particularly expected to do. But then, very little about 2026 has gone according to any plan I might have made for it.

I had moved from Northwestern Ontario to Vancouver Island in the spring, after my mother died in March. Most of my belongings eventually followed me west, but my car did not. It remained behind in Thunder Bay, along with a final collection of things I hadn’t been able to bring with me the first time.

So at the end of July, I flew back to Thunder Bay. A couple of weeks later, with the car packed and Paula installed as my co-driver, we pointed ourselves west.

Our first destination was Winnipeg.

That stop had particular meaning for me because my aunt, who is my father’s sister and my godmother, was in hospice. I knew before we left Thunder Bay that she was very ill and that there might not be much opportunity for conversation. There was some, though not enough. But there are times when conversation isn’t really the point.

I was able to see her.

That was enough.

From Winnipeg, the road opened westward across the Prairies.

People sometimes talk about the Prairie landscape as though there isn’t much to see. I don’t understand that. There is enormously much to see. You just have to adjust your definition of “something.”

There is sky.

There is an astonishing amount of sky.

There are fields stretching to a horizon so distant that Ontario-trained eyes aren’t quite sure what to do with it. There are grain elevators and little towns and farm machinery and clouds that appear to have been given an entire hemisphere in which to express themselves.

And, somewhere on the road from Swift Current, there was a bison.

One bison.

Standing in a field full of Black Angus cattle.

Naturally, Paula and I wanted to know what he was doing there.

We decided that the most plausible explanation was that he had jumped the fence.

Thus was born Bouncin’ Joe.

Bouncin’ Joe, we determined, was a legendary figure of the Saskatchewan plains. A rebel. A lover. A bison who refused to allow arbitrary human fencing practices to interfere with his social life.

The cows, apparently, had no objection.

One cow in particular became his main squeeze, Boltin’ Bessie.

This was funny for perhaps the first five kilometres.

Fortunately, Paula and I then had several hundred kilometres in which to elaborate upon it.

By the time we reached Calgary, Bouncin’ Joe had acquired a complicated romantic history, a reputation extending across the Prairies, and his own version of “Mambo No. 5,” since it became increasingly apparent that Boltin’ Bessie was by no means the only lady in his life.

I don’t remember everything we said.

This is probably for the best.

I do remember laughing until I could barely breathe.

And that is one of the peculiar pleasures of a road trip. You spend enough hours inside a car with somebody and eventually the normal standards governing what constitutes humour simply collapse. A solitary bison in the wrong field becomes a major character. A roadside sign becomes an event. Somewhere along the Trans-Canada Highway, two perfectly respectable women can devote hundreds of kilometres to developing the mythology and sexual exploits of a large ungulate.

We ate sushi in Calgary that afternoon.

Then we headed for Golden, and the landscape began changing around us.

The enormous Prairie sky gradually surrendered to the Rockies. The road started climbing. Mountains rose around us. There was smoke and haze from the wildfires, enough that Paula could smell it, although fortunately we never encountered anything that interfered with the trip itself.

There was also an electronic highway sign warning us about a bear on the road south of Golden.

After Bouncin’ Joe, this seemed extremely promising.

The bear failed to appear.

Frankly, I thought this showed a disappointing lack of commitment to the narrative.

From Golden, we continued through the breathtaking mountains of mainland British Columbia toward the coast and eventually the ferry to Vancouver Island.

And then, suddenly, I was driving my own car through my new home province.

That felt different.

When I had flown west in April, I was leaving a life behind. My mother had died only six weeks earlier. I had spent years in Northwestern Ontario, much of that time caring for her, and then almost everything changed at once.

This trip felt more like bringing the last part of that old life with me.

My car. My belongings. Pieces of my history.

And myself, perhaps, in a somewhat different way.

There is something wonderfully literal about a road trip. You can look at a map and trace exactly where you’ve been. Thunder Bay. Winnipeg. Swift Current. Golden. The mountains. The coast. The ferry. Vancouver Island.

But there is another journey underneath it that can’t be plotted quite so neatly.

I left Ontario after an extraordinarily difficult year.

I arrived back in British Columbia laughing about Bouncin’ Joe.

That seems worth noticing.

Life doesn’t necessarily divide itself cleanly into tragedy and comedy, grief and happiness, endings and beginnings. Sometimes they travel together.

Sometimes you’re visiting a beloved aunt in hospice one day and laughing helplessly at an adulterous imaginary bison the next.

Sometimes the horizon is obscured by wildfire smoke.

Sometimes it opens up into the biggest sky you’ve ever seen.

And sometimes, after thousands of kilometres, you drive onto a ferry, cross the water, and realize that the place you’re heading isn’t the place you’ve left.

It’s home.