On the back roads of New Brunswick, the fall colours are gathering; greens transforming to oranges, yellows and golds. They would make a tremendous backdrop, except right now they’re making a tremendous blur. The road quality is horrendous; we’re diving between potholes, ruts, wallows and severe frost heaves that compress the rear suspension and the…

Nova Scotia is built for motorcycle touring. I’m sure of it, provided you hit the right speed to skim over the roads of the Sunrise Trail, which run from smooth to brutally potholed. They are gently winding and combined with late fall light and a warm day the ride makes for motorcycling satisfaction.

Under pallid florescent light and surrounded by clinical décor, people pace; sallow, tired, arms folded and tense.  In the corner a man braced against the wall rocks to-and-fro.  Elsewhere, another sits on a metal bench, staring blankly forward at nothingness, his legs in a sewing machine jiggle.  At a table a woman works through a…

Sepia tones of sunset have given way to the purples of dusk, casting the rugged moraine into subtle relief. One hundred and seventy kilometers from St. John’s on the highway one, Newfoundland becomes a heartbreakingly and beautifully desolate terrain of glacial erratics and tolts.

Channel-Port-aux Basques, NL – In the deepening dusk light, women shaped like baking-powder biscuits look on disapprovingly, while children on bicycles wave and give a thumbs up. The Multistrada’s basso exhaust note reverberates through the tight winding streets, which serpent across each other in a tangle never un-knotted by city planners.

I know the man’s voice with its lecture hall delivery and resonance.  His white hair, with a hint of wild to it.  His jutting lower jaw.  Here in PEI, nearly the other side of the country the odds of running into an acquaintance should be slim.  Yet, despite probability forcing doubt on recollection, I know…