Category: Canada

We had left Ottawa just after 9:00 am and found highway 20 east easily. The drive was uneventful except for the usual waving, horn tooting fans. We completed the near 200 miles in three hours arriving in time for lunch. Bridget was still running well. It was immediately apparent to anyone that has travelled anywhere in Canada that the city of Quebec is different. Regular readers will have already deduced that I am not really a city person and as we approached the end of this journey my patience with city ways was diminishing. Quebec changed all that and I quickly realised what I had been missing for much of the second half of this adventure; history! One of the few figures I learnt about in school, and remembered, was General James Wolfe and he is one of several characters I had always felt akin to in that he attempted tasks that others felt were unlikely to succeed just because they were...

I had a bad night’s sleep. For some reason my body has broken out in a serious rash of heat bumps. They cover my head, neck, arms and legs and they itch like mad. Having kept me awake most of the night I am not really in good condition for today’s drive. We left at half past seven in the morning before the sun got up. The temperature overnight caused a light dew and is a very welcome break for me. The heat bumps do not itch if they are kept cool, and so at least the first phase of the drive should be OK. We took Highway 1 east from Winnipeg and eventually joined Highway 17 to Thunder Bay. The scenery is an improvement over the previous drive, with pines and even small hills breaking up the horizon. Then we arrived into Lakeland, there are hundreds if not thousands of lakes everywhere. I would love to find one of the ‘glassy’...

Calgary, situated to the east of the Rocky Mountains, is home to some one million people. It is twinned with, amongst others, the city of Jaipur, or the Pink City as it is sometimes called (see diary entry – Royal Circles 04/09/2008). We were to stay here for two and a half days and the Calgary MG Car Club entertained me magnificently. They were assisted on Saturday by the Vintage Sports Car Club when I was taken on a Garage Tour to see a number of cars and motorcycles in various stages of renovation. In the afternoon I was taken to experience the Calgary Highland Games in High River where a number of ex-pats threw hammers and tossed cabers, but they were even worst shots than the Talaban, so I stayed. There was also a pipe band competition that I thoroughly enjoyed and the Scotch Pies were excellent. On Sunday we went up to Bragg Creek and the scenery is gorgeous, with mountains...

From Kelowna we headed south on Highway 3B towards Rock Creek and Kettle Valley. The whole area is overshadowed by fir tree forested mountains. Occasional rivers and creeks are seen flowing mellifluously over gravel beds and rocks worn smooth by the flow. I had decided to stop by one of these rivers, between Carmi and Rhone, to take some photos of Bridget and the scenery, when I spotted a helicopter carrying a very large box object under it. The chopper was skilfully manoeuvred between the hundreds of fir trees so that the box could be emptied by ground crew and then it departed the way it had come. The pilot could not have had more than a few feet in which to manoeuvre its rotors and it was fascinating to watch. We spent the night at Nelson, a town on the banks of Lake Kootenay, British Colombia. Just like Kelowna the night before, Nelson is a tourist trap. The following morning we headed...

We arrived in Canada just after lunch on the 21st August having replaced Bridget’s fuel pump. She was still misfiring at low revs and over 4,000 rpm, but otherwise was running OK. I still believed the carburettors were not balanced. We had been invited to stay with Peter and Anne Tilbury from the Canadian Classic MG Car Club and their home is only three miles from the USA border. Peter came down the drive to greet us and guide Bridget into a waiting garage. After the introductions we were joined by Rod Taylor- Gregg and set about trying to resolve Bridget’s misfire. Rod examined the jets, needles and seats in the carburettors and noted that the seat of the rear ‘carb’ was somewhat higher than that of the front one. This meant that the starting position for the mixture control would different, something that you would not be aware of if you just tried to balance them without first looking inside. After...