Epic rides. Every motorcyclist has a very individual idea of what constitutes an epic ride. For some riders, distance is what elevates a ride into hallowed status. Whether it’s to the east coast, the west coast, or to the far north. For other riders, especially those with young children or with particularly demanding jobs, a three-day weekend is in itself epic. I know a surgeon with young twins, and if he can squeeze in a Thursday night ride to a coffee shop, he feels as if he’s trekked to Patagonia. I have my own methodology to define epic, and this past summer, it began with a song. Yes, a song.
Growing up in eastern Ontario, on the shores of Lake Ontario, the word majesty isn’t one I’d have ever applied to the lake at my doorstep. After all, it’s just a lake. Lakes, in my adolescent mind, were sport fishermen in aluminum boats with 9.9 horsepower outboards, hooligans on Jet Skis, and pontoon boats with fringed awnings jammed with revelers on Saturday afternoons. Clearly, oceans were where the action was. Oceans had sharks and whales and swallowed great monstrous ships like the Titanic. Now that’s a legacy. Next to an ocean, a lake was nothing more than a deep puddle. And then I heard the song. That song. And everything changed.
Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, though never a favourite—then or now—wormed its way into my consciousness. Released in 1976, when I was a boy, the song was everywhere. Despite the fact that it went on, and on, and on—for an astounding 12 verses with the chorus repeated but twice—it became a staple of AM radio. For a solid year, from the backseat of my parents’ Maverick or from every store my mother dragged me
into, I heard—over and over—about a ship sinking in Lake Superior.
Certain lines from the song I couldn’t shake—then or now. Like when the ship’s cook said to the crew “Fellas, it’s too rough to feed you.” Followed by “fellas, it’s been good to know you.” And then this: “Does anyone know where the love of God goes, when the waves turn the minutes to hours.” Cue the chills. But it was the mention of humble Lake Ontario (“And farther below, Lake Ontario, takes in what Lake
Erie can send her”) that made my adolescent mind reassess my dismissiveness: could the Great Lakes actually be great?
For the upcoming season of El Camino Motorcycle Television, co-host Jennifer Carriere and I hopped aboard the iconic supertanker itself—Honda’s Gold Wing— for a tour from Southern Ontario up to see—for my first time—the greatest of the great lakes, Superior. To see what inspired Gordon Lightfoot to pen the words about the lake “it is said, never gives up her dead, when the skies of November turn gloomy.”
But as we rolled past Barrie, on our way north, the weather was anything but gloomy. It was a glorious late August day, with just a hint of the upcoming fall to cut the summer’s heat down to size. Onward we went, past Parry Sound and French River Provincial Park. At Sudbury, we turned westward and worked our way to the Algoma region and toward our first overnight of the trip—the town of Thessalon. Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Thessalon is the ideal staging point from which to explore the Algoma region and—specifically—Lake Superior.
Thessalon is significant because it’s at the bottom of route 129, and after breakfast the following morning we headed up the sinuous route on our way to the junction of 129 and 101. There was a time, as a young man, that I’d have rolled my eyes at the prospect of riding a Gold Wing on a twisty road. I’d have thought of it as a waste of a good road. Far better to have something more agile, like a sportbike, or a sport-touring bike, or even a middleweight adventure touring bike. Anything— anything—but a Gold Wing. And then, years ago now, I rode a Gold Wing. And had to swallow my words.
The Gold Wing is a revelation. Yes, it’s huge—though less huge than it used to be (more on that in a moment). But the Wing moves with a lightness and grace that belies its size. I don’t know how Honda has done it. Due to its heft, it’s necessary to exercise care when you’re riding at anything nearing a walking pace, and wiggling it in and out parking spots requires a degree of attention that isn’t demanded by smaller bikes. But get the Wing beyond second gear and it becomes a whole new dancing partner.
Forgive me Gold Wingers, but as we
began to dispatch turn after turn on route 129 with speed and precision, I thought back to a dancing partner I had long ago. In high school, a friend and her parents would drag me along to an old barn where every Saturday a band played. It was hard-core, old-fashioned country music. I couldn’t stand it. But when you’re a teenager with a crush on a girl, you’ll do anything to make inroads. My goal was to keep my head down and make it through the evening. But it didn’t work that way. At the barn dance, everyone danced. Everyone.
On my first visit, a very large woman approached me. She didn’t say anything. She just grabbed my sleeve and yanked me onto the dancefloor. I was horrified. And then this woman danced with a deftness of step that belied her size and weight. She floated like a human hovercraft. I did nothing but slow her progress. She was a miracle of physics. Just like the Gold Wing.
Honda’s latest Wing is a different take on the formula. And as one relatively
inexperienced with Gold Wings, it still looks like a very large motorcycle to me, though in truth it’s a considerably smaller machine than a Wing from 20 years ago. Something we discovered at a roadside stop near the junction of routes 129 and 101, when we parked next to a man riding a circa 2003 Gold Wing.
In an instant, the 2023 Wing shrunk to midsize. The man with older Wing looked our new Wing up and down and called it a “fashion” bike. I choked on my energy bar. “What do you mean by that,” I asked. “Have a look for yourself,” he said, gesturing for me to come to the rear of his machine, where he popped his trunk lid. Inside was a dizzying array of junk. He had a second helmet, a good-sized air compressor, enough hand tools to build a house, and a deflated air mattress. He had a point. But, still, for those of us not on the way to a construction site, the greatly increased athleticism of the current iteration of the Gold Wing makes for a far better motorcycle.
Continuing west on route 101, we marveled at the beauty of the northern forests—deep, dark, cool and calm, they remind you of the majesty of our country. Late in the afternoon, we pulled into the town of Wawa for the evening, grabbed our rooms, grabbed a bite, said goodnight, and slept. Hard. There’s nothing like a motorcycle trip to bring sleep to even the most committed insomniac.
Heading south the next morning from Wawa, on Highway 17, we rode through Lake Superior Provincial Park. It’s a beautiful road. Then, just north of Agawa Bay, the view to Lake Superior opened. It was beyond beautiful. It was breathtaking. The colour of the water, the blue-black of a perfect sky, the hills, the rocks, the views. It was as if we’d been transported to an exotic coast in the Mediterranean. At least that was my original thought. And yet Lake Superior is as Canadian as the late Gordon Lightfoot himself.
Lightfoot, in his love of hockey, in his fondness for a stiff drink, seemed like every one of my uncles. Had my uncles been talented songwriters. I thought of the crews of all the ships—including, of course, The Edmund Fitzgerald—who’d perished in these waters. I thought back to what I’d read over breakfast about Lake Superior: that it’s actually not a lake at all—but rather an inland sea. And that it’s so large
that all of the other great lakes (plus three more the size of Lake Erie) would fit inside Superior. And of all Superior’s factoids, this one seemed to offer the most mystery: it takes two centuries for all of the water to replace itself—there is water in Lake Superior as old as Canada itself.
We continued south. Past glorious rock cuts and foaming surf and tidepools. Past bays so pristine they looked like they’d never been touched by man. At Pancake Bay, Jennifer and I waded out through the chilling waters to a sandbar, where we threw a frisbee until our shoulders ached. Back on the bike, we continued southbound through Jones Landing and Harmony beach, eventually settling into our hotel in Sault Ste. Marie exhausted and sore (from the frisbee, not the Gold Wing) before heading out for dinner.
People who live in southern Ontario—I guiltily count myself among their number—are often dismissive of the amenities available in the north. And by amenities I mean food. Good food. Exceptionally
good food. Earlier in the summer, I’d received a tip from a friend who’d traveled up this way. He suggested the restaurant named Peace as a worthy destination. We went without expectation. We were blown away. I did not expect to find an Asian fusion restaurant in Sault Ste. Marie. I had the mango salad and the Korean egg friend rice, but whatever you order, you’ll not be disappointed.
Disappointed. That’s what we were the next morning when we had to leave the north for the south. If you decide to retrace our steps yourself this summer— which we’d strongly encourage you to do—I’d suggest one of two routes. The first is to do what we did, with a long inland trek culminating with a ride down the coast. As an alternative, you can ride up the coast of Superior, spend a night or two in Wawa, and then ride back south to Sault Ste. Marie. One’s as good as the other. The only wrong move you can make it not to go at all—and I trust that you’ll not make that mistake.
