The Drive Across Canada: The Fight for the Trans-Canada Highway

Experience driving Canada’s longest road and travel with the adventurers who helped make it a reality.

The Trans-Canada Highway is one of the longest highways in the world – 7,700 kilometres from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Victoria, British Columbia, with almost the same distance again on secondary routes. It’s ironically Canadian, but its story is a long and winding journey. In The Drive Across Canada, automotive journalist Mark Richardson tells the stories of the pioneers who first drove across the country in the early days of cars and motorcycles, even before any roads existed, and of the political fight to create a physical link that would connect Canadians to every province of their vast country.

Richardson drove the length of the Trans-Canada Highway in 2023, repeating the drive he first completed in 2012. In his most recent journey, he encounters a hurricane in Newfoundland, a firestorm in British Columbia, and unspeakable tragedies on the Prairies. He meets people whose lives have been changed by the highway, sometimes in ways they could never have imagined, and along the way the highway changes his life too.

Mark Richardson is an automotive journalist who contributes regularly to the Globe and Mail’s GlobeDrive. He is the former editor of the Toronto Star’s Wheels section, and the author of Zen and Now and Canada’s Road. Mark lives in Cobourg, Ontario.