Here’s what Lorne McLash learned while cycling across Canada: The bears will move off the trail for you, but you have to make way for the moose.
And here’s what he taught the rest of us: Living with Type 1 diabetes doesn’t mean giving up on an active life.
In fact, that’s what inspired the two-wheeled trip that concluded at Victoria’s Mile Zero on Thursday, exactly three months after it began in a St. John’s snowstorm. The expedition was a response to people who told McLash their diabetes ruled out cycling trips like his.
The senior wanted to show that the reverse was true, that being fit makes it easier to deal with the condition.
McLash’s was a solo, unsupported ride, with his camping gear and everything else he needed towed on a single-wheeled trailer.
“The first three weeks I had frost every night.” It was wet, too, so drenching that he had to buy more-skookum rain gear. Then, after the weather warmed, the smell of salt-encrusted Lycra got old fairly quickly.
He tried to follow the Great Trail but that wasn’t always possible. In northern Ontario, the narrow, shoulderless Trans-Canada stretched the definition of “highway.” He only had to change just one flat, though. And no, wildlife wasn’t a problem. “When I saw a bear on the trail, I would just ring my bell.”
All the while, McLash had to carefully monitor the diabetes that was diagnosed 20 years ago when he was still in his 40s, working as a speech pathologist for the Sooke school district.
“You can drop fast when you’re working hard.” He always rode with two days worth of food.
He ate in restaurants, too, though it didn’t take long before he was hunting out those places that specialize in home cooking. Happily, he got plenty of the real deal, thanks to strangers who would open their doors (and refrigerators) to him. It would start with kids checking out his bike. “Before you know it, you’re talking to the family and they’re saying ‘come and stay the night.’ ”
Thursday, he was accompanied by a score of other riders from Victoria’s Spokesmen cycling club who joined him for the last leg to Mile Zero. That’s where many journeys have begun or ended, some more celebrated than others. Local legend Al Howie’s 1991 cross-Canada run is commemorated with a plaque in the Mile Zero sign. The entire nation watched when hockey player Sheldon Kennedy, raising awareness of sexual abuse, finished his in-line skate there in 1998. Just down Dallas Road, a beach is named after teenaged one-legged runner Steve Fonyo, whose 425-day Journey for Lives ended there on May 29, 1985.
Thousands lined the route that day, which began after HMCS Qu’Appelle brought Fonyo to Ogden Point and a helicopter flew him to Swartz Bay. Ultimately, he raised $13 million to fight cancer, earned the Order of Canada and got to meet George Harrison, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Pope. He also, later, earned notoriety for petty crime and substance abuse. It didn’t help that he spent his life being compared with Terry Fox — an unfair, albeit inevitable, yardstick against which few of us flawed souls could measure up.
Campbell River’s Clint Shaw got a lot of attention in 1967 after deciding to mark Centennial Year by roller skating from Victoria to St. John’s. By Regina, he had gone through 44 wheels, five axles and so many ball bearings that he lost count. (“Roller Skater Loses Bearings,” read the headline in the Daily Colonist.)
Likewise, HitchBOT the hitchhiking robot was front-page news when it took him (her? it?) just 19 rides and 21 days to get from Halifax to Victoria in 2014. The brainchild of Ontario researchers, HitchBOT got more coverage than did Victoria’s Joseph Boutilier, who spent 51Ú2 months unicycling from Mile Zero to Ottawa that year to draw attention to climate change. The same could be said of most of those who have ridden, run or rambled across Canada in the name of AIDS awareness, Indigenous suicide, kidney disease, missing children, multiple sclerosis, hepatitis C, hospice, the Tour de Rock … .
In 2000, in an attempt to highlight the yawning gulf between people in power and people with disabilities, cyclist Eric Teering towed his wife Shannon Teering’s wheelchair — she had multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis and was legally blind — 13,000 kilometres from Cape Spear, Nfld., to Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., to Victoria. When they arrived at Mile Zero, the greeting party consisted mostly of a busload of Korean tourists.
That did nothing to diminish the achievement, though. These people inspire us. McLash might talk about his journey as a personally rewarding opportunity — “I’m exploring my lottery winnings. Being born in Canada, we’ve won the lottery” — but others appreciate what efforts like his mean to the rest of us.
“When someone awakens our conscience to the troubles of those less fortunate, we want to answer that call,” wrote McLash’s friend Phil Wynne.
“It defines who we are.”
