This morning we met Mark from Toronto, who was also staying at our campground. He was coming from Vancouver and was headed back home. We shared some tips and had a nice chat. Mark mentioned that he had met a cyclist that said the tourist office in White River has free camping so we noted that!
Traffic was light and the winds were very calm. The many lakes we passed by were very beautiful in the calm. We then had an on-coming van that honked and waved at us enthusiastically. Katherine thought that it might have been the Tour du Canada van. Next thing you know there were cyclists after cyclists on the other side of the road for a good hour or so. There were probably 30 or 40 of them in total, all on unloaded road bikes. We heard later that it was a group from Quebec on a supported tour (we think the Tour du Canada probably passed us long ago). Each and everyone of them waved us at as they went by. People driving this stretch of Hwy 17 must have thought cyclists had taken over.
As we arrived in White River’s tourist office, there were two girls hanging out outside by their tandem touring bike. Their names were Carol-Anne and Nicole from Vancouver. They were headed to Montreal where they were hoping to stay and find jobs (what a way to move, on a tandem bike across the country!). They even had fancy business cards for their web site and contact info. Click here to check out their blog (wasn’t working when I checked). They had been mostly camping out in the wild. We were impressed! They were planning on stopping somewhere between White River and Wawa.
We looked around the tourist office and noticed they had water taps and even a RV dump station. On the advice of Mark from this morning we went into the tourist office. There were a couple local girls working at the desk and we asked them about pitching a tent around White River and they said that it was okay to camp at the tourist office park. There was also a truck stop near by where you could shower for $6.
We pitched our tent in the park by the bushes so it wouldn’t be completely out in the open (the park didn’t have many trees). While Katherine went to shower I hung around our stuff and washed myself using the cold tap by our tent. Next thing I know another fellow touring cyclist zipped by. I waved at him and he did an arm motion to say he was coming back.
He did come back after a few minutes and we met Henri from Montreal. He had just gone to the grocery store before they closed but it was too late (I had forgotten that it was Sunday and they close early, especially in these small towns).
He had also heard that there was free camping at the tourist office from another cyclist, and he was ready to unwind at the end of the day. He pitched his tent near ours and we cooked dinner together and had a nice chat. He works at a bike/ski shop in Montreal and was cycling across the country. He had left Montreal and biked to St John’s, where he caught a flight to Vancouver and was now cycling back. Quite a few cyclists do this as you only have to fly once. What’s funny is we somehow missed each other when he was biking east the first time in the Maritimes!
After dinner Henri fixed a broken spoke on his back wheel. He had been breaking a number of spokes on the back on his trip. His bike wasn’t a touring bike and he only had a regular wheel on the back. But working at a bike shop he was quick in fixing his spoke and we learned a few things from him as we watched!
After dinner we got the obligatory picture with Winnie-the-Pooh. It’s a bit of a long story but Winnie-the-Pooh was based on a cub from White River. They had only found out about this in 1987 during a radio interview with the grand son of the lieutenant Harry Colebourn. From Wikipedia:
“The bear cub was purchased from a hunter for $20 by Canadian Lieutenant Harry Colebourn in White River, Ontario, Canada, while en route to England during the First World War. He named the bear “Winnie” after his hometown in Winnipeg, Manitoba. “Winnie” was surreptitiously brought to England with her owner, and gained unofficial recognition as The Fort Garry Horse regimental mascot. Colebourne left Winnie at the London Zoo while he and his unit were in France; after the war she was officially donated to the zoo, as she had become a much loved attraction there.”
After seeing the bear at the zoo, a writer with her son got inspired to write Winnie-the-Pooh stories, which was later sold to Disney. In the end, there is a certificate from Disney at the tourist office, and what is even more amusing is there are Disney copyright marks on the local plaque!
We also got a photo with the big White River sign with a thermometer. For the story for that, here is a blurb again from Wikipedia:
“White River advertises itself as “The Coldest Spot in Canada” with recorded temperatures as low as – 72oF (- 58 °C). However, this is a myth as the coldest temperature in Canada has been recorded in Snag, Yukon, at – 62.8 °C on 3 February 1947.[2] Even in Ontario, the coldest place is Iroquois Falls at – 58.3 °C (23 January 1935), which is the lowest temperature reported in Eastern Canada too.[2] White River’s reputation for coldest area is probably based on the fact that for many years its reported temperature was deemed “the coldest in the nation today” from the handful of stations reporting daily temperature extremes in newspapers and on radio, climatological stations data being only available monthly to Environment Canada”
Interesting.
Trip Around The World 
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