Back in the day, when I was a young man, it was nothing to hop into your car for a road trip right across the country just for the heck of it. It was another time and it was another world with cars.
Driving across the country back in the ʼ50s and ʼ60 was a grand experience. There were small towns with local restaurants that served comfort food like cheeseburgers, french fries with gravy and Coca-Cola. You could sit in a restaurant booth, talk to the locals and hear wonderful stories about everyone in town. There were motels along the roadside where you could drive right up and park by the door of your unit. They were reasonably priced and well looked after too.
You had to save up a few bucks to make a trip like that but not near the thousands it cost in recent years. It could all be done very reasonably because the last thing anyone worried about was the price of gas. It only cost about 25 cents for an imperial gallon.
When the ʼ80s came upon us the idea of doing long trips like that went out the window and a great life experience was lost to us due to soaring gas prices and corporate greed. It became far cheaper to fly and save the money.
It also saved time, which had somehow also soared in value. All of a sudden we were calculating the cost of time, something we had never done before. We had time management and billing hours and the dreaded “time is money” come into our lives as new phrases and buzz words. It was a great loss, especially for young people.
For what it’s worth, I see a window of opportunity to bring back those days again because of the current anomaly of low gas prices. There may be a chance to once again explore our magnificent country on the road. The way it should be. Just get in the car and drive right across the country. It is the experience of a lifetime and you won’t even need a passport.
Pictures will never do justice to what you will see. You cannot capture a place like the Canadian prairie on film. Until you step out of the car and see an endless sky over 100 miles, you will never understand what that means from a picture. It may be great to fly into Regina and see the city, but it’s nothing short of spectacular to watch it emerge from the road, growing from a small dot on the horizon to become like the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz in the middle of a wide open space, with nothing else around.
We’ll all have a chance this year to see that and more – the mountains, the valleys, Niagara Falls, the Maritimes and even the Arctic Circle. I’ll bet you have talked about it and thought about it. Now is the time you can drive to it all, with a Tim Hortons coffee on the dashboard and a snack in the glove box. Enjoy the comfort of your car, your own space. You can even sleep in it if you need to pull over and rest.
Did you know that Walmart has an unwritten policy that allows long-distance travellers in campers or cars to pull into their parking lots at night to rest without charging them? There are also rest stops in every province. I would argue that Quebec has the best ones although Ontario has some nice ones too.
A lot of the good old restaurants on the Trans Canada Highway from years ago are sadly gone now, replaced with fast-food joints. I have to give them credit though, almost all of them have clean washrooms ready for you and many are open all night. Most Tim Hortons restaurants are open 24/7. Many are in places you would never expect, such as way up in Espanola in northern Ontario.
Many say the low gas prices we have today will not last, and if they do the government will quickly add on taxes that we never had before. Either way we may not have another chance to experience the incredible road trips from yesteryear within such reasonable cost and reach. I believe the opportunity is here. Plan your summer now! I urge you to take this chance and see our beautiful country in this unique and incredible way. The way it should really be seen. You may not get the chance again.
Heino Molls has been the Publisher of REM, Real Estate Magazine (formerly Real Estate Marketing), since 1989. Previous to REM, he worked as an executive at the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB), and at the Toronto Star. Contact Heino by email or call 416-425-3504 x2.
