Canada's Yonge Street: Driving the world's longest road through the rugged wild west

By Martin Symington

Yonge St stretches all the way from downtown Toronto to Canada's National Parks, such as Yellow Canoe in Algonquin Park in Ontario


Standing on the Lake Ontario quayside in Toronto's glitzy downtown district, I could only wonder what Sir George Yonge would have thought of the street named in his honour making it into the Guinness Book of Records.

With its stylish boutiques and historic theatres dwarfed by glass-and-steel skyscrapers, this end of Yonge (pronounced 'young') Street looked like many other principal shopping arteries in famous cities.

'Where does it lead to?' I asked people on their way to work.

'Right outta town into the backa beyond,' reckoned one.

'Thunder Bay,' guessed another. 'You tell me,' said a bemused third. For the record, Canada's most famous (though not best understood) street, is the world's longest. It leaves Toronto to stream across forest wilderness and skirt the Great Lakes before tracing an arc over the prairies of northern Ontario and ending 1,178 miles away at Rainy River on the U.S. border.

Yonge Street may not be celebrated in song like America's Route 66, but, as the Toronto-based friend who invited me to join a four-day journey in his Mercedes put it: 'To drive its whole length is to follow the brush strokes of an amazing impression of the real Canada.'

I had always thought of the railways as the sinews of Canada's nationhood. It was a captivating idea.

Leaving Toronto, Yonge Street morphed first into demented Highway 11, as a phalanx of cars and trucks zigzagged around us. Happily, six lanes soon became four, then two, as the city gave way to expanses of silver birch and sugar maple splintered by swirling rivers.

As the forests and glassy lakes rolled by, I began to sense just how huge Canada is. Ontario - just one province - is nearly the size of France, Germany and Italy put together.

I tried to picture how this terra incognita must have looked to Sir George Yonge, British Secretary of War and a member of Upper Canada's Parliament in the late 18th century.

The highway was built on top of Algonquin Indian trails to provide military access to the Great Lakes in case of an invasion from the U.S. after independence.


A Yonge Street Sign in Downtown Toronto. The street grew in size alongside the growth of Canada itself


As Canada was settled, Yonge Street advanced east to west, making accessible ever expanding swathes of country - preserves, in those days, of the people nowadays referred to as 'First Nation', and a few fearless hunters and beaver trappers.

The road we drove is still the route into wilderness areas such as the Algonquin National Park, though today's fur-capped and lumber-jacketed folk who come here to hunt, fish and paddle canoes into the wilds, do so for

leisure. As the vastness of Canada unfurled further, I recalled how, years ago when driving a camper van across America with some fellow students, we used to trap locks of our long hair in the window, so we would be woken with a sharp tug when irresponsible young heads began to nod.

The safety features of our swish Mercedes were rather more subtle about keeping us on the straight and narrow: the steering wheel would vibrate in simulation of a rumble strip if it sensed I was straying too far towards the middle of the road.

And when it really reckoned the driver was losing focus, a steaming hot beverage would flash on the dash.

Thank goodness for Tim Hortons. Canada's ubiquitous coffee and doughnut chain punctuates Yonge Street and provided us with tricky choices such as between the sticky Maple Dip or the crunchy Honey Cruller (my tip, have both). The original Mr Horton was a hockey star from the small town of Cochrane, on Yonge Street.

His life is celebrated in a tiny museum at the local rink, where we watched a game between padded giants on ice - another spectacle without which no tour of Canada would be complete.

The town's mascot is a polar bear, though the only live specimens are a captive pair - Nanuk and Bisitek - whom I was lured into 'swimming with', as we eyeballed each other through a glass wall at the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat and Heritage Village.

We slept that night at the Station Inn, which is also the ticket office for the daily 'Polar Bear Express' that chugs up to Moosonee, a Cree Indian town on the edge of James Bay.

It is a long way north, but in truth still far from the nearest polar bear habitat.

Yonge Street runs close to the Quebec border for a hundred miles or so, so it should not have been such a surprise to me that Ontario towns such as Cochrane are bilingual, while others such as Kapuskasing are almost entirely French-speaking.

Just as the Algonquin and Cree communities reminded me this country was once the domain of a different culture altogether, so I mused that a journey through Canada without its French element would be incomplete.

Despite signs warning of 'Moose on the Loose' and hunters with rifles strapped to their quad bikes, the giant creatures and potent symbols of the great Canadian outdoors proved elusive.

The roadside flying saucer and UFO visitor centre in the enchanted- sounding town of Moonbeam, on the other hand, were all too real.

Resident Alice Follet told us tales of 'glowing lights hovering in the night sky - we have seen them, others in Moonbeam have seen them. We cannot explain it. Whatever anybody believes, these chilling phenomena exist.' Curiouser and curiouser, as another Alice once said.

Then there was the town of Swastika. Yes, Swastika. I did a double-take as we approached the workaday blue signboard announcing a place apparently named after the inescapable symbol of the Third Reich.

'No, no, no, nothing of the kind!' laughed resident Melissa Newton. She seemed touchingly proud of this gold mining town 'named - before the National Socialists even existed - after an ancient Sanskrit symbol.'

Nevertheless, I have since discovered that the miners fought a fierce battle with the Ontario government to retain the name during the 1940s. These days, it is about all the nondescript little town has to attract interest from Yonge Street passers-by.

Beyond Thunder Bay and the Lake Superior shoreline, we passed the Arctic Watershed to the Atlantic, shifted a time zone, and entered a completely different scene and tempo.

Here, the prairie was as wide and flat as you can imagine - skies and unbroken horizons so huge we could sense the globe curving. The Rainy River bridge and border post, beyond which the road loses itself in Minnesota, finally marks the end of Yonge Street.

'Does it rain much here? I inquired of Linda Russell, a local, in the bar of the Canadian Northern Hotel.

'A lotta people ask me that,' she sighed. 'Yeah, pretty much.'

However, outside I gazed west to a crimson sun bleeding into cloud formations that looked tantalisingly like mountains.

As I fantasised about the distant crags and glaciers of the Rockies, I could only reflect that this drive from the thrum of city traffic to the swish of winds across the prairies had been right up my street.

Travel Facts

7Canada (020 8776 8709, frontiercanada.co.uk) offers a ten-night, fly-drive holiday for £1,650 per person based on two sharing. The price includes flights from Heathrow on Air Canada (0871 220 1111, aircanada.com), moderate hotels and car hire with unlimited mileage.


source: dailymail