| Nov 16, 2016


Pam and Marcel Giroux of Sharbot Lake were having dinner last Friday evening at the Maples Restaurant when they met 2 girls in their 20's who had very large backpacks. Pam, never one to be overly shy, struck up a conversation with the girls. They turned out to be sisters Sarah and Catherine Jackson who come from Edmonton.

Sarah traveled to Victoria over a year ago, and from there she has been walking the Trans-Canada Trail. Catherine has been attending university and has joined her sister from time to time on the long trek, and is with her for the final section. They intend to keep going through the winter until they reach the end of the trail in Newfoundland.

They travel between 30 and 35 kilometres per day, and were going to camp out before heading south to Harrowsmith to join the Cataraqui trail when they met Pam and Marcel.

“We invited them to have a shower and stay the night at our house, and they were really delightful company,” said Marcel, who took the picture of Catherine, Pam and Sarah the next morning as the sisters were on their way, after Pam made them a pancake breakfast with Frontenac Maple Syrup and fresh fruit.

Sarah has a website where she describes the trek. By the time she reached Toronto on October 20, she had traveled 7,585 kilometres.

She told the Edmonton Journal that she took on the trip because she wanted to go on a long hike after graduating from the University of Alberta last year. She was seeking adventure and a chance to meditate on what she wants to do with her life. While she considered hiking either the Pacific Crest Trail or the Appalachian Trail, the idea of seeing Canada took hold, and even though the Trans Canada Trail is not complete she decided to take it on. She took some time off at Christmas last year but has been on the trail the rest of the time, even in winter.

In her blog she has made some interesting observations about the reaction of people to seeing a single woman hiking alone. Essentially, while she does feel scared at times, she says that this is what it is like to be a woman in our society at all times, on the Trans-Canada Trail or on a city street.

“So when people ask whether I am ever scared on the trail, whether I ever feel unsafe because of my gender, I am so frustrated. The answer is an unequivocal yes. For so long I struggled with how to answer this, because how I feel on the trail is an almost perfect reflection of how I feel in everyday life,” she wrote on her website sarahrosewalks.wordpress.com.

As she said, no one would ask a male hiker the same questions.

The trek has been more about seeing the country than living in fear, however, and as Sarah and Catherine set out from Sharbot Lake on a brilliantly sunny November morning last Saturday, they had a spring in their step.

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