Colour me YELLOW
From the grand grain towers to Canada's Dead Sea, Highway 16 opens up a quirky window to the west
Few songs better capture the Canadian experience than Tom Cochrane crooning Life is a Highway. The Manitoba rocker may not have been lamenting literally, but few can argue we spend more time than most rolling down those freeways and byways.
From the urban parking lot that is Toronto's 401 to the spectacular Sea to Sky on the west coast, our transport corridors in many ways define us. Yet some remain largely unknown.
Case in point: the Yellowhead Highway. It spans almost half the country, stretching across the four western provinces, five national and 90 provincial parks and dozens of historic sites.
Covering 3,000 kilometres, the “Park-to-park Highway” begins its journey westward at Winnipeg, the eastern `Mile 0,' terminating at its west coast counterpart, the fishing town of Masset on Haida Gwaii, the former Queen Charlotte Islands.
Just to confuse us, the thoroughfare is also known as Highway 16 for its entire length and forms part of the Trans-canada Highway system — not to be confused with the Trans-canada Highway itself, which runs farther south.
It was officially opened in 1970 and even has its own lobby group — the Yellowhead Highway Association. Established in 1947, it sought to promote a corridor that would help the west prosper and continues to advocate for improvements and upgrades.
“Today with the Port of Prince Rupert, northern western Canadian natural resource exploration and extraction, agriculture, tourism, bioenergy industries and inland multimodal ports, the Trans-canada Yellowhead Highway is more important than ever,” it states.
Located on B.C.'S northwest coast, Prince Rupert is the last mainland stop before the 170-km ferry ride to Masset, via Skidegate, on Haida Gwaii.
Sadly, the Yellowhead has yet another name. The stretch between Prince Rupert and Prince George, in B.C.'S Central Interior, has been dubbed the Highway of Tears — a grim nod to the many murders and disappearances of women, mostly Indigenous, in this part of the province.
Officially, the route's identifier is derived from the Yellowhead Pass in the Rocky Mountains, a National Historic Site located within Jasper National Park in Alberta, which in turn takes its colourful moniker from the blond fur trader Pierre Bostonais — nicknamed Tete Jaune or “Yellow Head.” Both the mountain pass and the highway were important links for Hudson Bay Company traders in the 1880s.
But even the sternest Yosemite Sam was put off by its isolation and it was used only occasionally. Today the Pass crosses the continental divide between B.C. and Alberta, and is easily tackled by Rvers and other latter-day adventurers.
Just west of Jasper travellers can marvel at Mount Robson, at 3,954 metres (12,972 feet) the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. Situated within Mount Robson Provincial Park, this area is mostly untouched wilderness — home to elk, black bear and moose and a springboard for almost every adventure activity imagination will allow.
Though Alberta's Rocky Mountain scenery is a wow moment for both first-timers and Canadians shaking off pandemic-induced cabin fever, the flatter provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba reward those whose curiosity is piqued by more than peaks.
Starting in Manitoba, head for a photo shoot at Portage and Main in Winnipeg. Canada's most famous — and frigid — intersection, if you believe the immortal “50 below” lyrics of Randy Bachman in his 1992 hit song Prairie Town, this is the Gateway to the West and the official starting point of the Yellowhead as it makes its lonely trek to the Pacific.
Winnipeg offers plenty of attractions, including the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the magnificent legislative buildings, and The Forks historical landmark — a vibrant meeting place for more than 6,000 years.
Leaving the capital, the Yellowhead follows the Trans-canada until Portage la Prairie where it veers northwest. It's worth a detour to visit the City of Dauphin, founded in 1739 as a fur-trading post.
Noted for its annual Countryfest musical showcase, the small city is also home to Canada's National Ukrainian Festival — never more significant given world events — and its Ukrainian Orthodox churches retain many of their distinctive onion domes.
What the Prairies east of the Rockies lack in alpine grandeur, they make up for in a different kind of high-altitude attraction: the grain elevator. The wooden warehouses once peppered the plains, earning the nicknames Prairie Sentinel and Castles of the New World. Their numbers have been slashed to a few hundred — from nearly 6,000 in the late 1930s — but the U.S. invention lives on in Inglis, a tiny town west of the Riding Mountain National Park where a row of 1920s wooden towers has been preserved as a National Historic Site.
Pressing on, travellers will pass through great Prairie metropolises like Edmonton and Saskatoon and offbeat attractions such as the saltwater Little Manitou Lake — Saskatchewan's Dead Sea — and the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in North Battleford, which has artifacts dating to 1879, when the first recorded baseball game in the Northwest Territories was played in the town, and is home to Canada's Biggest Bat.
At Lloydminster, the only border city in Canada that sprawls over two provinces, the Yellowhead crosses from Saskatchewan into Alberta. With detours in Edmonton and Jasper, there is much to detain the traveller in Wild Rose Country before breaching B.C. and the final leg.
In B.C., the Yellowhead's history truly comes alive: from the Alexander Mackenzie Historical Trail, which commemorates the first European to cross the continent north of Mexico, to Fort St. James, one of the oldest white settlements in the province. The provincial B.C. Ferries service carries passengers on the home stretch to Masset, where hiking trails, nature sanctuaries and the re-emerging Haida culture await visitors.
The Yellowhead may never rival Route 66 or the Cabot Trail in the romance stakes, but as Cochrane himself sang: “There's a world outside every darkened door ...”
Though Alberta's Rocky Mountain scenery is a wow moment for both first-timers and Canadians shaking off pandemic-induced cabin fever, the flatter provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba reward those whose curiosity is piqued by more than peaks. Andre Ramshaw