Looking back on historic walk
Nail Pond native Henry ‘Hank’ Gallant walked coast-to-coast to celebrate Canada’s centennial
The owners of a small Saskatchewan hotel had urged him not to leave that morning, but Henry “Hank” Gallant was determined. He had already conquered the Rockies and endured -40 C temperatures.
It was 1967, and the Nail Pond, P.E.I., native was on a mission to complete a coastto-coast walk in celebration of Canada’s centennial.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Gallant’s walk, which he dedicated to Coureurs des Bois (Runners of the Woods), Acadian explorers known for covering long distances in all sorts of conditions.
His historic accomplishment was recently acknowledged in the P.E.I. Legislature.
During his trek across Canada, Gallant said he camped outdoors most nights, but he accepted accommodations when they were offered. The gracious hotel owners would have let him stay another night rather than see him continue on with a vicious Saskatchewan blizzard on the way.
His destination, a grain elevator, was in clear sight when he set out that sunny morning, and he was chancing on getting there before the weather turned.
“I bet you, I didn’t get two miles down the road and you couldn’t see a thing. And then she really blew,” Gallant said in acknowledging the forecast’s accuracy.
His 50-pound pack acting like a sail, carried him off the windswept highway. He stayed on course by following a fence line.
He would’ve walked past the elevator without even seeing it had it not been for a watchman who thought he saw something in the last light of day and roared to get his attention.
Gallant was ushered inside where he unrolled his sleeping bag and slept out the storm.
“I had planned it for six years that I would never let those things bother me because the battle was always in the mind,” he said in describing his resolve to get going every day.
He was a fit, 142-pound, 24-year-old when he set out from Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, B.C., on Feb. 6, 1967. Nine months and one week later, and some 5,226 miles to the east, a 127-pound Gallant arrived at St. John’s Harbour, N.L.
On Nov. 13, his 25th birthday, Gallant became the first person in history to walk coast-to-coast. It wouldn’t have been possible earlier, he said, as parts of the TransCanada were still being built, even as he made his way across Newfoundland.
Following his parade-like arrival in St. John’s in the company of hundreds of school children, Gallant took a private walk down the harbour’s slipway, removed his worn hiking boots and soaked his toes in the Atlantic Ocean, replaying a ceremony he performed in the Pacific 280 days prior.
He cut the tops off four to six raw eggs a day and drank the contents. He also made do on raw ground meat and, when available, fruits and vegetables.
On the coldest of nights he’d pile up spruce boughs and place his groundsheet on top so that he’d be off the ground.
“I didn’t want to get winter twice, but I really got a blast of it,” he said of waking up to six to eight inches of wet, late fall snow on his pup tent in Cape Breton.
He had lamented a lump beneath his sleeping bag. As it was already dark when he picked his sleeping spot near Port Hawkesbury, it wasn’t until the next morning that he discovered he’d pitched his tent across a grave in a cemetery.
Tool sheds, haystacks and cars in junkyards were some of his camping spots.
Once a week he’d find an inexpensive hotel, sometimes paying for his meal and the rest by performing the folk songs he composed.
“I had planned it for six years that I would never let those things bother me because the battle was always in the mind.’’ Hank Gallant on his resolve to complete cross-Canada walk