Unique adventure continues
HALIFAX - On a spectacular storytelling adventure, Louise Trotter continues to retrace the travels of the first Canadian cyclist to travel the globe as she heads to northern Europe this week.
Karl Creelman was a Truro man who cycled the globe at the turn of the 20th century. The inexperienced cyclist, who started without much of a plan, garnered many tales throughout his travels through developing countries and roads.
The last time Saltwire interviewed the Halifax woman, she had completed trips to Ireland, Wales, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Since then, she has travelled (not by bicycle) through Eastern Canada, Chicago, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and into western Canada. She lucked out timing-wise during COVID, only requiring a PCR test at times.
AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE
Trotter prepares her daily itineraries as closely as possible to Creelman’s, replicating accounts from letters to his sister, newspaper stories and stamp and autograph books.
After staying at Lévis, Que. for a night, she entered Quebec City via ferry just like Creelman did – something she would not have done otherwise. Creelman wrote a detailed account of the ride, seeing the famous Chateau Frontenac that still stands today.
Creelman arrived in a Chicago being rebuilt after the Great Fire, which architecturally looks very different today. The big city, where people worked on Sundays, was a huge cultural shift for him. There was a lot of crime – robbed from in one night was a westerner’s $7,000, a southerner’s $5,500 and Creelman’s own suspenders he’d just bought for 13 cents.
“I just love that he sort of lumped everybody into the same (value),” said Trotter. “(As) somebody who didn’t have a lot, his 13 cent suspenders were equally as valued as somebody’s thousands of dollars.”
In Chicago, Creelman references receiving the Cyclone, a magazine camera that could take a picture in 12 seconds with glass plates.
“It’s funny, you don’t really know what you’re going to write about,” said Trotter. “I have these itineraries. And yet, there’s some little, you know, with a word or a sentence, and then it just opens a door.”
Trotter visited a family camera store that has been in operation since 1899 and heard from a third-generation owner about the kinds of cameras his grandfather sold. There’s no conclusive evidence that Creelman ever visited, but she said it was a lovely thought.
“It really does make sense just to sidetrack a little bit because there’s a component of the story that’s a little bit of a tangent, but it fits in very well, and I can’t ignore that,” said Trotter.
Trotter visits the locations of hotels and post offices he visited to see what exists there now. She asks post offices to stamp and visitor centres to sign her own book.
“Getting to meet people, that I wouldn’t under any other circumstance get to meet … probably wouldn’t have been a place I would have visited, were it not for my dedication to doing this project,” said Trotter.
Trotter feels like she’s learning the history of the world through her travels and knows how fortunate she is to have the opportunity. Creelman followed old trails between Minnesota and Manitoba carts where carts carried furs for trade. The avid photographer is trying to capture a photo to epitomize each location.
“Through the Prairies, that quintessential landscape of crop fields and blue skies, that hasn’t changed,” said Trotter. “So very much that that view and that image would be the same as it was for Karl as it was for me … trying to be very true to, this is exactly what it could have been, would have looked like, and then sometimes almost the opposite.”
“It is a very personal aspect,” said Trotter. “You’re not just going to a place. It’s about the process of getting there. And what happened in that place at that time. And so many things change.”
Storyteller retracing turn-of-century global cyclist’s journey, captures U.S. and Canada
SCOTLAND AND A FAMILY CONNECTION
Now, she’s off for two weeks in northern Europe, going from France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, and then two weeks in Scotland.
Creelman was in Scotland for a great deal of time and wrote extensive accounts of his fondness for the place that felt like his home province.
“He really spent a lot of time with the people and was very well received,” said Trotter. “He references quite a number of times he, “could have stayed weeks on end” with every person that he visited, that just welcomed him and wanted him to stay longer with him.”
She is not sure if she’ll be able to visit the castle where Creelman was nursed back to health from an illness since it is no longer public, but she is hoping. And in the Netherlands, she will be meeting a historian at the Velorama National Bicycle Museum to learn about Albert Sutherland Royaards, a deaf man who did two bicycle grand tours between 1895 and 1898.
Jim Vance of New Glasgow is a 72-year-old avid cyclist who stumbled across Trotter’s blog one day on the internet and noticed “Creelman,” a name on his paternal grandparents’ side. (They were from Bass River.)
Through some genealogy, he connected Karl as being the grandson of Vance’s fifth great-grandfather, through the early-mid 1800s period in the Upper Stewiacke area. While not a close relative by any stretch, he likes to think that they shared cycling genes.
“How many 70-something year-old Nova Scotians have a passion for riding bicycles, and I happen to be one of them?” said Vance. “It’s sort of an interesting connection with Karl in that regard.”
Vance cycled Scotland for five weeks in 2002, visiting locations associated with the Vance/deveaux family name. He said the roads and cow paths were established much earlier than Canada’s – meaning that Creelman’s exact route likely still exists today, just paved.
“If he and I travelled some of the (same) small backcountry roads … if I can really clearly figure (that out), that’d be really neat, wouldn’t it be? To say, ‘look, I travelled from here to here. And Karl travelled from there to there.’ There’s only one logical road, so he and I must have cycled the same road.”
Vance “tips his hat” to Trotter’s accounts and looked forward to meeting Trotter in Truro before her departure. He does not think he would have made the connection without discovering her blog.
“Her blogs, my first impression was, are very well written. I think she has a real talent … Karl’s journey is the connecting story, but the blogs that I’ve read are interesting in a broader sense.”
Scotland was Creelman’s last stop, but she is not making her journey in chronological order and only in segments at a time. In December, she will hit India, then Sri Lanka and Egypt. Her journey is documented at louisetrotter.photo/globetrotter.