Day 38 didn’t have much to offer except kilometres. We drove from Camping Transit to an hour north of Montréal on roads so rough they could double as a chiropractic treatment. Or cause you to need one! Traffic crawled. Google Maps cheerfully informed us that after 2.5 hours of driving, we’d shaved a whole… one hour off the total journey. At that point it felt less like travel and more like being trapped in a time capsule powered by despair.
With nothing to do but inch forward, I started thinking about Canada’s road signs. Canada: land of mountains, moose, and stop signs that generally behave themselves. A red octagon means stop. Sometimes it offers a bonus instruction— “ALL WAY,” or “4 WAY”.
It seems Québec looked at this perfectly functional system and said, “Non, merci,” then slapped a cryptic diagram underneath. It’s an intersection sketch that could easily be mistaken for retired IKEA instructions—just add the confused stick‑man and a tiny Allen key. You pull up, squint at it, and think, “How many ways is this stop… and is it even a stop?” Meanwhile, locals—who’ve been welded to your bumper for ten minutes—zip past and glide through, barely glancing at the sign they apparently learned to read in preschool.
Prince Edward Island, meanwhile, has gone full Broadway. Their stop signs don’t just sit there—they perform. Flashing LEDs, glowing borders, the whole razzle‑dazzle. You don’t see a PEI stop sign; you experience it.
And then there’s New Brunswick, proudly bilingual, where stop signs say STOP and ARRÊT. Does that mean you’re legally required to pause twice? A double stop? A polite bilingual moment of reflection?
In other news, Joe’s thumb is healing well.
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