Thomas W. Wilby – A Motor Tour Through Canada

The script of the "Chasing the Trans-Canadian Dream" documentary is deeply informed by A Motor Tour Through Canada, Thomas Wilby’s firsthand account of the 1912 cross-country automobile journey.

Published in 1914, the book recounts the first attempted trans-Canada automobile journey in 1912, undertaken by English journalist Thomas Wilby and his American driver Jack Haney in a REO touring car. The journey spanned from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Victoria, British Columbia, and aimed to promote the idea of a transcontinental highway.

Pioneering Spirit & National Unity: Wilby’s book captures the audacity of trying to motor across a country with no continuous road. He was the first to attempt to see Canada “from the tonneau” rather than from a railway observation car. The journey symbolized a literal and figurative effort to connect East and West.

Challenges of Early Motor Travel: The book documents a country largely unprepared for automobiles: missing roads, unmarked trails, primitive accommodations, indifferent infrastructure, and often hostile terrain. Northern Ontario and the Rockies posed the most formidable obstacles, and at times they had to ship the car by train or boat to circumvent impassable regions.

Social and Cultural Observations: Wilby provides rich, often wry commentary on Canadian society, comparing it to both England and the United States. He notes the provincialism, the blend of British and American influences, and the potential of motor travel to transform rural life.

Advocacy for a National Highway: Wilby makes a passionate case for building a transcontinental road as a nation-building project—one that could stimulate commerce, tourism, and Canadian unity. His journey was both exploration and political statement.

The REO and the Journey Itself: The car—described in great detail—becomes a character in the book. Outfitted for endurance rather than comfort, it bore the team across over 4,200 miles of varied terrain. The book includes vivid descriptions of landscapes, towns, natural wonders, and the people they met along the way.

A Personal Adventure: Though Wilby refers to Haney only as “the chauffeur,” the tension and class contrast between the two men adds a subtext. Wilby remained seated in the back of the car, taking notes and writing dispatches, while Haney drove and handled repairs.

Illustrations and Humor: The book is richly illustrated with 34 photographs that highlight both the scenic beauty and road conditions. Wilby's style is literary and often humorous, filled with irony, metaphor, and high-flown rhetoric, especially when describing poor roads or quirky locals.

Legacy: Although the journey didn’t fully qualify for the “Todd Medal," Wilby’s account helped cement the importance of a cross-Canada road and remains a landmark in Canadian travel literature and infrastructure advocacy.

Historic Events

A close reading of A Motor Tour Through Canada shows that Wilby does much more than describe roads and scenery. He repeatedly pauses his 1912 journey to connect the landscape before him with an earlier disaster, war, migration, exploration, political decision, or transportation milestone.

• The Titanic disaster — Halifax, Nova Scotia — p. 12. Only a few miles after beginning the journey from Halifax, Wilby passes the area where victims of the Titanic had been buried. He writes that “many of the unidentified victims of the ‘Titanic’ disaster” lay somewhere nearby. The sinking had occurred only four months earlier, on April 15, 1912, giving this passage unusual immediacy.
• The American Revolution and the United Empire Loyalists — Saint John, New Brunswick — pp. 35–38. A monument in Saint John prompts one of Wilby’s longest historical digressions. He discusses the Loyalists who supported Britain during the American Revolution, their persecution and losses, and their predicament when Britain recognized American independence. He regards their story as fundamental to understanding English Canada.
• The Loyalist migration to Canada — Saint John — pp. 36–38. Wilby separately emphasizes the mass migration that followed the Revolution. He recounts the hardships of the Loyalists who traveled north with their families and possessions and notes the arrival at the mouth of the Saint John River on May 18, 1783. In the passage, he quotes a history describing them as “the fathers of English Canada.”
• Early French settlement of the Saint John Valley and Madame de La Tour’s defense — pp. 38–39. After discussing the Loyalists, Wilby goes farther back in time to the arrival of Champlain and De Monts and the fort of Charles de La Tour. He specifically remembers Madame de La Tour’s resistance to the siege conducted by her husband’s rival, Charnisay, saying that she had earned a “notable place in history.”
• The Wolfe–Montcalm struggle and British conquest of Quebec — Quebec City — pp. 75–76. Leaving Quebec for Montreal, Wilby travels toward Sillery along the Grande Allée and across the historic battlefield. He recalls Montcalm seeing the British forces and stops at the monument marking the site of Wolfe’s death. The road literally carries Wilby across the landscape of the decisive 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
• The French explorers who opened the route toward the Great Lakes and West — Quebec — pp. 75–76. Looking back at Quebec, Wilby invokes La Salle, Marquette, La Vérendryye and the Jesuit missionaries Brébeuf and Lalemant. He describes them as explorers and pioneers of the “Country Beyond,” emphasizing how they traveled westward without roads or established settlements. This is important because Wilby explicitly compares their westward exploration with his own automobile expedition.
• The capitulation of Montreal and the transfer of Canada to British control — Montreal — p. 85. From Mount Royal, Wilby recalls Montreal’s capitulation in 1760, writing that “the whole of the known Canada became a possession of the English crown.” He uses the moment to reproduce Voltaire’s famous dismissive view of Canada as an apparently worthless frozen possession over which Britain and France had fought.
• Champlain’s exploration of the Ottawa River — Carillon/Pointe-Fortune — pp. 88–90. Approaching the Ottawa River, Wilby recalls Champlain’s 1613 canoe expedition. He explains that Champlain was exploring the unknown river partly to investigate the claims of a subordinate who said he had followed it to the northern seas. Wilby turns the episode into a humorous reflection on explorers, exaggeration and the creation of travel stories.
• The War of 1812 — Ontario, approaching Toronto — p. 106. Wilby says that “famous historical highways” associated with incidents of the War of 1812 carried the REO toward Toronto. The reference is brief, but significant: the automobile is traveling over roads already embedded in the military history of the Canada–United States borderlands.
• Lord Selkirk and the Red River settlements — Northern Ontario/Manitoba context — p. 143. When Wilby confronts the enormous roadless barrier around Lake Superior, he recalls Lord Selkirk bringing the first colonists into Manitoba. His point is transportation: the settlers approached from Hudson Bay, and Selkirk himself traveled through the United States because there was no practical overland route west in Canada.
• The Red River Rebellion and Wolseley Expedition — pp. 143–145. Wilby makes a particularly revealing comparison between his own failure to drive around Lake Superior and Colonel Garnet Wolseley’s 1870 expedition against Louis Riel’s provisional government. Even then, Wilby notes, there had been no road across western Ontario. Wolseley’s force followed the Dawson Route and chains of waterways, taking approximately ten weeks.
• Radisson and de Groseilliers open the route into the West — Portage-la-Prairie, Manitoba — pp. 164–165. Wilby identifies Radisson and de Groseilliers as the first white travelers to cross the Manitoba prairies. He recounts their 1666 journey by way of the Winnipeg River, Lake Winnipeg and Hudson Bay.
• The founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company — Portage-la-Prairie — p. 165. Wilby immediately connects Radisson and de Groseilliers with the creation of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Their reports of enormous inland waterways, plains and resources stirred interest in London, and Wilby says that a company was formed and chartered by Charles II in 1669. He describes the HBC as becoming the virtual ruler of an immense portion of Canada.
• The Brandon boom of 1882 — Brandon, Manitoba — pp. 173–174. Wilby explains that Brandon grew out of the “great boom of 1882,” when the prairie was being pegged out, and prospective residents lived in canvas tents. He recounts the speculative atmosphere, young British adventurers, money, clubs, and drinking, followed by the inevitable collapse of early optimism.
• The Regina Cyclone — Regina, Saskatchewan — pp. 183–185. This is one of the strongest contemporary events in the book. The devastating tornado had struck Regina on June 30, 1912—only a few months before Wilby arrived. Shop windows still displayed photographs of the destruction, and from the Parliament buildings Wilby could look toward the path where the cyclone had cut “a swath of ruin and destruction through the city’s heart.”
• Alexander Mackenzie’s first transcontinental crossing — approaching the Rockies, Alberta — pp. 230–231. As Wilby approaches the mountains, he invokes Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s 1793 crossing. Wilby calls him “the first transcontinentalist” and contrasts his own automobile and road with Mackenzie’s journey on foot and by canoe. The comparison consciously places the 1912 REO expedition within the larger history of transcontinental exploration.
• The Frank Slide — Frank, Alberta — pp. 232–233. Wilby drives directly through the wreckage of Turtle Mountain’s catastrophic 1903 collapse. He describes the mountain as having “spilled itself over the valley” and buried part of Frank. Residents were still living beside the enormous debris field, and some of the dead remained beneath the rock.
• The destruction of Fernie by forest fire — British Columbia — pp. 236–237. Entering British Columbia, Wilby travels through miles of burned forest. The charred trees remind him of the enormous fire that had “swept away the town of Fernie” and blackened the countryside for approximately twenty miles. The rebuilt Fernie through which he travels makes the disaster another piece of recent history still visible from the automobile.
• The Fraser and Cariboo gold discoveries and Sir James Douglas’s road-building program — Ashcroft and the Fraser/Thompson region — pp. 256–257. Wilby describes himself as entering the Cariboo mining country and the Fraser and Thompson gold lands. He says that the discovery of gold had helped make Vancouver and Victoria and had given British Columbia new enthusiasm for highway construction. Governor Sir James Douglas responded by developing roads through the Fraser Canyon and north toward the gold fields.
• British Columbia joins Confederation and demands a transcontinental railway — Fraser Canyon — pp. 268–269. Wilby explains that British Columbia insisted upon railway communication with the Prairies and eastern Canada before agreeing to join Confederation. He uses this history to explain why portions of the old Fraser Canyon wagon road were later surrendered to railway construction.
• Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and destruction of portions of the old highway — Fraser Canyon — pp. 268–269. Wilby argues that when the CPR was constructed, sacrificing portions of the highway seemed reasonable because the railway promised vastly faster transportation. By 1912, however, he regarded the loss of the road as short-sighted—a powerful example of how Canada's commitment to railways had contributed to its lack of continuous highways.
• The Steamboat Mountain gold fraud — Hope, British Columbia — pp. 271–273. Near Hope, Wilby records a vivid story of two American promoters who claimed to have discovered a rich gold deposit at Steamboat Mountain. Hope boomed as newcomers arrived expecting another Klondike. When the supposed mine could finally be inspected, the promoters disappeared, and the deposit proved fraudulent; according to Wilby’s informant, the mine had been “salted” with ore brought from Nevada.
• The Alberni Canadian Highway ceremony and theft of the highway marker — Alberni, Vancouver Island — pp. 275–277. At his western goal, Wilby reaches the simple post marked “Canadian Highway,” pointing east toward Halifax. He recalls the ceremony held only months earlier to inaugurate the proposed transcontinental road. Two days afterward rivals from Port Alberni stole the post and carried it away; it was returned, restored, and guarded by a chained bull terrier. Wilby regarded the marker as the physical beginning of the future Trans-Canadian Highway.
• Sir James Douglas’s earlier dream of a transcontinental Canadian highway — Victoria — pp. 279–282. At the end of the journey, standing beside the Douglas monument in Victoria, Wilby returns to history one final time. He portrays Douglas as a visionary who imagined a road linking British Columbia with eastern Canada and explicitly calls him the “Father of the Trans-Canadian Highway.” Wilby connects Douglas’s nineteenth-century vision directly to the white highway post planted at Alberni in 1912 and to his own transcontinental journey.

The page numbers refer to the printed pagination of Thomas W. Wilby’s 1914 A Motor Tour Through Canada, not the PDF or scan page numbers.