As I write this, we’re parked in our Sprinter van on the side of the Trans-Canada Highway just outside of Rossport, Ontario, overlooking Lake Superior. It’s been a particularly snowy past couple of days, with sunshine finally peaking through in the late morning. Nothing beats seeing Lake Superior under gleaming sunshine, even in the frozen grip of early spring.

Just yesterday, my husband (driving), our dog (staring through the back window), and I (passenger, as per most of the time) were driving through Thunder Bay, Ontario, heading east to make our way back to Montreal. Whether you’re driving east or west, Thunder Bay is either the start or the end of Lake Superior.
The differences between driving to, driving through, flying to, and living in a place come up. Each mode of arrival constructs a different version of the same geography. I’ve only driven through Thunder Bay, giving me a perspective distinct from those who call it home and those who merely fly in as transients.

Before this road trip, my knowledge of Thunder Bay was entirely second-hand, filtered through the pages of Tanya Talaga’s Seven Fallen Feathers and the rare broadcast on the news. My understanding was defined by absence and the stories of the seven Indigenous students, the systemic neglect, the cold indifference of institutions. It was a place of heavy gravity in my mind.

Then there is my oldest friend, who as a child would fly into Thunder Bay to visit her family in Treaty 3. For her, the city was never the destination. It was merely the airport and the car ride. She never had much to say about the city itself. The city was just an entre-deux for her, an infrastructure she passed through to get to her family. The flying experience, I realized, often renders the intermediate spaces invisible. You arrive at the gate, you leave the gate. The city in between is a blur of tarmac and terminal glass, a non-place where nothing happens.

But driving through town shatters that invisibility. Suddenly, Thunder Bay looks like any other Northern Ontario city. Any other Canadian city. It is a place of mundane, unglamorous reality. There is a moderately maintained Esso station, its pumps slightly rusted against the grey sky. There is a bustling Walmart parking lot, filled with pickup trucks and minivans, smelling of diesel and winter salt. There is a Tim Hortons at every street corner, the red and white logo a beacon for anyone needing a coffee and a donut.

I watch people wait at bus stops, huddled against the wind. People walk in and out of stores with their heads down. People commute just like in any other town.

This creates a strange, almost cognitive dissonance. Driving through, I see the normalcy of the “Canadian town” aesthetic that feels so familiar. Yet, I am acutely aware of the stories Talaga told, the lives lost in this city. The “flying” perspective allowed my friend to bypass this tension entirely, treating the city as a void. The “living” perspective, I imagine, requires residents to hold both truths at once: the beauty of the lake and the weight of the history, the warmth of a neighbour and the chill of systemic racism.

Driving through offers a third option: a fleeting, fragmented witness. I see the surface, the texture of the asphalt and the faces in the windows, but I don’t feel the ground beneath my feet. I am a ghost in the machine, observing the rhythm of a city I will soon leave behind, forced to reconcile the banality of the present with the gravity of the past. It makes me wonder: if we only fly, do we ever really see the people? And if we only drive through, do we ever really understand the place?

We’ve noticed how much more people are willing to approach us for conversation since getting our van. It’s a great conversational starter, but also a curiosity enabler. We get to see into people through our van. It gives us a buffer. We’re travellers, passer-bys. They divulge interests and experiences that way. We take them in, always open to a new conversation. Not to say you wouldn’t get these opportunities if you flew to Thunder Bay, but there’s an ease to driving especially when you don’t have a dated schedule destination (which we don’t).

In recent years, I’ve found myself perplexed by the ethics of travel. As a child, I traveled with my family on major trips at least twice a year. We were out of the house most weekends as well. My parents prioritized travel for us, making sure we saw as much as we could. We stayed in the not-so-central arrondissements of Paris, explored the Alps, stayed in Harlem, visited the red-light district of Amsterdam, drove around Kauai, walked the carpet lines in Las Vegas casinos, ate cactus in Arizona. We drove cross-country and all around the province of Alberta. As Quebec migrants, we had seen more of Alberta than most Albertans have. I spent my weekends hiking and camping. I was a big fan of it as a child, and even into my adolescence, I’d travel through my French school board as a student diplomat, promoting French learning throughout the provinces, but it also sent me all the way to China.

As an adult, I started reconsidering my traveling habits. The shift wasn’t just about carbon footprints, though that is a factor; it was about the quality of the connection.
There is a prevailing myth in our culture that if you travel, you are automatically cultured, open-minded, and enlightened. We wear our passport stamps like medals of honour, assuming that the act of movement itself confers wisdom. But I’ve met the “flying people.” Those who zip from airport to hotel to attraction, their itineraries packed with “must-sees” but empty of genuine connection. They seem to carry a romanticized version of the world in their heads, a curated gallery of images they’ve collected from magazines and Instagram feeds. They consume places as mere backdrops for their own narratives, turning complex people and cultures into props in a journey of “discovery.”

The speed of flight creates a physical and psychological distance that allows for this idealization. You are insulated from the friction of the place. You don’t see the grit of the construction sites, the gridlock of the rush hour traffic, the exhaustion of the service workers, or the mundane grocery runs that define daily life. You don’t see the systemic inequalities that shape the skyline or the housing crisis hidden behind the tourist traps. You just see the postcard.

This insulation is often intentional. I experienced this firsthand when I traveled to Beijing and Qingdao as a student diplomat. We arrived in a large group, armed with a rigid itinerary and a dedicated tour guide. Every meal, every visit, and every handshake was choreographed. We were moving through a carefully constructed bubble, designed to showcase a specific version of China to the outside world. By all accounts, we were the epitome of the “flying person” experience: efficient, safe, and profoundly disconnected from the reality of the streets we drove past.
Yet, even within that rigid structure, I found a crack in the wall. I met a kindred spirit, a local high school student whose eyes held the same curiosity I felt. She became my mirror, reflecting a version of Chinese culture that the official itinerary had omitted. She showed me the sights through her eyes all while challenging my assumptions. We spoke of the crushing beauty standards that mirrored Western norms, the complex legacy of the one-child policy (of which shaped her generation), and the subtle, pervasive presence of propaganda signs in schools and on billboards. She spoke candidly about driving policies, gender roles in marriage, media censorship, and the daily negotiations of free speech.

She invited me into her home, a space far removed from the tourist hotels, where she shared her talents in the fine arts and her favourite movies. We abandoned the schedule to explore her town, walking hand-in-hand through the chaotic energy of the local mall, sharing street food that burned our tongues, and strolling along the beach where the water met the sand. In those moments, the “prop” vanished. She was not a character in my story of discovery. She was the author of her own, and she allowed me to read a few pages.

This experience taught me that the question isn’t necessarily the mode of transport but the intent of the traveler. Even in a controlled, flying environment, if you are willing to step off the script and engage with the friction of another person’s reality, you can break the bubble. But this requires effort. It requires the same vulnerability that the road trip demands.

In contrast, the driving experience strips away the insulation by default. The road forces you to confront the texture of reality. You see the same traffic jams, the same strip malls, the same struggles with infrastructure. You are exposed to the geography in a way that demands engagement. You can’t ignore the poverty on the side of the highway, or the signs of decay in the neighbourhoods you pass through. The van breaks down, the weather turns, you get lost. These moments of friction are opportunities for genuine connection and understanding. They force you to slow down, to ask for help, to listen, and to realize that the world is not a theme park designed for your consumption.

However, we must be careful not to romanticize the road-tripper. Driving through a place like Thunder Bay doesn’t automatically grant you insight into the underlying trauma of the place. You can still be a tourist in a van, gliding over the surface of a community’s pain while admiring the view. The van is a buffer, yes, but it can also be a shield.

The distinction isn’t necessarily between driving and flying, but between passing through and witnessing. The flying person who stays in a resort bubble and the driving person who refuses to leave the highway are both engaging in a form of tourism that prioritizes comfort over connection. True open-mindedness comes from the willingness to step out of the vehicle (whether it’s a plane or a van) and sit with the discomfort of a place that doesn’t fit your narrative.

My husband and I, sitting in our van on the edge of a frozen lake, are still just passing through. But the slowness of the journey allows us to pause, to read the signs, to remember the books we’ve read, and to wonder about the lives unfolding in the towns we glide past. Maybe that’s the only advantage the road offers: the time to think, to question, and to realize that we don’t know as much as we think we do.

It’s now sunny in Rossport. The heavy grey clouds that hung over Lake Superior for days have finally parted, and the sky has opened up. A few kilometers down the road, at Terrace Bay, the light is hitting the water in a way that demands to be captured. A great photo opportunity, yes, but more than that, a moment of pure, unfiltered presence in one of my favourite places in Canada. I pack up my notes and my thoughts linger on the ethics of movement and the difference between seeing and knowing. The van engine hums to life, a familiar sound that signals the continuation of the journey. I am still a passerby, still driving through a landscape that holds both breathtaking beauty and deep history. The goal isn’t to solve the paradox of travel or to definitively prove that drivers are better than flyers. The goal is simply to be present, ready to witness whatever the road reveals next. Whether I arrive, the sky is the same, and the light, for now, is golden in Terrace Bay.