A hitchhiker's ride to Sudbury.
Local weaver Dave Woodall, who grew up in a small town outside of Montreal, QC. and has called Vancouver Island home for the last decade, has self-published a book titled 1000 Drivers to Get Me Home which follows his yearly hitchhiking adventures between Duncan and Sudbury, Ont. over the course of 18 years.
"One year I went across the country twice, while another I went from Sudbury to Yellowknife, NWT, then to Duncan before returning back to Sudbury," said Woodall. "This is a good news book that celebrates not just the extraordinary beauty of our country, but the kindness of complete strangers who offered me a ride. I started writing it in my head the minute I got out of my first car ride and even wrote a blog around it for a number of years. I think, in part because of the chaos that is happening to the south of us and elsewhere in the world, that it provides a bit of antidote to the world we live in."
The book features some of the stories that had been rumbling around Woodall's brain that he's told 100 times to other drivers, and others who would listen, which includes tales of the folks he met, the stories they told, along with the places he saw and stayed including hostels, motels and soft patches of grass along the highway.
"When I told my colleagues in Ontario that I was going to hitchhike from Ontario to Duncan to see my son with whom I had lost contact with, they all told me that at age 51, I was too old to even try, which was enough to get me to do it," said Woodall. "The first year I got to Duncan I spent a week seeing the sights, then hitchhiked back. The trip was so interesting and fun that for next 18 years, I made another 14 trips across Canada. I stopped the year I turned 70 partially due to COVID, and partially because I may have almost accepted that I am nearly too old to hitchhike long distances."
Woodall's book is 236 pages and he hired a professional editor and designer to help him. He notes this creative project was not only an outlet to fuel his passion for writing, but one to share his journey with people as he shares this bit of writing from his book's back cover.
”Usually in the dark cold days of February, when thoughts of long, bright, warm sunny days are only a remote, barely possible fantasy, I start to dream of standing on the side of the road with my thumb out. I dream of the myriads of spots that I have stood, some ten or more times before; I dream of getting the perfect ride; I dream of the conversations I have had or will have with those who drive me; I dream of the spots where I will sleep, of Husky gas stations where I will grab a quick sandwich and some more water. These dreams are what have sustained me in those cold dark nights and they are what have made me delightfully vulnerable to a sudden attack of spring fever on the first day of near spring. I am a hitchhiker.”
1000 Drivers to Get me Home is now available to purchase at Volume One Bookstore in Duncan.
"Canada is an extraordinary country, not just the scenery that almost universally breathtaking, but also the people," Woodall said. "The kind and generous folks who looked at me standing on the side of the road, sometimes in the middle of nowhere looking slightly bedraggled and decided to trust me and in doing so created a place where we could share stories of both our joys and our failures. I wish everyone could see Canada as I have done."
