FEAST: An Edible Road Trip

The 2013 adventure that started it all.

Quick Facts:

The trip was 37,000 kilometers in total, 34,000 of which were by car. We travelled for 5 months and stopped in over 135 cities
We partially funded the trip through an Indiegogo campaign, which raised over $10,000 (our amazing funders are here). Watch our 5-minute pitch video below.
The rest of the funding came from various tourism boards across the country, and a few other businesses.
Our car was a champ, but we did need to call a tow truck just once thanks to a misguided GPS and some very muddy “roads” in PEI. Another time, we locked both sets of keys in the car at 11pm at a gas station on an 18-hour driving day.

The Project:

In 2012, the two of us lounged on a fallen log in the Squamish River. We ate chips, drank beer, and dreamed up with the initial concept of Feast. Why don’t we head out on a five month cross-Canada road trip to all ten provinces and three territories in search of answers to the question, “What is Canadian food?”

We spent eight months worth of evenings and weekends planning the trip. Eventually, we worked up the courage to buy our domain name, create an Indiegogo fundraising campaign, and trade our jobs and lives in Vancouver for hundreds of hours spent in a tiny car.

Together we found ourselves in places we’d never expected to be, like crossing a frozen lake in Nunavut to attend a Beer Dance, pedalling our bikes around the hills of Charlevoix in search of bread, collecting sea asparagus and huckleberries on Haida Gwaii, standing within a herd of bison in Alberta, and tucking into jars of bottled moose in Newfoundland.

Though we stayed within one national border, moving from region to region was like travelling to many different countries, and our idea of Canada became far less cohesive than it previously was. Over the many cultures, landscapes, and kilometres, we discovered that Canadian food is broad, diverse, compelling, and so much more than poutine and Nanaimo bars (though we love both these things very much).

If you’re interested in reading more about what we found in our travels, have a look at our road trip recap series from 2014: Life Lessons and Big Questions & So, What is Canadian Food?. Check out our cookbook (Feast: Recipes & Stories from a Canadian Road Trip) and browse the 200+ stories in our blog section (an index of stories can be found under the “Canada” heading).

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