I'll Show You Mine! Part 1
Show Me Your Canada is a made in Canada TV show about four girls, Maude Lemieux, Rachelle Hamilton, Sarah Hansen and/et Summer Eastwood, on a cross Canada Road Trip, asking Canadians, coast to coast, to "Show Me Your Canada"!
Quatre filles issues d'une petite ville du Québec partent en road trip demandant a tous les Canadiens de leur montrer ce qu'est leur Canada.
GSB: Summer, can you tell me a bit more about each of the participants? Who are you all? Who's idea was this?
SMYC: We’re four friends from Ormstown, a small village in south-western Quebec. The idea was born out of a camping trip gone seriously awry by Sarah (Hansen) and myself (Summer Eastwood): long story short, a 2 hour drive to Vermont took us 9 and ended in Albany, NY! We got SO lost and a lot of funny/random/kind of scary things happened but we had the best time despite (or because of?) all of those things. From there the idea took off on its own: we decided to do a cross-country road trip but we figured we’d go crazy just the two of us before we reached Ontario, and immediately we thought of Rachelle (Hamilton) & Maude (Lemieux) right away as the perfect “up for anything” type of friends you’d want on this kind of trip. As a foursome, we clicked with the idea right away and have been working on developing it since this winter. We’re challenging ourselves to do it all on $100/day for food, lodging and gas and do it without our cell phones or GPS – it won’t be easy but we are up to it! We couldn’t help but think that filming this adventure would help us to get more people interested and on board to host us and we think that the four of us dealing with said parameters should be pretty entertaining!
Nous sommes quatre amies de longue date qui ont grandies à Ormstown, une petite ville au sud ouest du Québec. L’idée de ce projet est née lors d’une fin de semaine en camping qui s’est improvisé une heure avant de partir (Sarah Hansen et moi, Summer Eastwood). Pour faire une histoire courte, un trajet, qui normalement aurait pris 2 heures de route nous en a pris 9. Après nous être perdues et reperdues, nous avons finalement arrêté notre trajet en Albany, NY. Malgré que la route fût longue, il nous était arrivé tellement de choses drôles, bizarres et certaines presque effrayantes, que cette expérience surpassait toutes nos attentes face à ce road trip imprévu. De là, l’idée c’est formée; nous allions faire un road trip de l’est en ouest du Canada. Au départ, nous voulions partir que toute les deux, mais aussitôt que nous nous sommes emportés sur le sujet nous avons conclu que Rachelle Hamilton et Maude Lemieux serait les complices idéales pour cette aventure. Depuis, nous travaillons les quatre sur le projet et de merveilleuses idées en sont sorties.
SMYC: We are indeed traveling by car – along the famed Trans-Canada Highway (and beyond!). We’re estimating 100 days – basically from the beginning of June through Labour Day Weekend 2012.
GSB: What is the purpose of this adventure?
SMYC: We want to discover our country, the people who live in it, each other and most of all ourselves. As young women (currently 22 – 25 years old) we’re in a phase of life that is full of questions: who am I? What do I want to do with my life? Why do I want to do what I want to do with my life? At the same time, even though we’ve all done some international traveling (between us: South America, Europe, Australia, just to name a few) none of us have really seen Canada beyond Quebec and bits of Ontario. We really want to change that! Travel has a wonderful way of opening up your mind, I find when you go to new places you expect to learn about the culture and people who live there – and you do! – but you learn even more about yourself in doing so. So as we explore and meet Canada, we will also be pushing and encouraging each other to do some internal discovering as well.
GSB: How will you choose where to go?
SMYC: The thing is, we could buy a travel book and see all the “must-dos” in Canada: the Rockies, the CN tower, the Bay of Fundy – but while those sights are amazing and of course we want to see them, we’re even more interested to see what we’re calling the “non-postcard” side of Canada. We want to work on a ranch. We’d like to discover some of the more unique cultures of our country – like seeing what it’s like to live as a Mennonite. We want to go to your favourite hole in the wall pub to listen to your hometown’s favourite local artist. We can’t do that through Google or Lonely Planet – so we’re asking Canadians coast-to-coast to show us their Canada (hence the project’s name). We’ll decide where to go based on the places we’re invited to visit. Some of the responses we’ve gotten already are so great, we just can’t wait to hit the road!
GSB: Who will you stay with and how will you set up these stays?
SMYC: The internet is making it so easy these days! We’ll be setting up some of our plans in advance as we get responses from people via facebook, etc. but we also plan to leave a fair amount of our trip unscheduled – we are sure to meet some really interesting people along the way and want to give ourselves time and freedom to be spontaneous!
GSB: What are your itinerary dates and destinations?
SMYC: So far, all we know is that we’re going to be starting in Cape Spear, NL on or around June 1, 2012 and ending in Victoria, BC Labour Day Weekend. There are a few things we definitely want to hit along the way, for example it’s the Calgary Stampede’s 100th anniversary this year and we have to make that! But we also realize that there’s no adventure in a trip that has been planned down to the minute before it even begins.
Jusqu’à présent, tout ce que nous savons c’est que nous allons débuter notre expérience à Cap-Spear, situé sur la pointe de terre la plus à l’Est de l’Amérique du Nord, aux alentours du 1er juin 2012 et terminer le tout à Victoria en Colombie Britannique autour de la fête du travail. Nous nous sommes déjà entendues pour arrêter à Calgary pour fêter le 100ième anniversaire des Stampedes, mais nous ne croyons pas possible le fait d’établir un itinéraire fixe à la minute près sans même être encore embarquées dans la voiture.
Part 2 tomorrow!
:: images courtesy of Show Me Your Canada.
French translation courtesy of Maude Lemieux.



