There are great walks and there are Great Walks and the Trans Canada Trail is probably the greatest of them all.
Award-winning filmmaker, Dianne Whelan, has made movies on Mount Everest and in the Arctic Circle, but in her latest film, 500 Days in the Wild, she took on the impressive challenge of documenting her journey on the Trans Canada Trail, the longest trail network in the world.
In July 2015, Whelan took off from St. John’s, hiking, biking, canoeing and cross-country skiing across the trail, totalling 27,000km, completing her journey in Victoria, B.C., on August 1, 2021.
"On a more personal level, my marriage had ended, my dog had died, and the life that I had been living was over, and I was full of anger and really sad," Whelan told Yahoo Canada about what inspired her to set off on this journey. "I knew I needed a reset, so I needed to check out to check in, as I like to say."
"So I thought, well I can go make my next film, I don't need a lot of money, ... this is doable and someone's going to want to buy this film, because it's the longest trail in the world. ... I wanted to get off the wheel where everything is just about having to make the bills that month, and so this was the only way I could see doing it."
Check out the movie preview here and watch out for the film when it comes out in cinemas.