The Politics of Motorcycle Touring

I used to live in northern Canada. I was there as a psychologist working for a First Nations community. I tried to use the tools of Western psychology to solve colossal social problems. As I should have expected, the work was a failure.

While growing increasingly despondent, I tried various schemes to brighten my mood. Many were incredibly stupid. One that was less misguided was buying a motorcycle, a Yamaha cruiser.

With it, I went on tours through the boreal landscape. I tasted the tangy pines in the wind. With awe, I looked upon those forests unfolding in front of me. Once, a bear and her cubs greeted me on the highway, and I skirted them with caution and gratitude.

Sometimes I would pack camping gear and head to the national park south of me. I would set up my hammock and then brew a cup of coffee on my stove. I was alone with nature. I was safe and at peace. I was in a land devoid of people.

It was a relief to escape the insoluble chaos that confronted me daily. Yet was my respite not at its core part of the larger settler-colonial project? I was basking in a land without the inconvenience of interacting with its original inhabitants. Was I not following in the footsteps of the Europeans who came to Canada with big promises of “free land”?

Now, we see the bloody consequences of the insoluble contradictions of the last great European settler-colonial project play out before us. It is easy for me to condemn those who seek to maintain and even increase their ill-gotten gains. Yet, I also know the joy of experiencing a land as if it had no people.