Moose

Northern Ontario covers a staggering 800,000 square kilometres. Most of it has no roads at all. The communities that exist in this vast boreal zone — Hearst, Kapuskasing, Cochrane, Timmins — are connected by a handful of provincial highways that traverse some of the emptiest terrain in eastern North America. Among these, Highway 11 is the primary corridor, and the section between Hearst and Kapuskasing — roughly 100 kilometres of two-lane highway through the Clay Belt — represents the corridor at its most exposed.

Northwestern Ontario is one of the most sparsely populated regions in Canada. The vast boreal forest between the Manitoba border and Thunder Bay is crossed by a thin ribbon of highway — Highway 17, the main surface route through the region and part of the Trans-Canada Highway system. The approximately 200-kilometre section between Kenora and Dryden distills everything that makes northern Ontario highway driving difficult: long distances, no services, dense wildlife, severe winters, and the particular hazard of fatigue that sets in when hours pass with no town, no fuel stop, and no change in scenery.