Let’s call this one the Watino Waltz.

I’ve had a lot of time behind the wheel of a car this week contemplating why I’m up in the nothern parts of the province, but it comes down to democracy. Every few years the government does some serious work that helps turn the wheels of our democracy, and lots of people are needed to help out. I raised my hand this time round and now I find myself five hundred klicks from home driving—and occasionally walking—as I hand out census cards on behalf of the federal government up north where mail delivery is not as robust.

On my first day, the route had me starting in a little summer community of about twenty five homes.

The Route

I didn’t track my walk on GPS as I normally would another of these fifty walks but instead was relying on the data—which is respectably accurate—from the pedometer built into my watch.

I didn’t track it because I was walking door to door, knocking and talking, and over the course of about three and a half hours had walked the entire village a few times and noted that my watch had crossed over the ten klick mark.

The Effort

Obviously it was not my fasted route, nor did it have but a few tiny slopes barely worth the mention, but I was working and wandering and stopping frequently to log my visits to each home.

I’m calling it a 10.1km walk in 3:30 and every footstep of it was somewhere I’d never been before that day. If that doesn’t count as an adventure, I don’t know what would. 

This brings my total up to 54.75km in about thirteen hours.

The Highlight

Of course, I met all variety of people out there in Watino. Maybe someday someone will get this post in a search and wonder why the heck someone is writing about their little community. I was the guy that brought you your census in 2026. I tried as hard as I could to find you and to count you for the census even though most of you were not there or were really hard to locate, and I enjoyed your little community for that cloudy morning in May as I walked and walked and walked through the streets.