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It’s hard to get lost when you bicycle across Canada. There aren’t that many highways that connect the remote parts of the large, sparsely populated country. With so much solitude, there is greater risk of getting lost inside one’s head.  

When Martin Bauman started his journey across Canada in 2016, some part of him was already lost. In his first book, Hell of a Ride, winner of the 2023 Pottersfield Prize for non-fiction, Bauman writes about cycling across the world’s second largest country, which he did because he was “restless.” It’s a wonderful euphemistic catch-all for the psychological anxiety that’s haunted every young person who ever dreamt of going west.  

The pieces in Bauman’s travelogue are familiar. He makes a nod to both Kerouac and Pirsig in Hell of a Ride. He borrows a good reason for his trip from one of his personal heroes: Terry Fox. Bauman’s charity is depression, which has had a profound effect on the men in Bauman’s family, including his father. So, Bauman sets out to ride across Canada to raise money for men’s mental health because it sounds better than restlessness. 

What distinguishes Bauman’s travelogue is his honesty about his trauma. To be clear, Bauman is never diagnosed with depression. He reiterates the need to talk to somebody throughout the book. Bauman could have chosen to talk about depression without talking about his personal demons. He could have talked about his personal demons without detailing the ways he was abused. He made a braver choice. 

“I tried the straight-up travelogue,” Bauman said. “I tried the version of the story at a distance. It’s certainly more comfortable talking about other people.” 

Bauman isn’t afraid to explore the uncomfortable. Hell of a Ride is a happy story about growth and renewal, but like any arduous journey, it’s also a rite of passage. It is, at least in part, about confronting pain. Bauman follows the Trans Canada into the infinite, unexplored edges of his consciousness to find himself because he was so restless it made him hurt. 

The heavy themes are tempered with plenty of fun in Hell of a Ride. Bauman’s Odyssey is replete with mentors and helpers that fit perfectly into any iteration of the hero’s journey. A quirky cast of backwater helpers appear from across the great white north. Helpers who sustain him through the underworld – which is that place in the Rocky Mountains, or during a lightning storm on the prairies, where the awe-inspiring power of nature nearly defeats the hero, but it doesn’t. He returns stronger from his trials and dips his bicycle tire in the Atlantic Ocean – a tribute to Terry Fox – to mark the completion of the journey when he reaches St. Johns, Newfoundland. 

“I would encourage anyone to do it,” Bauman said. “Suddenly you’re in completely different circumstances. That can be enough to lift the needle off the record and let you reset.” 

Canada is a large country. It’s easy to forget just how large unless you are facing the prairies on a bicycle. As cathartic as solitude can be the most important lesson Bauman learned on his journey came from the opposite direction. 

“Well, I think the universal truth is we’re not as alone as we think,” Bauman said. “We really do matter a lot to each other. I think that that was hammered home to me. Being in the middle of nowhere in the prairies and thunder and lightning is crackling around me. The only thought flashing through my mind at the time was wanting somebody else to be there with me. It wasn’t about any sort of survival. It was about companionship and company. And I think that that was such a crystal-clear lesson: Yeah, you dumbass. You can’t do this by yourself.” 

Only Bauman does complete the journey by himself; it’s just that much of what he does, like much of what he writes, is a metaphor for life – one a hell of a ride.