Doug Firby

Doug Firby is a lifelong journalist, with experience in print and electronic media. He has also been cycling his whole life, and enjoys the outdoor experiences in western Canada.
ConnecTour 2021

The bike adventure spirit lives on

What an incredible year this has been. We, the people behind ConnecTour, are writing to you today because each of you has been engaged in some way by our cross-Canada adventure. We want to bring you up to date on developments since we reached St. John’s, NL, in October. We all made it safely home, and are slowly …

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bell island

Second World War attack helped shape Bell Island’s history

Bell Island is a little piece of eastern Canada off Newfoundland’s Conception Bay that most citizens haven’t even heard of. Yet it is an historically significant footnote to our involvement in the Second World War. It’s one of the few parts of our countrythat was attacked during the war, and the only domestic location where …

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A warm welcome, and kudos, from the deputy mayor of St. John’s

ConnecTour was honoured to meet with Sheilagh O’Leary, deputy mayor of St. John’s, NL, when we arrived in town. In addition to hosting us at Mile 0, O’Leary invited us up to her office and congratulated us on our cross-Canada bike ride. In this video, O’Leary describes the efforts in St. John’s to build a …

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On eve of tour’s end, bike team reflects on their experience

On Tuesday, Oct. 12, the ConnecTour riders arrive in St. John’s, NL, completing the cross-Canada tour that started on May 28 in Kelowna, British Columbia. It’s been a tour filled with adventure, some drama and many, many encounters will real Canadians in their home environments. In this video, the four riders who are completing the …

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Gander’s aviation history has a latter day champion

Although she grew up just an hour from what was once one of North America’s most important airports, Sandra Seaward says she didn’t have much of an interest in studying its past. “I never had an affiliation for history,” she says, scrunching her face into a frown. “It had a lot to do with my …

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Proud captain sails to Canada’s other ‘distinct society’

Capt. Stan Peet is the only of five siblings not born on Newfoundland. His father was serving in the military when his youngest son was born in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley. Yet, he considers himself a true Newfoundlander. Canada’s most eastern province, he says, is every bit as much a distinct society as Quebec. Isolated …

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Charlottetown’s heritage homes have a champion

From its modest exterior of dark red wooden cladding, it would be easy to dismiss the small house in Charlottetown, P.E.I.’s historic downtown Hillsborough district as cute, but insignificant. Under that cladding, however, is an historic log house built in 1844 – making it the third oldest known log home in the city. It was …

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New Brunswick’s Acadia region remains a ‘hidden gem’

Born and raised on the northern edge of Acadian New Brunswick, Mark Ramsay is an unapologetic hometown boy. Campbellton, in his view, is one of the great undiscovered places to live in Canada. “It’s a hidden gem,” says Ramsay, while he directs traffic at the annual Terry Fox Walk/Run being held at Sugarloaf Mountain Provincial …

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Our good luck dodging wind and rain finally runs out

The ConnecTour team has been incredibly lucky with the weather through most of the ride across Canada. Yes, there was that scary day when we were hypothermic near Nancy Greene Provincial Park in British Columbia, the day-after-day intense summer heat in Saskatchewan, and a steady downpour as we headed out of Ottawa. But our rain …

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Bearing witness to Africa’s climate migrants

Gilbert Desjardins witnessed the genocide in Rwanda. But not the one that dominated the headlines in 1994. Instead, the artist who lives in the small Quebec town of Mont-Laurier, about an hour north of Mont Tremblant ski resort, was a young traveller in that tragedy-laden African country in the years 1965 to 1969. It was …

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