In this episode of Karryon Podcast's Into the Hearts of Canada hosted by Matt Leedham, our journey today takes us onto the epic Trans-Canada Trail – the longest trail in the world, stretching 24,000 kilometres across Canada’s vast mountains, forests, lakes, and three different ocean coastlines.

Filmmaker, author, and explorer, Dianne Whelan walked, paddled, biked, and snow shoed every step of the trail, filming her experience all the way.

Her remarkable six-year solo journey became the documentary 500 Days in the Wild, a phenomenal story that goes far beyond the distance to serve up life lessons on embracing fear, connection to nature, and rediscovering what it means to belong.

Learn more about 500 Days In The Wild here

Into The Hearts of Canada is presented by Karryon, in partnership with Destination Canada.

Subscribe to Into The Hearts of Canada Podcast here

Visit: www.destinationcanada.com for more on Canada

Visit: karryon.com.au for more from Karryon

Presented by Karryon, Into the Hearts of Canada takes you beyond the guidebooks and into the heart and soul of one of the world’s most progressive travel destinations. Hosted by Karryon’s Matt Leedham, this 10-part series explores the people, places, and powerful ideas shaping the future of travel through a Canadian lens. From Indigenous knowledge-keepers and local changemakers to iconic landscapes and regenerative tourism pioneers, each episode offers an intimate conversation with the people reimagining what travel can be:

For the traveller, communities, and for the planet. Whether you’re a curious wanderer or a travel professional seeking fresh insights, this podcast invites you to see Canada with new eyes and an open heart.

Into The Hearts of Canada is presented by Matt Leedham and produced by Cassie Walker.

Mentioned in this episode:

ITHC midroll updated 14/07/2025

Softer take

14/07/2025 edit

Welcome to into the Hearts of Canada, the podcast where we share the stories of extraordinary people transforming Canadian tourism.

I'm your host, Matt Leadham, checking in from Byron Bay on Bundjalung country, Australia's most easterly point.

Our journey today takes us onto the epic TransCanada Trail, the longest trail in the world, stretching 24,000 km across Canada's vast mountains, forests, lakes, and three different ocean coastlines.

Filmmaker, author and explorer Diane Whelan walked, paddled, biked and snowshoed every step of the trail, filming her experience all the way.

Her remarkable six year solo journey became the documentary 500 Days in the Wild, a phenomenal story that goes far beyond the distance to serve up life lessons on embracing fear, connection to nature, and rediscovering what it means to belong.

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Diane.

It is an absolute pleasure to have you on our podcast.

Um, I have to say I'm feeling quite nervous.

I'm very excited to have this conversation with you today.

And yeah, just to hear about all about this incredible journey that you embarked on.

Firstly, I always like to ask our guests on this show, where, where does this podcast find you?

This podcast finds me in a space, small fishing village called Garden Bay on the coast of the British Columbia.

So on the west coast of Canada.

And yeah, it was a fishing village for many years before that.

A part of the seashell First Nation where indigenous people would come like six months of the year because there was abundance of oysters and clams and mussels, so they could just eat salmon, you know, spawning in the fall.

So.

But then it evolved into logging and fishing, and now.

So it's sort of a small retirement community.

If you looked at a map of Vancouver, kind of, you're about two and a half hours north of Vancouver.

You have to get a ferry boat.

Yeah, okay.

On an island, but because of the fjords, you have to get on a ferry boat to get to this part of the coastline and then you just head north.

Sounds absolutely beautiful.

So let's dive into the journey.

TransCanada Trail, longest trail in the world, 24,000 km, which I think was the total journey across Canada.

What was it that compelled you to think about starting going on this journey?

Well, Matt, I guess from a professional perspective, I'm a documentary filmmaker for the last close to 20 years of my life, and I write books about my adventures as well.

I had made a film on the most northern coastline in Canada called this Land, and I made a film on Mount Everest called 40 Days at Base Camp.

So the thought of doing a film on the longest trail in the world seemed like a natural fit.

Never been done.

It was a brand new trail.

In fact, I left two years before it officially opened, which accounts for some of the, you know, times when there is no trail and I'm basically hacking one.

And the trail is made up of land and water trails.

So yeah, from a filmmaker perspective it was like, wow, what a triptych, right?

The highest mountain, the most northern coastline and now the longest trail.

On a personal level, I was just turning 50.

My marriage had ended and my dog of 16 years had died.

So the two things that kind of kept me tethered to my home and into one space were gone.

And I had thought about this idea before.

I mean they first announced that they were going to build the longest trail in the world by connecting 487 different land and water trails.

Now they're up to like 30,000km, 600 trails.

I did one continuous line, there's lots of offshoots.

My goal was to start in Newfoundland and do one continuous line of land and water trails across Canada and connecting three oceans, the Atlantic, the Arctic and the Pacific Ocean.

That was my goal.

And yeah, it had never been done because my marriage had ended and my dog had died.

I found myself at a place where naturally I was sad with the loss in my life.

But I also saw opportunity.

I saw the opportunity to go do this because I could.

So I embraced the opportunity and I didn't have a lot.

I, you know, I've made films.

So I had the camera equipment and I had some old gear.

I had a 40 year old bike and a 15 year old backpack and a sleeping bag that wasn't too old from Mount Everest.

I kind of just made a list of not why I couldn't go and try to do the longest trail in the world, but I made a list of what I had to do it and I made a plan.

Basically spent a year getting rid of all my bills.

And the last six months I actually go to eastern Canada to a small village where my mother was born.

My grandmother's house still stands.

No one lives in it, but that's where 14 of my aunts and uncles were born.

And I spent six months training for the trail there because A, it's closer to my departure place B, but also I've already, once I got rid of my bills, it was really about like getting rid of all my overhead and I need stay there for free for a minimal amount of money and also get used to being alone.

And just breaking trail and skiing and doing those kinds of activities to.

To start the training process of trying to get in shape, which, I mean, I completely wasn't.

But you have on the job training when you embark on a trail of this, like.

But that was the idea anyway, so that's what I did.

So, yeah, a combination of I'm a documentary filmmaker and it was time to make another film, and a combination of, you know, it was time to check out, to check in.

Like, when I go through big life changes like that, I want to make the next decisions I make in my life from the healthiest place in me.

And so for me, going out on this trail was also about, on a personal level, getting in probably the best shape of my life if I didn't kill myself out there.

And I love being outdoors.

I mean, everything I did, I love.

I love paddling, I love mountain bike riding, I love hiking.

And I'm a professional.

None of them, you know, I'm just.

But I enjoyed them.

And I just basically, you know, on this journey, it was basically doing all of them on, you know, in kind of an extreme way.

But I loved it.

And I.

What some people would call.

I don't know, wouldn't.

Might not find comfort in.

For me, this journey was actually the greatest gift of love to myself I've ever given myself, because it was all my passions, my passion to film, my passion to write, my passion to be outdoors, my passion to do an adventure.

So, yeah, in so many ways, it was.

When you love what you do, you know, you don't really.

The pain is.

The pain has a purpose.

The pain has purpose.

I like that.

I mean, wow, that's incorporating the pandemic as well.

Yeah.

I missed Covid.

You missed Covid?

Yeah.

It was the strangest phenomena because I came out.

I mean, it happened when I was in my final year and a half on the trail, and I did have to figure out how to get some support out there, but there was no one out there.

I never saw anyone, so.

And a lot more animals started coming out, so that was kind of thing.

But yeah, and then to finish the journey and to re.

Enter into society and see this collective trauma that people had endured, it was palatable.

I could see it in people.

Almost everybody I knew had been impacted in some way.

Some flourished, some got the break they needed for a long time to really reset their life and get healthy and others didn't, you know, they lost their social skills.

They lost.

They became more.

Had more anxiety, more anxiousness around being around people.

It was a very interesting thing.

Yeah, what a gift.

I mean, that's.

It is a gift really, isn't it, to have completely kind of missed all of that.

This might seem like a ridiculous question.

You obviously experience so much diversity, but can you give us a bit of a sense of the scale of diversity that you encountered along the journey?

Yeah.

And also, you know, Canada is the second largest country in the world, so we have a lot of space here.

And there is a large difference between a place like Saskatchewan, which is prairies and quite flat, and then someplace like British Columbia that has the Rocky Mountains, you know.

So of course, the journey included 8,000 kilometers of water trails.

So also things like Lake Superior, you know, paddling Lake Superior, or a 4,000 kilometer paddle from Alberta up to the Arctic Ocean, you know, on the Peace River, Slave River, Great Slave Lake and Mackenzie Rivers, and some very isolated sections, of course, than sometimes going through communities and even cities, you know, for a day or two.

So it's.

It's quite an incredible trail, actually.

And I mean, as a storyteller, you know, when they first conceptualized of the trail, it was to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday.

And I loved Canada.

I mean, as a woman, you know, I've enjoyed a lot of safety and freedom to be myself here and to live a really authentic life.

And we have, you know, free medical, free dental now, you know, the things that matter to me as a way kind of measuring a society, you know, like when you have free medical, every citizen is kind of equal, like, not financially, but when everybody gets access to the same heart and the same lungs and the same blood and the same everything, it does create an equanimity between people, which I really love.

I really love Canada a lot.

But at the same time, you know, I'm of settler descent.

You know, my mother's ancestors left France 400 years years ago, and my father's left Ireland 200 years ago.

But people have lived here for over 12,000 years.

And that's where we finally have caught up with carbon dating and archeology.

This isn't like we think this is scientifically proven.

The Haida people, which are the indigenous people, on an island off the north coast of B.C.

the carbon dating has placed them there in the same spot they are now for thousand years.

So, yeah, I, I love this country, but I also, I Thought, wow, what an opportunity as a storyteller to kind of bring a different narrative to this trail than just like, celebrating colonialism.

You know, let's celebrate far deeper when we talk about a trail that connects us all and make it something that honors the ancestors of this land.

So before I left, I went and asked an elder in Haida Gwaii, actually, because I just so happened to be there for a film festival.

Yeah.

To ask an indigenous elder how I might honor the ancestors as I cross the land.

And so I met this man named Vern Williams.

He is a traditional knowledge expert.

He gifted me his eagle feather, which he used in ceremony.

I'm a stranger to this man.

He gifts me the thing that is the most important to him in his life.

So right away, I have an incredible amount of reverence for this feather because I realized the gift that it is.

Yeah.

But I'm also like, oh, my gosh, how am I going to look after this fragile on this very rugged, crazy journey?

Like, I don't even know how I'm going to look after myself, let alone this fragile feather.

But anyway, little did I know that actually that feather would have a profound impact on the shape of my journey.

You know, I guess that's one of the lessons, Matt, from the journey, which is that our life, our journeys, are shaped by what we carry in our heart.

Yeah.

Getting this feather and carrying it on the journey and caring for it every day on the journey, the feather shaped my journey.

And I ended up spending time in quite a few different Indigenous communities across Canada as I traveled across it.

And we have many first nations nations here in Canada, and I probably spent time in about 15, 16 communities on the trails than much more, and just going in and listening and learning and sometimes participating in some ceremonies that made it much more than just an adventure film.

It made it a reconciliation journey as well.

And it's interesting because while I was on the trail, you know, there's a change of government in Canada, and when that happened, there was a prioritizing of Indigenous rights in this country.

And I was.

I could see it visibly.

The impact of that kind of recognition was having on these communities where traditionally in my lifetime, as a result of things that happened before I was born, you know, they were high rates of addiction, et cetera.

All of a sudden, I was seeing this rebirth of cultures.

Yeah.

Like, and self respect and self esteem coming from kids wanting to learn the old songs and the dance and the ceremonies and.

And it was beautiful to see.

I mean, how just this acknowledgement.

Yeah.

Land Rights as well as murder.

The missing Aboriginal woman in this country.

How the government acknowledging that had a profound healing impact and a shift and communities as I cross them.

So we hear this word a lot in Canada.

Reconciliation.

I'm sure you a little bit in Australia as well.

Absolutely.

Stories, really.

And I want to emphasize that you can be proud of your country as an Australian and still in your heart want to honor the ancestry that comes the country that you have today.

Right.

It's like tree and its deepest roots, you know.

And actually, the feather, as I said, did shape the journey.

About a year after I left on the journey, that man, Vern Williams, had a granddaughter named Lillian Hope.

And I knew the day she was born, a year into the journey, that if I survived and the Feathers survived, that the journey would not end at mile zero and at the end of the trail, that the journey would end when I returned to the island of Haida.

Gwaii.

Yep.

And gifted the feather her grandfather had given me to the granddaughter to Lillian.

So.

And that's in fact what I was able to do.

Incredible.

Absolutely incredible.

And I mean, you just mentioned this before a little bit, but, you know, 500 days in the Wild, it's not your typical travel film.

It feels very sacred and meditative.

And given you filmed it mostly by yourself, we're right there with you.

I can't even begin to imagine how you even managed to do that, aside with coping with what's actually going on around you.

But can you kind of walk us through the sort of deeper layers of what this journey became for you?

Three months into the journey, I'm greeted on the shore by the Grand Chief of the People.

And the Mi' Kmaq people are the first nation people on the Atlantic coast of both the United States and Canada.

Anyway, first thing they'll tell you is he was lost.

Anyway, the Mi' Kmaq people, so the grand chief, you know, comes and meets me after my first 40 day paddle around a large inland sea called the Border, you know, and I think I'm traveling the old way because I am not using a motor.

I'm using like, you know, human power canoe, snowshoeing in the winter, you know, hiking and then mountain bike riding.

And he's like, you know, I learned after spending a few days in the community again listening and learning, oh, no, the old way is not that at all.

For them, the old way isn't how I'm traveling.

It's what I'm carrying in my heart.

As I travel, it comes back to the heart.

And so I was, you know, I was told with every step on the land to say, the earth is sacred.

The earth is sacred.

And with my paddle in the water, the water is sacred.

The water is sacred.

And that if I did that, I would be safe on my journey.

And honestly, Matt, I did not need my logical mind to explain this to me.

I accept this information.

And because a lot of this journey is confronting personal fear.

I mean, I'm a woman in a tent at night.

There's no lock, door.

You know, I.

That changed my journey.

And so every time I would get afraid at night or in the woods, I would.

The earth is sacred.

The earth is sacred.

Yeah.

And thing on the water, when things.

Whenever I would get afraid, I would immediately like, the water is sacred.

I would refocus my mind on saying this over and over again.

By focusing my mind on that, I was taking my mind away from the fear.

Instead of being afraid of something I was connecting to, something I was connecting with.

And, you know, I think that moment on Lake Superior, that realization that humans are just 0.01% of all life on Earth, so when we are out in nature for long periods of time, we really do start connecting to the web of life.

And it is a very humbling experience.

And you feel very fragile out there.

I thought I would be alone, but I felt more connected to life than I ever had.

I felt this very visceral connection to the web of life.

There was a butterfly, a dragonfly or moose or bear or deer or sea otters and river otters and seals and whales and everything, and eagle birds, winged ones.

I mean, all of it.

You really just start connecting.

And I would say, I mean, you know, so for me, and I think for a lot of people, yeah, like, there is this reverence for nature.

And what is sacred is what sustains life, and water sustains life.

So I guess you could say scared sacred, but definitely made it a very spiritual journey for me.

It's where I went when I was afraid.

Yeah.

So that essentially a mantra really, isn't it?

I've talked to a lot of other people, especially other paddlers, people that have done long journeys on the water, have encountered similar situations as I do, where you have, you know, suddenly there's no shoreline and day becomes night.

You find yourself out there.

It's pretty scary.

Yeah.

And we all had different ways of dealing with it.

Some would sing a song, some would count strokes.

So people have their way.

For me, certainly my way was.

Was by taking in the information that was being shared with me.

The Wisdom that was being shared with me, honoring that and listening to it and weaving it into my experience.

But it's always.

All my films have always had this interplay of indigenous people and non indigenous people.

On Everest, of course, the Sherpas are indigenous and all the climate come from around the world and the mountain is sacred to them.

Nature, reverence, it's this animism that exists in indigenous cultures where, yeah, it's.

It's probably the oldest form of spirituality we have in the human race, really.

And that is having reverence for nature and reverence for that, the part of this web of life that we are a part of and responsibility towards it as well, you know, so all those things are interconnected.

I mean, checking out to check in.

When I was doing my film on Everest, I read this book by Reinhold Messner, who was the first man to summit Everest without oxygen.

And there was a quote that he used, which is, I climb high to go deep inside.

And for me, checking out, to check in was just that.

It was, you know, to leave my life.

And to all the masks and all the people that you, you know, we all do it a little bit when we're around people.

We all want to be liked.

We want to make those connections.

And we wear certain masks, masks of being polite when we don't really feel that way, you know, and they serve a good function in our lives.

But when you're away like that, again, all of that just drops away.

There's no one to perform for solitude reveals what a mirror cannot get to know yourself.

Was that, do you think the biggest thing that surprised you about the whole journey was that everything revealing itself for.

Sure, in so many ways, the journey is always about understanding.

I'm also just.

I have an immense amount of gratitude for just surviving.

I can't believe that in those six years I was never injured.

I mean, I had lots of bruises, lots of sore this, sore that, and I never got sick.

Yep.

I have an immense amount of gratitude, you know, and it was sobering.

Year 5 when I did that paddle and up to the Arctic, and the man in front of me was eaten by a grizzly bear and the man behind me drowned.

All within two weeks.

Both of whom were also artists out there, had made decisions, especially the younger guy had sold his car, quit his job.

He wanted to make a documentary on climate change, you know, and he only out there a month and he drowned just five months behind me, paddling the same lake, you know.

Yeah.

So it's sobering also.

It's like you know, I know that there was some good decision making on my behalf but there's also this luck thing.

You certainly don't finish a journey like this with any kind of ego.

It really is quite humbling and you just have an immense amount of gratitude for the kindness and for the safety really that I was, that I was able to film.

I mean I filmed over 800 hours.

Don't do that.

Well, you definitely had some hair raising moments to say the least.

I have seen the film and knowing viewers in Australia are going to get to see it very soon as well.

I was lucky enough to see it on an Air Canada flight flying over to Canada and yeah, I absolutely was blown away.

Just how incredible and just mind blowing to be honest.

But some of the encounters that you do have, I mean I just think I would have probably given up for.

Honestly I find myself sometimes in, in you know I was in LA for theatrical release last year to qual Oscar qualify the film and you know you're 12 lane to traffic going nowhere management issues and you're thinking really no, the worst day on the trail.

I don't think match this right now.

This is living hell.

Interesting perspective.

Yeah.

Reality is an interpretation.

You know, no matter what you choose, there's gonna be good days and bad days.

But at least when you lean into the things you really enjoy, you've got that half, you got those half.

That half of it happening.

Yeah, for sure.

We've worked across, you know, journalism, filmmaking, environmental activism.

How did this project differ from anything you've done before, I mean aside from the time?

Well, first of all I'm a subject in my film which is the first time I've been a subject in my work.

My background's in photojournalism and then sort of fine art photography and then yeah documentary filmmaking and then writing the books and a of public speaking.

But I'm not, I've never put myself in my work.

It was something I was quite uncomfortable with.

I wasn't doing those selfie talk conversations.

In fact, when I got into the edit room with the editor, she's like where the bleep bleep, bleep are you?

I got a lot of great moose, I got a lot of this, a lot of that.

But I ain't finding you sister.

And like you're like the main character and so she had to scratch pretty deep.

I mean I just wasn't.

When you hear the narration in the film, a lot of that narration is what I was doing.

I would point my phone or my audio you know, whatever camera out at, whatever I was looking at, and then I would talk behind it.

My feelings, rather than talking to the camera, I was just, yeah, talking.

And so that informed a lot of that, gave the narrative a lot of structure.

That's why it feels so organic to the film.

Because frankly, it really is quite organic to the film.

We did some pickup lines and stuff, which we also, myself and the editor went off into the woods so that we could match the ambient on that.

But it came from the recordings that I did out there.

Yeah.

So it's quite authentic, I guess you could say.

And I mean, I've always been a cinema verite documentary filmmaker, which basically means instead of going out with a story that you're gonna like, you know, you've got your little script and now you're gonna go shoot this story.

I immerse myself in Everest and the Arctic.

And of course, in 500 days in the Wild.

The thing that is the same is I am living and breathing the story 24 hours a day until it's done.

And during production anyway, I am like, when I'm on Everest, I'm there at 18,000ft in my tent.

I'm like breathing the thin air.

I'm eating, I'm doing, I'm going through everything the climbers are going through to some extent anyway, I'm experiencing while making the film.

Same with the Arctic.

I embedded myself on a patrol of seven men.

I had to become a part of that patrol.

That's kind of my style of making things.

It's very rooted in that kind of experience.

Like a cat in the window kind of thing, you know?

Yeah.

Just.

Just trying to think of the logistics of.

Of actually just filming that on the fly.

The hard part was the logistics, of course, was I would have to be able to charge.

I could charge by solar panel, two of my.

Three of my cameras, but my DSO could not.

No, sure.

And very heavy.

Yeah.

And so I had six three hour batteries and you know, and that would give me 18 hours of filming on that camera.

Plus I had the other cameras, which were infinite, like as far as I could, like I could recharge them.

So every time I got resupplied, they would rent a car with one or had a car with one of those battery chargers.

So we could.

They'd meet me, resupply the food.

We usually have to spend a couple days together, like get the canoe or figure out the bike or whatever, backpack, whatever that was going on, and back up all the footage onto two drives.

Not just one, but Onto two, two portable drives and then those were shipped to an editor in Toronto.

For the six years I was out there, who kind of collated it and at least put it into one, kept it and put it onto a drive, to a larger drive.

So it was, the logistics were like, was a massive thing.

But I never left on day one with a plan for the six years.

Well, first of all, I never could have dreamed that I would have spent six years doing this.

But I knew when I went out it was 487 land and water trails I had to do.

And the first one was 888km long.

I focused on that.

Yep.

And when I'm like, oh, it looks like I'm going to live through this, like I haven't gotten myself in any way permanently injured.

And so now I'll start thinking in the last couple two weeks out there, oh, I gotta start thinking about that canoe.

And that's gonna be like almost a 400 kilometer paddle.

And then to the next thing and stayed quite grounded in that.

And you know, that was my superpower.

I think if commit to planning as I've spoken to a lot of people who do like long adventures do, of course, the more time and energy you spend on the plan, the more rigidly attached you are to the plan.

Yeah, the capacity to adapt is absolutely crucial for the success of a journey of this length.

I can't control nature, so it's impossible for me to know what day I'm going to be at, what location.

It will all depend on the weather, on the terrain.

I have to stay alive.

That becomes the priority.

You know, oddly, doing this crazy extreme thing required crazy extreme self care.

You know, you can't cheat the process.

You can't.

I won't eat breakfast.

Oh, I won't eat lunch.

I'll just keep going.

That's when you're going to make irrational bad decisions.

You don't measure your success by how many miles did I go today?

You know, it's measured.

Well for me it was measured by like how much filming did I do, how much writing did I do?

But also like did I do all the things I needed to do to look after myself?

Is my equipment in good working order?

Does anything need my attention?

Attention?

Do I need to take off and just work on my mountain bike for a day or sew some buttons or fix some strap or.

Because the minute you start letting the small things slide, self care slide, then the probability of something happening and going bad for you goes up incrementally.

And also that Those little things kind of can somehow have a domino effect where one little bad thing happens.

But because you haven't dealt with all this other stuff, it immediately goes.

And suddenly in a life death situation, I mean, there's that scene when I get lost in the forest when the hunters come and save the day.

But I'm terrified, of course, because I'm already afraid, right?

I'm afraid because I'm lost.

I'm in a bad storm.

And here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

I always carried a paper map as well as an app, right?

I went old school and new school, right?

Like here's my compass, here's my paper map for this section, and then here's this digital app that works on a satellite.

So even if there's no service, it will show me my.in relation to where this trail is supposed to be.

So, you know, and I'm in that bad storm and my digital devices are not working because they've all gotten wet.

So they're useless to me.

And the paper map, which I knew I should have laminated and didn't, immediately became pip in the rain.

So here's an example of not like, of not proper preparation for that and how these things can kind of, you know, go, go quickly downhill.

So suddenly I'm lost.

I have no means of communication.

I have no mapping, I have no nothing.

So I can't even find my way.

All I can do is head up this big hill to the highest point and hope I can find a place to set up my tent in a really bad storm.

So then those guys show up and they're.

Because they're out hunting and they're on their way back to their hunting cabin when they see tracks and followed them to find me, like all the way up in the middle of nowhere by myself.

And you think I should have been ecstatic, right?

I mean, I'm this, I'm in such bad situation.

But here's the lesson, right?

Because I'm so afraid.

I'm afraid of them.

And of course I'm a woman and they're like in their hunting gear and it's dark and they've got guns and rum.

But they were great men.

Of course I had to trust them.

I had no choice.

I went back, they treated me exceptionally well, made me deer meat, I smoked a cigar and we, we got me, you know, and they got me back on the trail where I needed to be.

Incredible.

So true of everything.

Like, we watch the news and we get all freaked out by A culture or a country or this or that.

And everything we, we experience then is through this lens of fear.

Right.

And so it's, it's, it's.

We all, I do it, we all do it.

It's a, it's, I guess an Achilles heel in, in our makeup because like the, the safety of each person needs to be ascertained one at a time.

Like you've got to, you know, virginity before passing judgment, but we all pass judgment before we even the person.

So I think I'm a pretty progressive, hip chick, but caught myself my own, you know, in my own kind of preconceived ideas of what safety is and you know, and all the men I met on this journey treated me kindly, treated me with respect and were amazing, like brothers and friends to me out there.

So, yeah, it was really great.

It was very healing that way for me.

Beautiful.

Since the documentary launched, what's the feedback been like from at large, from Canadians, from First nations community?

Wow, Matt.

Well, you make, when you're a documentary filmmaker, you can't measure your success by how much money you're making an hour or you'll, you'll, you won't have a very good self esteem.

But you do measure your success by how your work impacts people.

And this film has impacted people more than any other film I've ever made in my life by tenfold.

In Canada, it's been number one on, you know, Paramount plus bought it in Canada and it's been number one for over a year.

It had super successful theatrical release.

I get emails every day.

Yeah, from Air Canada.

Much like yourself, Matt, people see the film on Air Canada and will send me an email from like 38,000ft or wherever.

They don't even wait till they land.

Get on the WI fi, send me a note to let me know that they've just watched this film and how much it has impacted them.

And it's so interesting because it's like some people just like, oh, I had a pen and paper and I was writing down all these things that you said or just that they know when they, you know, they can, when they go into the, on their walks or into the woods, on the trails that they are going to try to connect to nature in that reverent way.

In terms of like seeing like the animals as sacred and all life is sacred.

Take credit for that.

I mean, all I did was listen to the lessons as I was taught them and because of the way the film is, you know, the story is filmed, everybody's learning those things.

As I learned those things on the journey.

And those are old teachings, and they're not my teachings.

They're teachings that come through all kinds of people that I meet along the way.

But it's wonderful to see how those teachings have not only changed my life, but how they've landed and the impact they have had on other people.

And I think people also right now, just to be reminded that, you know, most of the people on Earth are really kind people, but you see things happen.

People do need to be informed.

There's a reason why we do.

But it's out of balance, of course.

And as a result of that, people are very fearful, more fearful than they need to be of each other.

So I think people find a certain amount of hope in the film.

Yeah.

In the kindness of the people that you constantly see me interacting with.

I also think that it's an unconventional adventure story.

I am not an extreme athlete.

When I start, I am failing camping school so badly, my shoes are coming off.

I went through 5, 10 in the first few months.

Poles are breaking, windows are blowing out.

One of them I just lost because I didn't tie it on tight enough.

I mean, it's pretty embarrassing.

I mean, every.

You know, but I stick with it and I get.

Become a much more competent everything.

So winter camping, all of it.

And so I think people get to see that part too, which usually when we watch these extreme films, they're the.

The characters are unex.

I mean, we're.

We're in awe of them because of their likability at something.

But clearly, you know, I think most people could say, I'm not sure I want to do it.

But I mean, if she can do it, clearly, I mean, I could.

And then just the beauty, it's just spectacular.

I've been a photographer for a long time.

There's a beautiful weave in this film of quiet moments that you can sit with and.

And action and adventure and.

And time to sort of some deeper kind of reflections.

And so, you know, when you shoot 800 hours, it affords you the ability to pull some pretty spectacular shots out of your work.

People have also just let me know just like, how they really want to see it on a big screen now.

Yeah, it feels very much like the antidote to the world.

It's slow travel at its absolute best.

It's the most amazing advertisement, let's face it, for Canada, because you get to see so much of the country and you just.

You get to encounter so many different communities and the diversity of nature and just.

Oh, it's just.

Yeah, it's.

It's incredible.

I mean, we're.

We're going tick, tick, tick, tick, tick here on the list of all the great things about visiting a country.

Well, it's open spaces, open minds and open hearts.

Right.

We have the same afflictions everyone else does in our cities, you know, but by and large, once you leave the cities, people are always afraid of nature.

But you're.

It's safe out there.

Sure is.

Now, let's just move on to our travel professional audience.

Canada is a very, very popular country for Australians to travel to.

What advice would you give travel professionals in helping them connect clients with sort of Canada's deeper beauty?

That's a great question, Matt.

I mean, you know, first of all, every province has a tourism board.

I would, I would tell you, look at, at the country of Canada and, you know, there's obviously, Quebec is a huge French influence.

You can go into areas of Quebec like Bay St. Paul, you know, where, you know, you have the art and the microbreweries and white whales and.

And you have this very sort of Parisian culture.

You know, it's.

It's quite fascinating.

I would start there.

I would also, you know, pursue indigenous tourism in this country.

You.

You can have some really wild and unique experiences, whether it's dog sledding in the Yukon and watching the northern lights and sleeping in, like, these glass igloos at night.

You can go out on a horseback riding adventure in Saskatchewan with the indigenous communities in the Capel Valley.

You can, you know, where you're camping in fields and watching, like, herds of buffalo.

I mean, there's just like a diversity of experiences out there.

And the indigenous communities now are very open to receiving guests who want these experiences.

And also because they want to share their culture, they want to share the stories of the land.

And it's a way of building kinship.

Right.

And understanding between people.

So, yeah, I would definitely highly recommend doing that as well.

You know, a lot of travelers, it goes against everything you've said.

They've got to get it for the gram, and we've got the picture, and that's all great.

We move on.

But how can we sort of guide people to move beyond that to something a bit more longer lasting and meaningful in terms of how we travel?

Well, exactly.

It's about looking for experiences.

Right.

And opportunities to learn while you're at it.

I mean, I think the TransCanada Trail is a perfect example where it's made up now of over 600 trails.

So you can just choose one you know, you can say, let's go do a bike ride in B.C.

you can go almost 800 km on an old rail line and stop at vineyards, and then you could come back every year and do another trail in another province.

Right.

So I think it's a great way of kind of coming into a country and climatizing.

And I think if I show anything, you know, it's slow travel.

It's always, you know, it's not about how far you go, it isn't about the fastest way, and it's not always about the easiest way.

It's about finding the most meaningful way.

Yeah.

And that.

Something you got to check in with yourself, because I'm.

Everybody's got their own idea.

Meaningful way.

But, you know, I think if you bring that sensibility to the way you travel, the most meaningful way for me to go and have this experience.

Right.

There's a lot of space here.

You know, it's easy.

You can drop out, you know, you really can.

And you can go and experience the wilderness, you know, in a way that I'm not sure you can still do in very many places.

Very true, very true.

Two words I love about the way you approached all of your travel was listening and then connecting.

Because I think so much of travel, often we go to these places and we bring our lives with us and we're talking, but are we really listening?

Are we really connecting with actually what's going on around us?

And you illustrate that so beautifully in every respect, whether it's with nature or with first nations communities.

It's taking a step back and actually going, hey, hang on.

I'm a visitor to this place, and I've come here to listen and learn.

Yeah, absolutely.

I brought that sensibility to everything because, well, when I left, I had a lot to learn, right?

From like.

Oh, like how to camp, apparently.

But anyway, yeah, no, it was a really.

It's a wonderful way to experience the world and just to realize again, with the indigenous communities, too, you know, you're reminded that there are many different ways of perceiving reality.

There's.

I was blown away just by, you know, how really the difference in sort of Western, contemporary, Western thought and an indigenous thought is this idea of being with something instead of being on something.

And it's just one little word.

But, wow, what a profound difference that one word makes.

Right.

And also things like being reminded that, you know, for all of our differences, there is one thing that we all share, and that is every single living human being on the Earth right now is an ancestor to Tom, you know, and that with the responsibility of making sure there is clean water and clean air for people in the future, which means we need to keep some trees around and we need to start treating our rivers like living beings.

We need to protect these sacred waters, because with no water, there is no life, not only for, but for the other 99.9% of life forms that we're sharing the earth with also need the water.

Well, that's a very profound way to close out our conversation today.

And I know you're excited to share before we finish that the documentary is actually movie documentary is actually coming to Australia.

Yes.

As yet, we haven't been able to see it yet on Australian screens other than on an Air Canada flight.

So give us a bit of detail on that.

Sure.

Matt.

Well, I mean, the ink isn't dry yet, but I am working distribution in Australia right now.

We're just trying to sign a contract, but we're talking about doing 20 screenings in Australia.

We were looking at late October.

It might be that we do some festivals in late October and that we start the theatrical release a little bit later than that.

But I'm hoping to have something up on the website, which is 500daysinthewild.com we're going to put a whole new section up just for Australia.

And as.

As the dates get confirmed, they'll all go up on there.

In the meantime, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, connect to the project on Instagram at 500days in the Wild or at Danne Whalen Photos, because I'm looking to build audience, you know, and I find that that's just been a great way of sharing in a grassroots way.

Like, hey, okay, we're coming.

We're coming to your town.

And when you know people and they can share it with friends, that's usually the way indie films kind of get around, is through word of mouth.

And just like you, Matt, seeing the film, feeling moved by it, and here we are having conversation.

So that's kind of the way things get out.

But, yeah, so I'm excited.

And Australia will be the first country that has purchased the film outside of Canada.

So I'm really excited and I'm coming back.

I'll be there in October and I will be personally attending, like, 20 event screenings.

I know many of our listeners will be looking forward to meeting you in person.

Great.

Well, again, thank you so much, Diane, for our conversation today.

It's just been amazing.

I've learned so much.

Yeah, I can't wait to meet you in person when you do come over here.

And again, congratulations on just an incredible project and a very much needed one right now is how it feels in the world too.

So wishing you all the very best with it and can't wait to connect with you again very soon.

Okay?

Right on.

Take care.

Diane's story reminds us that travel isn't just about moving through landscapes, it's about moving through moments of meaning.

Her story calls us to slow down, reconnect with nature and community and remember that finding a sense of belonging is about the journey, not the destination.

Thanks so much for listening today.

Don't forget to check the show notes for useful links, downloads and more information on today's episode.

Whether you're a travel professional, a traveller or simply a curious listener, you'll find all the resources you need to help you dive deeper into the hearts of Canada.

Until next time, safe travels.