Pilgrimage Stories From Up and Down the Staircase

“An unwritten contract so ancient it predates the law”: Come with me to Nuuksio park in Finland to learn how jokamiehenoikeus—"everyperson's right—connects Finns to forests, fauna, and foraging, whether or not they own land.

Inconceivable! Pilgrimaging near Castleton and Higger Tor, in England's Peaks District, in search of scenes from the cult-classic "The Princess Bride."

Welcome back for more stories - and audio - from our trek on the North-West Mounted Police Patrol Trail on Treaty Four territory. We're on the path of Everett Baker, talking about everything from the Desert Mothers to walking with one's Ancestors!

Whether you know it as the North-West Mounted Police Patrol Trail, the Métis Traders' Road, or the Wood Mountain to Cypress Hills Trek, it's a pilgrimage back in history and across Treaty Four territory.

Camino pilgrims inevitably feel the itch to return to the high peaks of the Pyrenees and the windswept trails of northern Spain. I went back too - this time with mic and camera.

It all started when I was called into the office of a powerhouse academic who was a former nun. "You're going on the Camino and taking students with you," she told me. "Why me?" I asked. Later, in Spain, I sometimes asked myself the same question.

The saint behind the Whithorn Way is lost in the shadows of history. As we walked toward Ninian's Candida Casa, the "House at the Edge of the Earth," we caught glimpses of the saint in the moors and mists of Galloway.

On our foot-path between Old Montreal and Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, we and our students discovered much about the Kanien'ke:ha, the inner city, and ourselves.

Did my walk with locals along a pilgrimage in Iceland in 2016 turn out to be a "pilgrimage fail"? I check back with one of my Icelandic fellow walkers to find out.

I walked from Dovre to Trondheim with five other Canadians in 2013. On the path, I spoke with Dr Allen Jorgenson about Saint Olav, the trail, and being Scandi-Canadian.

After walking barefoot across the ocean floor to Holy Island, I met Kate Tristram, who set me straight on how Cuthbert would have arrived in the seventh century!

I didn't know Clare when I met her on the St Cuthbert Way between Melrose Scotland and Holy Island. But she knew she was waiting for me.

There's no Saint Olav anymore at the end of the long walk to Trondheim, but given how stunningly gorgeous the plateaus, mountains, and valleys are, did our group of Canadian walkers care?