Some people said that we were crazy when we told them about our plans to embark on a month-long tent camping trip in Canada. Especially our friends in Mexico, whom we waved goodbye to just before boarding a plane up north. They happened to be Canadians too, but had left their home country more than a decade ago to escape the cold. We had just been enjoying several weeks of warm Mexican weather together in their comfortable guesthouse. Why on earth would we want to exchange this for Canadian weather? In a tent for **** sake?
Our answer is simple: Because that is what we do. We’ve come to the conclusion that our travels are not about the destination a long time ago. We travel for the journey, for the experiences, and for the people we meet along the way. Most of our best stories did not happen at a certain place, but along the road to get there. To quote Shannon L. Alder: “Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone“. Camping with a tent in Canada sounded uncomfortable enough for us to get a good dose of life.
And then we lived in a tent
It wasn’t exactly our own idea though. Months earlier, we had been contacted by the Belgian company Canvascamp which sells, as the name suggests, tents made out of canvas. They wanted us to test out one of their tents. As soon as we had a look at their website, the smell of adventure started tickling our noses. We could see ourselves opening the doors of such a tent in the morning and being surrounded by astonishing nature. The kind of nature you find in… Canada.
We had been in Canada years ago and the wild nature had always been our strongest memory. If one of those tents was looking for a new home, it had to be there. But Canada is not exactly a very affordable country. Even when you live in a tent, you still need to pay for food, campsites, and transportation. The pieces of our financial puzzle magically fell into place when we asked Orbit Car Hire, our favourite car hire website, whether they would be interested in sponsoring a part of this trip. And guess what, they had just branched out to Canada.
A touch of Canadian weather
It was late in the afternoon when we touched ground at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. We picked up our rental car and drove straight to Bare Oaks Family Naturist Park. We waved at the other guests, all wandering around in their birthday suits, and memories of our last visit started to reappear. Which were quickly blown away by a cold wind once we opened our car doors. Was it because we had spent so much time in warm climates lately? Had we lost all resistance to colder weather? The only thing we could think at that moment was “Where are my jeans and jacket?”.
Bare Oaks is one of few naturist resorts in the world that maintains quite a strict nude obligatory policy. When the weather permits, of course, which it apparently did when we looked at the others. But not to us. The next day a cold morning sun woke us up and we figured that now clothes were definitely acceptable. We walked a trail towards the bistro, passing by the lake, right in time to see a couple about our age have their morning skinny dip. At that moment we realised that our comfort zone maybe wasn’t such a bad place after all.
The Sunward microclimate
The title of the first YouTube video in our Canada series, “We Tried Naturism in the World’s Coldest Country“, wasn’t a complete lie. Canada is actually the 3rd coldest country in the world, but since Antarctica and Russia were not particularly an option, Canada was the coldest country we could get to. Not that the Canadian climate had been part of this plan or something we had considered during the planning of this trip. Maybe for the better or we may have never left Mexico.
The first morning we woke up at Sunward Naturist Park was also the first one when we didn’t feel the urge to get immediately back into our sleeping bags. It wasn’t Mexican warm, not even Belgian warm, but we did not feel as if we were about to freeze to death. To this day, we’re still unsure whether we had finally started to adjust or if Sunward has its own microclimate. The most probable reason though was that we may just have been distracted from the cold.
The lake at Sunward had been popping up in our visions about this trip during the last months. To us, this is the true Canada. A huge lake in a huge forest with a small rustic naturist campsite on its shore. A place where wifi and electricity don’t exist and where running water had just been invented a handful of years before. We took a few steps back, looked at our tent next to the lake and realised that it was exactly as we had dreamt it. It could have been any temperature, we couldn’t care less.
We had to cheat
Paulo Coelho said that when you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. But he doesn’t mention what happens next. The way we see it, the universe said: “Okay kids, you got your picture-perfect tent spot in Canada, now I’m going to mess with you a little“. After a couple of sunny days in Sunward it just wouldn’t stop raining and the temperatures took a huge drop. Day and night.
We had borrowed very thick sleeping bags from a friend that kept us warm even when night temperatures started moving dangerously towards the freezing point, but this wasn’t fun anymore. As soon as the sun set, we had to go to bed and could only come out when it was almost noon. Tenting may have seemed the perfect way to experience Canada, but hiding in our sleeping bags was not exactly the experience we had in mind.
In Europe, we don’t really have motels, we only know them from the movies. In reality, they look exactly the same as on TV and after our first night in such a motel, we felt kinda relieved that we hadn’t been murdered. But more than that, we felt warm and awake again. A couple of days in a real bed in a heated room were enough to make us look forward to camping again.
Lakeside nude beaches
If you know a bit of geography, it probably comes as a surprise that Ontario has nude beaches. Yes, the province has a long coastline at the Hudson Bay, but that area is probably what puts Canada in the top three of the coldest countries in the world. What we tend to forget though are the big lakes.
Weeks earlier, we already had the chance to visit Hanlan’s Point, Toronto’s famous lakeside nude beach. Now we were on a ferry crossing Lake Huron, a lake twice the size of our home country Belgium, on our way to Lake Erie which is one of the smaller lakes but still borders with 4 states in the USA. These were our last days in our tent and we wanted to take it to Port Burwell. We had received an inside tip about a private nude beach right next to the provincial park and figured that this could be the perfect last stop.
It was actually hot when we were lying naked on the shore of the lake, but neither of us considered skinny dipping an option. Several hours before sunset we returned to our campsite to light one last campfire, the only thing that could extend bedtime until after 8 pm. We thought back about the past weeks. We had felt cold, very cold, but we had also felt alive. And that’s why we will happily do it all over again.
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I live in Alaska, so can understand that weather quite well. Unfortunately, nudity is really frowned upon here, and that has nothing to do with the weather. It is a total shame that the majority of places in this world make it illegal to even be nude on your own porch or in your yard if others can see you! Living where there are nudist resorts is nice, but expensive, and just can’t come close to the freedom of being able to be nude in one’s everyday life! But, I am so glad that you are able to find places where you can be nude and be nude around others. I am enjoying hearing about your travels.
Yeah, we imagine that normalising nudity works a bit better in places that have the climate for it
Recently came across your IG and your website and from everything ive seen all i see is a couple of hypocrite’s you say life is better without clothes and you want to make the world a more nude friendly place to live yet all we see in your photos is you doing your best to keep yourself covered, naturist i’ve seen and met dont do that, there proud of who and what they are and there not afraid to put themselves out there, then i see you preaching about how great it is living without clothes but, then you’re either to afraid or to ashamed to let it all hang out on ANY social media platform but, yet you call yourself naturist unless your the type of naturist who’s actually ashamed of their bodies if so, then you can’t really call yourself naturist can you and i’ve seen your blog talking about why you dont do full nude and all i see is a bunch of excuses the biggest one being time not having time to do two sets of photos but the way i see it it takes a lot of time to plan out the shots you take to make sure nothing is showing but it takes no time whatsoever to point a camera and click for just a random photo which, also looks more natural because it is it wasn’t planned so it is natural and honestly i dont think people are wanting to see whole photo sets of you actually doing what you say you’re doing just an occasional pic to prove that you’re not ashamed of who and what you say you are cause honestly all i see when i look at your photos is you doing something hollywood has been doing in there movies for years and thats using fancy camera angles and strategically placed objects to give the illusion of nudity but thats all it is, an illusion so, how bout you put your money where your mouth is and stop preaching about it and just do it, unless you really are either afraid or ashamed but, then you really can’t call yourself naturist now can you because true naturist are proud of what they are and there not afraid to show it, all i’m saying is you’re the only ones i’ve ever seen who obviously are afraid to really put themselves out there and i could care less about the nudity you can turn on the tv any day of the week and see more then what you show, its the principal of it, you preach about it but then you’re afraid to do it yourself now what kind of a message are you really sending out with that, that it’s ok to take your clothes off as long as you keep yourself hidden whatever, i’m done here i’m sure i’ll get some slack for this might even get banned but i dont really care wouldn’t be the first time and won’t be the last never been one to keep my mouth shut if i see something wrong and this, what you’re doing is just plain wrong anyway have a nice life or maybe i should say lie.
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I already have. just one last thing you say you want to normalize nudity except what you show is the same thing that can be seen on tv everyday ppl are already blind to it they barely notice it anymore you want to normalize nudity you’ve got to go all in 100% no fear no shame except on IG where I know you can’t but on a site made for naturist and even patreon I mean come on REALLY but I understand, fear and shame are hard to overcome I don’t understand it from a “naturist” being a lifelong one myself but OK whatever.
Hey Crystal, You came across Nick and Lins because they haven’t been banned from almost all social media because of overt nudity. If you want to get your message out you have to stay in view, cant do that if you are banned. they have published whole articles on this subject. Maybe you should keep your mouth shut until you have absorbed a bit more information about the subject you are criticizing.
And Nick and Lins keep on keeping on. It is too bad you didn’t get to Canada in season, there really is nothing better than enjoying the Canadian summer naked.
Thanks a lot for your support!
I can understand why Nick and Lins don’t show more nudity. They are trying to keep those clothed minded people from complaining about their nudity. Me personally, I feel that being nude without having to flaunt it is good. Everyone has their own way to being free and showing it. I just wish I had the funds to travel to nude places. I try to drive nude whenever I go somewhere. It’s the only freedom from clothes I get. That is other than in my house. I wish every state was more open to nudity and clothes freedom.
Thanks for your support. Nudity is a part of naturism, but we don’t think that it’s necessary to explicitly show naturism to make a point.
Nick and Lins have already explained repeatedly why they do not publish frontal nude pictures. They want to increase general acceptance of naturism by trying to reach those people that are not naturist.
Confronting non-naturists with fully frontal nude pictures to make naturism popular is like trowing spiders in someone’s face and hoping they will then start liking spiders. This usually does not work. Besides frontal nude pictures trigger too often reactions where the beauty of the pictured bodies are commented on and sometimes sexualised, which also does not help in popularising naturism.
Nick and Lins think from the outside in, not the other way around.
When we’re creating content, we always wonder if you can watch it on the train without having to fear that people around you who get a glimpse may think that you’re a pervert. It’s just a way of doing things and we don’t think that there’s a right or wrong way. Many others believe in showing explicit nudity to make their point. In the end, it’s probably the combination of all these different people and strategies that will do the job.
I too support your approach. You come off more as supportive of naturism than publishing self-gratifying exhibitionism.
Thanks a lot Mark!
Amen. but people on the train likely already think I’m a weirdo, I wear kilts most of the year, closest you can get to walking around nude without getting arrested (cant go commando at work though).
This sounds like a great yet challenging trip. I would love travel and be comfortable enough nude in as many places as you have been nude.