VICARIOUS | Featured Road: Route 326, Nova Scotia

Featured Road

Route 326, Nova Scotia

An Epic Canadian Drive

Story | Matthew Guy

We get it. You live in a city for a multitude of reasons, all of them good ones. It’s convenient and that new coffee place is amazing... but traffc is terrible, the downtown is perpetually under construction, and drivers generally exhibit a dangerous mix of apathy and aggression. Suddenly, your decision to purchase a fine-handling sports car seems rather dim.

Nevermind all that. From one coast to the other, Canada has a multitude of treasures and, as a gearhead, the roster of fantastic roads across our land is near the top of your author’s list of reasons to love The Great White North.

Some drives and their roads are well known to all, leading them to be clogged with tour buses and meandering beige sedans clogging the macadam like deep-fried fish clogs your author’s arteries. Our favourite drives are found on the roads nobody knows about, ones which are twisty and fun but more deserted than a government offce after five o’clock.

On a map, the 19-kilometre stretch of Nova Scotian tarmac between Earltown and Brule on the north shore of Nova Scotia doesn’t look like anything special. But, as we learned in kindergarten, we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover—and we definitely shouldn’t judge a road by the line it traces on Google Maps.

“ Our favourite drives are found on the roads nobody knows about.”

At the base of Route 326 stands the sharpest and most nostalgic general store this side of a Disney movie. Stop here at Earltown General to load up on locally-made snacks for the humans on your trip while fueling your car with a drop of go-juice from the vintage gasoline pump sittng outside.

Leaving the shop and heading north, Route 326 opens with a series of twisting corners seemingly designed to test the handling of anything with a set of wheels. New pavement laid within the last couple of years assures drivers that the road surface will be free of the scars and pockmarks which define most rural roads in the Maritimes. Watch for the scattered deer and other wildlife.

Along the way, you’ll find a cadre of well-kept and neatas-a-pin farmhouses. The final few kilometres of the road become straighter than an outstretched bullwhip, with gentle undulations which give a whoop-de-do roller coaster feel just before the route ends at a threeway stop in the tiny hamlet of Brule. Hang a left and travel a few minutes into the spellcheck-vexing town of Tatamagouche, home to one of the best microbreweries on the East Coast.

The ales and lagers from TataBrew are certified organic and unpasteurized, earning them the title of 2018 Atlantic Canadian Brewery of the Year. Pick up a growler of North Shore Lager or Deception Bay IPA for home or stay awhile and enjoy the local music.

From Tatamagouche, there are a couple of routes back to Earltown... but we know which one we’d choose. Route 326, with its fantastic mix of straightaways and twisty bits, is one Epic Canadian Drive.