ELORA – An 8,000 km bike trip across Canada sounds like a big task but it’s just the kind of thing one Elora man does all time.
Ian Evans, originally from central England, has lived in Elora for nearly 22 years and has become known for going on all sorts of adventures.
The 65 year old has cycled twice through Australia, around Iceland’s coastline and climbed five of the seven summits — which refers to the tallest mountain in each of the seven continents.
At 58 he skied from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole as one of the oldest to ever do so.
“A lot of people pleasantly call me the lunatic around town,” Evans said, because that was the title of a documentary on his trek.
The most recent one was a four-month trip on his bicycle across Canada from the most westerly point to the most easterly, over this summer and into the fall.
He said sometimes people are surprised to hear about the adventures he takes at his age but he doesn’t consider himself to be remarkable.
“I don’t think about it that way at all actually. I think what I’m doing is nothing extraordinary, some people do, but it’s just the way I live my life,” Evans said. “I just plan these things and I go and do them and come back and say ‘that was pretty good, okay well cool, what should we do next?’”
This one was a bit different, he said, because his wife Liz travelled with him in a camper van with much of their equipment. On the expedition he said he contended with strong headwinds, heat waves and forest fires along the way.
Part of what compels him to do these treks is he likes the logistics and planning, picking something that sounds outrageous and breaking it down into a manageable trip. It’s also to challenge himself physically, but mostly mentally.
“Virtually all of it is mental, actually, and I really enjoy that and developed ways of coping with those extreme adventures and achieving things that seem unlikely,” Evans said.
There’s also a charity aspect to it, the recent bike trek raised nearly $10,000 for the Centre Wellington Community Foundation’s COVID-19 community response fund.
This is an organization he’s raised money for in previous treks and sees it as his way of giving back to the community rather than acting as a volunteer.
“For all the people that have really suffered from COVID, mentally, physically, financially, they’re getting support from this,” Evans said.
When not going on adventures, Evans works as a chartered accountant specializing in restructuring companies that are in financial trouble.
He is also a keynote speaker and founded the Elora Adventurers to bring in speakers to local events to discuss their own experiences.
“A lot of people that come to the events would never get the opportunity to go to these incredible places around the world and they can live vicariously through it,” Evans said, adding there’s usually a moral to the story.
“People have ways of coping with adversity and struggle and I know what I do, lots of public speaking, I talk about failure and I talk about how I get through those difficult times.”
