St. John's teacher setting out on 1,700-km journey across Labrador and Quebec

He's walked acrossNewfoundland. Today he takes on Labrador.

Justin Barbour begins his hike across Labrador, and Quebec,today, just over a year after he completed his 700-kilometre trek across the Rock. Add a "1" in front of that number, and you have the length of his new journey 1,700 kilometres walking, and paddling, from North West River to Kuujjuarapik, on Hudson Bay.

Barbour, a teacher from St. John's, began planning his new trip in October, after resting up from his previous one.

"I kinda had the itch to go again. It's just something I wanted to do," he said. "It's exciting. As I always say, you don't really know what's going to happen from one day to the next, and that's interesting."

He's packing rations granola, jerky, dehydrated fruits, tea and coffee as well as two fishing rods and a shotgun.

"I'll be trying to catch whatever fish I can get. That will be a big supplement to my income," he said. "I'm in the Big Land, and people come here to catch big fish, so I'm hoping to be one of those."

It's something now that just seems like a little bit of a fairy tale to me.- Justin Barbour

There are also a couple of spots where he has a pilot dropping supplies to him.

At his side as he was last year will be his two-year-old Cape Shore water dog, named SakuKoivuJr., after Barbour's childhood hockey hero from the Montreal Canadiens.

"They use these dogs on the coast of Newfoundland to retrieve sea ducks, in high seas and cold weather, in January, in February. These dogs are known to go out in crazy swells and retrieve ducks that hunters will shoot from shore from their boat," explained Barbour.

"So he's cut out for doing hard work and going long days. He's my boy. He's good to have around. It's the companionship. He has contagious energy. He can go all day long and sometimes if I'm feeling a little tired and I see Saku's still going, that's also good."

He figures it'll take him about three months for the trip if he does19kilometres a day, it'll take him 86 days, ending his journey Oct. 20.But that's just a ballpark figure.

"I could get really good conditions and do it in 80. I could get heldup a lot or take longer than expected and it could be over 100," he said.

Visualizing the end

And while he's planned every stage of the journey practically down to the step, as he starts his journey he's trying not to get ahead of himself by thinking about the finish line too much.

"But it'll be pretty damn exciting, man, I must say," he said. "It's something now that just seems like a bit of a fairy tale to me, but I'm big on visualization, and I would say in the last six months I've visualized myselfpaddling into Kuujjuarapik, which is the community on Hudson Bay. I've visualized that a hundred times."

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