Roads, Memory and the Generosity of Story
As I prepare to drive north towards Highway 16, I have found myself thinking about the stories I have heard throughout the years and the privilege of bearing witness to them. I have been reflecting on the generosity of community members who allowed me to sit beside them as they drove, and on the responsibility that comes with being trusted with another person's story.
When I first became a driving instructor, I thought my work was about teaching people how to drive. I thought success was measured by passing road tests and understanding the rules of the road. I believed that my role was to teach intersections, parallel parking, and lane changes. I did not yet understand that the licence itself was rarely the destination.
Over the years, I came to realize that people did not get into the car because they simply wanted a driver's licence. They got into the car because they wanted to get their children back. They wanted to return to work. They wanted to leave violent relationships. They wanted to attend medical appointments without relying on others. They wanted to drive their son home from the hospital. The licence was rarely the goal. It was often the bridge to something much larger.
There is an intimacy to the space inside a vehicle that I never anticipated. Perhaps it is because people are looking out at the road instead of directly at one another, but stories have a way of emerging there. Over the years, community members shared stories of foster care, residential schools, addiction, grief, violence, healing, and hope. Many of these stories had little to do with driving, and yet they revealed everything about why mobility mattered.
I began to understand that I was being entrusted with something precious. Not information, but stories. And stories are gifts.
There were Elders who asked only to drive with a woman. There were matriarchs whose hands trembled as they sat in the driver's seat. There were lessons where nothing in the curriculum seemed important because the most meaningful thing we could do was sit quietly with the doors open and allow enough space for trust to arrive. Sometimes an hour would pass before the engine was even started. At the time, I worried that I was somehow failing to do my job. Looking back now, I wonder if those moments were the work.
Nothing in my instructor training prepared me for those experiences. No manual explained how to sit with someone carrying memories of being taken away in a vehicle, or how to create enough safety for trust to slowly return. Yet I learned that teaching was never simply about transferring knowledge. It was about relationship.
For many years, I believed that caring deeply meant carrying everything. I thought I had to fix every injustice, fight every battle, and hold every burden. Somewhere along the way, I confused witnessing with responsibility for outcomes.
What I have come to understand instead is that witnessing asks something different of us.
It asks us to hold both emotion and truth at the same time.
It asks us not to turn away from grief, anger, or disappointment, but neither does it ask us to abandon what we know to be true. Witnessing is not indifference, nor is it the absence of feeling. Rather, it is the quiet work of remaining present enough to see clearly.
Perhaps that is what the highway has been teaching me all along.
Highways witness everything. They witness departures and returns. They witness family reunions and funerals. They witness joy and heartbreak, healing and loss. They witness those who are searching and those who are finally coming home. They hold stories we will never fully know, and yet they remain.
As I prepare to travel north again, I find myself carrying a deep sense of gratitude. Not only for the work, but for the people who made it possible. Because the truth is that they were never simply students, and I was never simply an instructor.
Together, we were travellers.
And perhaps the greatest gift community members gave me was not their stories, but their trust. Their willingness to let me sit beside them as they drove. To listen. To laugh. To cry. To bear witness.
Somewhere along the way, I realized that the road had been teaching me too.
This essay is dedicated to the many students, Elders, matriarchs, and community members who invited me into their stories over the years.
Thank you for your trust, your patience, your humour, and your generosity. Thank you for allowing me to sit beside you as you drove, and for teaching me that mobility is about far more than transportation.
With Gratitude ~ Lucy Sager