Some people golf, some people hunt, some people play backgammon.

Jasper’s Scott Sherlow rides his motorcycle.

“It helps me get out of my head,” the 55-year-old said.

Sherlow’s typical rides are the ones you’d expect someone who lives in Jasper National Park would take advantage of: Highway 93A (“a really nice after-supper run”) and the Icefields Parkway (“some people spend a lot of money to come ride it,”) top his list.

But this August, Sherlow is joining an atypical ride. Along with more motorcycle enthusiasts from across Canada, the retired firefighter and not-quite-retired electrical powerplant maintenance technician is going to be riding his 1800cc Honda GoldWing from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Burnaby, B.C.

“My wife said ‘it’s important to you,’” Sherlow said.

The Rolling Barrage is a coast-to-coast motorcycle rally to combat mental illness among military veterans, first responders, emergency healthcare workers and RCMP members. // Supplied

But it’s not just feeling the cool breeze in his beard or the opportunity to see the country from between his handlebars that’s important to Sherlow. It’s the chance to help support The Rolling Barrage, an motorcycle rally that, despite the twists and turns of the open road, has a straight-ahead mission: to create and maintain a community of support for military veterans, RCMP members, first responders and emergency healthcare providers, and to help combat the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Sherlow, who initially felt unsure if his participation in the rally was warranted, has since been assured by his fellow riders—from former UN Peacekeepers to volunteer firefighters like him—that the Rolling Barrage community doesn’t discriminate.

“Trauma is trauma,” Sherlow said. “It doesn’t matter if it happens on foreign soil or if it happens on Highway 16.”

Founded in 2017, the Rolling Barrage has grown from half a dozen riders participating in the “full pull” to more than 50 signing up to go coast to coast this year. Along the thousands of kilometres, Sherlow knows that when the engines are shut off, the conversations will turn on.

“This group has allowed people to say ‘there’s others out there like me,’” Sherlow said. 

Jasper’s Scott Sherlow will fly from Jasper to St. John’s Nfld, where his motorcycle has been shipped. The coast-to-coast ride back out west starts August 1. // Bob Covey

As he crests the hills and descends into the valleys of Canada’s vast road network, Sherlow will be remembering his friend and fellow firefighter, the late Reuben Doyle. The Rolling Barrage was created to help give people like Doyle, who suffered in silence, a chance to ask for help.

“We’re trying to keep people from having a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” he said.

While simultaneously raising money for organizations which use evidence-based tools, services and therapies to provide assistance to those who serve the country, the Rolling Barrage has more immediate benefits for the very riders who participate. There’s a reason that so many people suffering with Occupational Stress Injuries (OSIs) find peace on the saddle of a bike. Sherlow calls it “throttle therapy.”

“Hyper-vigilance—getting up in the middle of the night because you thought you heard a noise, or obsessing over small details—can be a symptom of an OSI,” he said. “But hyper-vigilance on a motorcycle is therapeutic because it keeps you from dying.”

As he prepares himself for the flight to St. John’s, where his Goldwing was trucked, along with a dozen other bikes from across the country thanks to a mission-alignment between the Rolling Barrage and Winnipeg-based Big Freight Systems, Sherlow will be thinking not only of his wife, who encouraged him to join the rally, but his dad, who pushed him to get a bike in the first place. His 84-year-old father, himself an active rider, remembered how much Scott loved motorcycles as a young man.

“Dad said ‘life was too short, let’s go get you a bike,’” Sherlow recalled. 

Scott Sherlow joined the Alberta leg of the Rolling Barrage last year. On August 1, he is in for the “full pull,” riding his motorcycle from St. John’s, Nfld, to Burnaby, B.C. // Supplied

He did. Since then, as he’s opened up the bike’s throttle, he’s opened up to the idea of talking about mental illness—the “dark mind monsters,” as he said. When those monsters start to close in, whether he’s got blacktop under his tires or not, he’ll know his “battle buddies” with the Rolling Barrage will be right there alongside him.

“It’s the family reunion you don’t mind going to,” he laughed.

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com