Ottawa, ON - Halifax, NS (via Montreal, PQ and Fredericton, NB)
This turned out to be the final day of what was originally billed as a five day journey (yes, the journal entry title is still correct).
I did not get a great look at Montreal in the morning as I was speeding along its freeways around 6am. There were a lot of cars out already, but traffic flow was still smooth at that hour of the morning.
The approach into Quebec City brought upon our only major separation. AT one point, the highway diverges into three, with the left branch heading to the bridge into the city, the central one being for through traffic, and the right one going somewhere else. An abbreviated conversation (the co-pilots were sleeping) over the walkie-talkies assured me that we wanted the middle branch. I was in the lead, with the truck behind in the leftmost lane. I was in a lane that split at the junction, and waited as long as possible to see what would happen behind me. At the last moment, I decided to keep to the left so that we wouldn't get split up, since it looked like the truck was blocked from the middle lanes and wouldn't make it in time. Of course, just as I was past the point of no return, the truck bolted for the middle lane and made it . . . we had a few seconds of walkie-talkie contact before we were out of range, and they headed out on the highway and I crossed the bridge into Quebec City.
To solve this sort of problem, you should plan in advance what to do, like stopping at a certain exit or something. We had no such plan, but we did have cell phones, and after a brief excursion into the city, I found the other bridge back and we met up at a later exit.
There are also moose in Quebec. But the signs are different. I didn't manage to get a picture, but there, the silhouette is of a moose that is kind of standing there, maybe walking slowly towards you, and there is no demonizing caption. He looks much friendlier than Night Danger, sort of a "hey, how's it going" kind of moose.
There is quite a nice highway system in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, at least if you are going through all the major cities. They also have the most sensible moose signs, I think, with a non-menacing silhoutte, and a red and white caption saying "ATTENTION!". It conveys the significance of the safety issue while not making you fear for your life should you have to pull over at night and forget to lock your doors.
We rolled into Halifax around 11pm local time (we lost one more hour by entering the Atlantic time zone). There were mattresses and a couple sheets available even though most things were still packed in boxes (the movers had only arrived the previous day).
The total travel time for the trip was about:
11 hours for Day 1
14 hours for Day 2
15 hours for Day 3
17 hours for Day 4
So you can make it in four days at about 14 hours a day. Your time may vary according to how fast you are willing to drive (the truck was kept under 110km/h) and how much construction you encounter.