I am now in Toronto and thought I'd do a post for the benefit of others or possibly those looking to head to the UK. I arrived here on September 11th 2021 and am now legal to ride the DR650 I purchased via kijiji prior to my arrival.

So, how I did it......... The mainland UK does not have a reciprocol agreement with Ontario but Northern Ireland (still part of the UK does). This makes no sense to me whatsoever but this is exactly how it is. So, with the super kind assistance of others (in Belfast) I had the use of an address and visited Ireland in August and also applied for my licence. The forms are only available in Northern Ireland and it isn't a process that can be done online but you could do it by post via an NI mail address if you had friends as good as I was lucky to have. So, my NI licence was issued and a few weeks later I attemped to exchange it in Toronto. The one issue I did have was a 'certificate of entitlement' which is definitely required. This is a document issued in Ireland that shows your driver history and any motoring convictions or endorsements. Thankfully I was able to receive one online (and after lots of conversation was accepted) but had I had this arranged it would have been a simple process. Once I had my licence I was able to insure and register the bike and I am now legal to ride.

This situation, in reverse, might help Canadians who would like to own a UK registered bike for a while and ride incident free but I can only comment on UK to Ontario.


I'm not quite sure as to when I will start to head south, but the eventual 'plan' will be to ride to the bottom of South America having first hopefully ridden the Trans American Trail.


All plans are subject to change though, because as we all know, things often happen to stop us in our tracks - it did for my previous trip in 2019. I was using my ultra reliable 2005 UK registered Honda XR 250 Tornado and covered 18,000 miles before returning to the UK. The issues I had surrounding importation and possibly exiting the States without my bike made me think that the way forward was to purchase here and start over. Whilst the initial outlay might seen prohibitive I've saved the freight costs but more importantly have no insurance or import issues. Unbeknown to me, I was mostly riding uninsured in the States because progressive insurance cancelled my policy because of an admin error (on their side) with my chassis number. They wrote to the address I used for setting up despite dealing with everything else by email. I would never knowingly ride unisured especially in the States.

Back in 2008 I purchased a 1982 GL500 silverwing in Alpena Michigan for a little States based road trip and once registered (fairly easy despite being told otherwise) I rode incident free for a while. I should have remembered this when planning my Alaska trip on the mighty Tornado..

Oh and I just noticed in the top right hand corner of this screen that I last visited this site in 2019 - that tells everything I guess - but huge thanks and appreciation to Grant and Susan for the work they put in, it must be immense.

Happy to answer any questions to those who are genuinely about to attempt a similar thing.

Simon