http://www.shorelinebeacon.com/2016...the-attention-of-many-in-bruce-huron-counties 
He said he was headed for London. That he had family there. That he was homeless by choice. That he was 57 years of age. And that his name was Mitchell Nelson.
He said he had worked eight years in Edmonton. That he had worked the city’s recent economic boom but now that the boom was over he was heading home.
He said he had started his 3,000-km journey around Canada Day. That he had canoed the Saskatchewan River from downtown Edmonton to North Battleford. And that he had then biked Highway 16 to the Trans Canada Highway and had continued east into Ontario.
What is known about the man who said all this is that his body washed ashore in Port Albert on Oct. 15, just over 100 kms north of his supposed destination.
After two months of searching the police still have not been able to identify the body.
Who was Mitchell Nelson?
“We do not believe that is his real name,” said Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Constable Jamie Stanley.
From his Goderich detachment office in early December, the OPP officer told The Signal Star that at first it seemed like it would be a rather straightforward case.
“We thought we were going to be able to identify him once we got the photos from the reporter,” Stanley said.
The photos are of an older, thin, grey-haired man with a beat up blue bicycle pulling a green 15-foot canoe along the highway.
The man supposedly named Mitchell Nelson.
All the information known about him comes from an article published Sept. 16 by Sault Ste. Marie’s SooToday. The reporter had interviewed the man outside of Espanola in mid-September.
OPP released those photos to the public nine days after the body was found.
“We have a dead body, we have really good photos taken of that individual prior to his death, it’s just for some reason we haven’t been able to connect with somebody who knows him,” he said.
From birth certificate records and social insurance number databases to tax returns and border crossing information, and even contacting shelters along his supposed route, Stanley says the OPP have done an “exhaustive” search for the name “Mitchell Nelson” and nothing has come up.
Mitchell Nelson could be a variation of his actual name, Stanley said, and the OPP don’t necessarily think he lied to the reporter, “but that name’s not coming up.”
Stanley said there’s nothing to suggest it is suspicious, but they want to tell his family of his passing and “provide some closure.”
And mirroring the man’s life, his death is still technically undetermined.
Again, Stanley said this is not suspicious as there was “nothing suspicious on the body” nor is this clarification uncommon. Lots of similar cases have this as the cause of death, he said.
The OPP estimate the time of death within two weeks of finding his body.
His bicycle and canoe are still missing.
What is known for certain about this man is that he left an impression on the communities he passed through during his journey.
With his long canoe yoked by a contraption made from junk to a beat-up old bicycle, the man quietly grabbed attention throughout Ontario.
The Signal Star has been able to trace his route through eyewitness accounts to Labour Day weekend travelling from Wawa to Sault Ste. Marie.
From Sault Ste. Marie, the man then travelled the Trans Canada Highway to Espanola where he was stopped by the reporter for SooToday.
That reporter declined to speak with The Signal Star.
That article states the man intended to canoe to the east side of Manitoulin Island and then across Georgian Bay.
On the island, another reporter stopped him, this time from the Manitoulin Expositor, on Sept. 17.
OPP confirmed that he took the Chi-Cheemaun ferry to Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula, where he made his south.
Michigan freelance writer AnnMarie Rowland snapped a picture of the man on the morning of Sept. 22 just south of Wiarton on Highway 21.
“I knew I had to get a photo of him, so although I was headed toward Wiarton and he away, I turned my car around and went back,” she wrote to The Signal Star.
She said she thought he was an “interesting member of the local colour” and was curious as to why a man would be towing a canoe.
She was taken by the determination of his stride, she said, of his focused gaze as he trudged forth through the rain.
“He didn’t look up when I stopped. He didn’t seem to be interested in more than putting his right foot ahead of his left then his left before his right. ‘Just keep walking,’ was what I imagined he was thinking,” she said.
She posted the photo that September day to a Facebook group called “Sh*t You See in Grey & Bruce,” which is mainly used to poke fun, often mean-spiritedly, at the area.
The post garnered encouraging comments cheering him on and others documenting where they had seen him and at what time.
“Good for him,” one person wrote. “This is fantastic,” another wrote.
Rowland now regrets not having spoken to him.
“I have been kicking myself ever since I discovered that I missed the opportunity to get his story first hand,” she said.
Sept. 27 was the last date The Signal Star could find an eyewitness sighting of the man when Steve McRae saw him walking his bicycle and canoe along Highway 21, just south of Port Albert.
“We saw him a couple days in a row,” McRae wrote to The Signal Star. “... Saw him around dinner time [Sept. 26] camped out on the side of the road under his canoe.”
McRae said the canoe was propped up at a 45-degree angle and he was using it for shelter. It looked like he was reading a book, he said.
“Next day he was walking his bike, which was towing his canoe on the side of the highway heading south,” he said.
His body was then found two weeks later in that same area. It has since been transported to the Centre for Forensic Sciences in Toronto.
The investigation will be left open until they can identify his body, said Stanley.
Since the first media release asking for the public’s help to identify the body, the OPP has received hundreds of tips, and are continuing to do so.
“There’s enough people that passed him on the side of the road that made that mental thought, ‘Huh, that’s kind of different, look at that setup,’ Stanley said. “And I think maybe a large part of that is the vehicle he was with, this long, big canoe. You just don’t see people towing a canoe on a bicycle. Where do you see that? That’s very unusual.”
The comments under Rowland’s Facebook post suggest that people were taken by his ingenuity and assumed he was an adventurous spirit.
Though nothing about the man is known, Stanley said he assumes he must have been personable considering the two newspaper articles that were produced on his journey.
During the interview with the Manitoulin Expositor, the reporter asked the man known as Mitchell Nelson more in statement of fact than as a question that “this trip was a good idea, wasn’t it?”
“Was it?” replied the man with a question of his own before continuing his journey.
