For the first time in over a year, for Father’s Day weekend, our family ventured back to Gatineau Park in Gatineau, Québec. For people living in the national capital region, Gatineau Park is a no-brainer when it comes to hiking, biking, swimming, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. The park is the largest in the region; it’s over 350 square-kilometres amid towering trees and rocky outcrops, with gorgeous lakes, scenic lookouts and really cool caves. Our summer family tradition is typically a long hike followed by ice cream in Chelsea. (The vegan chocolate flavour at La Cigale is to die for.) 

Gatineau Park is such an expansive wilderness in the region with waterfalls and caves that our family never paid much attention to the multi-use trails in Ottawa. All that changed with the pandemic, of course. As much as we missed Gatineau Park for over a year, rediscovering local and neighbourhood has become a new, exciting activity for our family. Two months ago, I stared at a beautiful massive mural in my neighbourhood that I had never seen before; it was designed and produced by local artist Claudia Salguero along with more than 90 people. Called ‘Transformation’, it is the tallest mural in the city and according to Salguero, underlines the importance of inclusion. Here’s the thing: it’s been there since 2018. Except I was never present for it.

In this past year, we’ve all been through hell — our own versions, but hell nonetheless. It feels to me that our struggle and the struggles we’ve witnessed in others have prompted us to seek connection in ways we haven’t before. There is a profound and renewed sense of discovering local places and helping people around us. From fighting the gypsy moth caterpillar infestation to fighting covid, our neighbourhood came together in ways we never did before 2020. Since April last year, I’ve hosted science classes for the neighbourhood’s kids, learned how to build a picnic table from someone who lives a couple of streets over, and engaged with an ad-hoc group of neighbours that came together to ensure everybody around us had access to good food and high-speed internet as I live in a mixed-income community with a number of essential workers. 

In the last 16 months, discovering places and people for me has become about really seeing communities to understand their beauty, their triumphs, and their needs. It’s becoming more of a symbiotic relationship where I’m not blindly consuming what brands and places have to offer, but actively listening and learning, and being present to what I can share or contribute — not in a contrived or feel-good type of a way but having a mindful, purposeful, authentic reflection. 

Over the last week or so, provinces and territories across the country began announcing their summer plans for re-opening. I can imagine highways, campgrounds, hotels, visitor information centres, and airports becoming packed again with energetic travellers looking to get away, explore, and visit friends and family. There is huge variability in how open regions may be; from Alberta where masks and physical distancing are set to be optional to Nova Scotia where 14-day quarantines are still mandatory for visitors. Canada’s tourism industry is a significant economic driver both nationally and locally. It is a vital industry for many communities, especially smaller ones. According to Statistics Canada, the Canadian tourism industry shrank by nearly 50 percent in 2020. In Canada, as it was around the world before COVID, tourism was a fast-growing industry and a leading economic driver. As the country’s fifth largest industry, tourism was responsible for $105 billion in GDP, 1 in 10 Canadian jobs, and 225,000 small and medium-sized businesses across Canada. And according to the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, tourism was the first hit, the hardest hit, and will be the last to recover. 

The dark side to the growth of tourism of course is that global tourism has a huge carbon footprint (on a good pre-pandemic day). A recent Future of Good article noted that a 2018 study found that the industry accounts for 8 percent of global carbon emissions, and that percentage was growing rapidly year over year. It’s also been heavily criticized for exploiting and failing to respect local communities. I know I’ve contributed to this by whizzing around in airplanes and staying in chain hotels, many of us have. As people begin to travel domestically and internationally again, the recently-formed global Future of Tourism coalition argues that now is the time to reimagine the industry’s future, implementing far higher standards for environmental sustainability and respect for destination communities. The timing couldn’t be better, and I believe this critical moment presents an opportunity to renew the mission of hospitality and service that is at the heart of the travel industry.  

Tourism recovery is critical for Canada, but in addition to helping the industry get back on its feet, let’s ask a more people-centred question: how might we help people discover places that enrich their lives? The mass commercialization of tourism continues to be a worrying trend. This summer, if you visit places, ask yourself, how much of the tourism income actually stays in the community without disappearing to foreign entities. The pandemic helped us all ignite a local spirit, let’s cultivate it further. In the past 15 months, I visited local farms, learned about the artists in my neighbourhood, skated on a nearby lake, walked along old rail tracks, taught classes to kids at a park, discovered theatre under the stars, and a whole lot more. Igniting and cultivating a passion for being curious about places, will have lasting impacts, I can already see it in my children. 

I imagine we’ve all gone a little deeper within ourselves, perhaps emerging with a new sense of what travel will look like after the pandemic. For myself, I’ve realized that discovering new activities and places locally gives me immense energy. I’ve become more conscious about the purpose of travel, and its effects on communities and the natural environment. 

Having said all of this, call me crazy, but I do like a bit of air turbulence and jet lag once in a while. I’ve travelled so much since I was two years old, the truth is that I can’t wait to hear the voice of a pilot again. But the pandemic has made me a more mindful traveller. And as we all get back into travelling this summer, let’s be conscious of our footprint, the traditional territories we’re on, where the money goes, be present to what places have to teach us, and demand more from the brands we choose to return to.  

Vinod Rajasekaran

Publisher & CEO  

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