 |
travel / travel magazine / march 2008
Notebook
Sparkling souvenirs
WHILE CAMPING in Peterborough, Ont.,
in the summer of 1983, my immigrant
parents got a quick lesson in canoeing
(just enough not to drown) and introduced
my sister and me to this uniquely North
American tradition. We crashed 12 times
and nearly toppled into the lake, but that’s
not the point. A photo from the trip still
hangs on my wall. Indeed, my vacation
memories are filled with such discoveries.
It was on vacation that I first learned to ride
a horse and eat a lobster and tried my
hand at archery. Those trips are the ones
I remember best.
Sometimes a vacation is all about unwinding
and letting go of work. Sometimes
it’s about connecting with family and
friends. For our Live & Learn package in
this issue, we sent our writers and photographers
on five trips to enrich their minds
and enliven their souls.
Deborah Campbell ventured into the
land of the white spirit bear. British
Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest, the
world’s largest intact coastal temperate
rain forest, she writes, is one of the last
inhabitable regions of the planet that, on
satellite images, still turns black at night.
Lynn Coady headed east, and came within
tickling distance of the towering pectoral
fin of a mammoth humpback whale off the
coast of Labrador. We sent Jennifer Wells
to the olive groves of Tuscany to learn how
to hoist a bruscola and harvest the peppery
black fruit of the gods. Candace Savage
spent a weekend immersed in voyageur
history outside Saskatoon, while Curtis
Gillespie, his wife and two young daughters
took a trip back in time aboard the
White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad soon
after it began crossing the border into
Klondike country for the first time in
15 years.
We hope these stories will inspire you to
embark on your own vacation educations
and to bring home a souvenir more valuable
and lasting than any T-shirt or trinket.
By Patricia D’Souza
|
|
| ADVERTISEMENT |
|
|
|
|
