Features
Saddle Up & Get Back In Shape
Mar 5th
With the recession finally relinquishing its grip on those purse
strings, we can all focus on our personal health rather than that of
our bank balance. According to Ranch Rider, fitness holidays are not
simply concerned with trekking and hiking into the hinterland
(although many guest ranches will offer these pursuits), as riders
can burn up to 650 calories an hour while in the saddle.
So if that New Year’s resolution to get back in shape has been
shelved along with your gym club membership, grab the reins and head
to North America, Africa or Argentina with Ranch Rider.
If More >
False promises finally fulfilled
Feb 5th
Canada has ambitious targets of immigration aimed at raising its population from 25 to 40 million by 2020. Behind every immigrant’s statistics, however, is a personal tale. Martin Smith tells his…
It was autumn 2004 and, after three years in North East, the marketing job, Number Two to the managing director, just wasn’t working out. And, it wasn’t the first time.
It was clear, I had to change jobs — the long hours with little or no reward were just getting me down.
I seriously started to think about my options. What did the region offer in terms of job prospects? Very little. More >
Native Peoples – Siksika
Jan 7th
A visit to the Siksika Nation — the Blackfoot of Alberta – is a journey that tells us much about how the “sense of place” of the Aboriginal, or First Nation, peoples of Canada.
The event was a community affair; we had been invited to attend the unofficial inauguration of the magnificent Siksika Nation-Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park Interpretive Centre. In many respects it was like an enormous family picnic during which a great deal of inter-generational bonding was going on.
On another level, it was a soft-spoken but triumphant celebration of thousands of years of Siksika history; a validation and reconfirmation of More >
L’Étranger
Jan 4th
An outsider’s view of Canada and things Canadian…
It was my geography teacher, when I was 17, who gave me my first inkling of what it must be like to be Canadian, when he suggested that Australians had a stronger sense of national identity because they were an island continent. Canadians, on the other hand, have been separated from the most powerful nation on Earth by only a very long, often invisible line.
Forty years and numerous visits to different parts of Canada later, I think he was both right and wrong. On the one hand, no-one can deny that Canadians do More >
Toronto – My Kind of Town
Jan 4th
Bob Fisher invites us to spend a long weekend in his home city, Toronto…
How does a travel journalist describe the city in which he has spent most of his life?
A Latin professor of mine at university many years ago insisted that we speak certain rather arcane sentences. I remember especially:
Strepitum odi urbium; rus est semper mihi gratissium (I hate the din of cities; the country is most pleasing to me.)
There is the perennial love-hate relationship with cities and their cultures of “the rush”. As poor angst-ridden Woody Allen once said in a documentary, “I like everywhere I go; I just More >
Go West to Cortes
Dec 23rd
While other 20-year-olds were heading for the all-night discos of the Mediterranean, Hannah Abbott chose to Go West…
Cortes
A Mecca for East-coast Canadian travellers partial to a bit of peace and love, the islands off the West coast of British Columbia would have remained undiscovered for me were it not for a friend of a friend of a friend. Well, one island in particular: Cortes.
I spent a month there, variously staying with old friends, crashing at new friends’, sleeping under the stars, and living in a refurbished 1955 school bus. It’s just that kind of place.
We certainly got there in style. More >
Rocky Road
Dec 22nd
Stan Abbott determines the bare necessities of walking in the wild Rockies…
Stan surveys the magnificent view from Skoki Lodge
Canadians have a tip about how to distinguish grizzly bear droppings from those of the less aggressive black bear – the grizzly’s are the ones with bells in.
Bear bells are supposed to be worn by humans hiking in grizzly country, the idea being that a grizzly hearing the bells will make itself scarce, because it would rather avoid an encounter with people than eat them.
Parks Canada publishes Bears and People, a helpful little guide for backpackers, which makes the casual understatement that More >
