My very first scuba dive was a house reef off the island of Tufi in Papua New Guinea. Firmly located in the Coral Triangle, a region of mind-boggling diversity and with the healthiest corals left in our oceans, the house reef of the Tufi Dive Resort was sensational, not that I had a frame of reference.  My second dive was a wreck dive, followed by a night dive. How this came to be is another story altogether, but for now I thought it would be fun to look at three of my favourite dives:

​It takes 2.5 hours with the swell for our dive boat to make its way along the west Kauai coastline towards the islands Ni’ihau and Lehua.  It’s my first dive in the region, and fellow divers with Seasport Divers  tell me it doesn’t get any better in all Hawaii. Seasport only runs excursions to Ni’ihau from late spring to early fall, after which the swells and currents get too strong.  Today is the last run of the season, and due to the surge, our entry and exit will be drift dives.  Everyone will be using Nitrox, allowing us to go longer and deeper than normal air.    It’s both my first drift and Nitrox dive, and I could hardly wait to get underwater. 
 
First site, the Lehua Ledge, sitting off the small island Lehua adjacent to the much larger Niihau.  Seconds in the water, I’m being stared at by a large monk seal, an endangered pinniped that lives around these waters.  As I descend, I encounter a huge school of colourful Pyramid Butterfly Fish.  Below me on the shelf, I see the shadow of a large Sand Bar shark, gracefully vanishing into the shadows.   Other highlights on the first dive: A Yellow Margin Moray, Triton’s Trumpet, a Crown of Thorns, and endemic Bandit Angels.  
 
The next dive is at a pinnacle known as Vertical Awareness.  My Nitrox is at 32%, and I am relieved that it tastes just like regular air.  I descend to 90ft, making my way around a large outcrop.  We see Pennant Butterflies, a Stout Moray, a huge Titan Scorpion Fish, an endemic Hawaiian Lionfish, and a cool red-striped nudibranch.  Although the water is a comfy 26°C, I pass through some cold thermoclines, and a powerful surge sweeps me along.  There’s a reason why this dive is seasonal.  The captain spots me and picks me up as divers continue to pop up all over the surface.
 
The best is saved for last, a drift dive to a spot called Pu’u Mu’u.   It’s my introduction to underwater caves, and while one diver ends his dive early with claustrophobia, I absolutely love it.   Reflective bubbles of air gather on the cave ceiling like mercury, as my flashlight reveals so much life and colour.  Black coral hangs from the walls, along with Cauliflower and Leather coral.   Deeper into the rock, Purple Spiny Lobster and big Tiger Cowry shells are amazing to see, as I ebb towards a series of spectacular swim-throughs.  
 
The swells pick up as we return to Poipu, even as Bottlenose and Spinner dolphins gather around the boat.   It will be another season before Seasport Divers resume this incredible dive, but there’s plenty of others on Kauai to keep them, and us, busy in the meantime.   Dives to Ni’ihau run twice a week late spring to early autumn. 

​A plane, another plane, a 4-hour drive, a small boat, a larger boat, another smaller boat, and at last my toes touch the squeaky-white beaches of Malapascua Island. It’s one of the premier diving spots in the Philippines, and with 7000 islands, this is a country that’s full of them.  The water is a balmy 28°C, visibility can reach up to 35m, and the Visayan Sea is teeming with life.   For recreational divers in love with big animals, there’s a much bigger hook:  Year-round, this is the only place in the world where you can dive with thresher sharks.
 
Popular with Asian and European divers, Malapascua Island has exploded in the last 10 years thanks to budget flights from Manila.   A Dutch couple founded Exotic Island Dive Resort, the first resort on the island, and are credited with discovering the shoal where the threshers gather. Everything – people, supplies, water – has to come in daily on boats, so I’m amazed with the resort’s exhaustive dining menu. I meet my sun-blonde dive-masters, Jules and Mimi, and they fill me on what I can expect.    
 
“Thresher sharks are different from other sharks.  They’re shiny, with big eyes and that giant tail. And they’re so sweet, I just want to pet them,” explains Mimi.  Adds Jules: “You have to respect them, but you can’t feel afraid.”    We suit up for a night dive to Lighthouse, just to warm up and enjoy the seahorses, mandarin fish, huge hermit crabs and flamboyant flatworms hanging around a nearby reef.  It’s only my second night dive, and to my delight, the inky ocean feels comfortable and safe.  Bio-luminescence surrounds me on my ascent, as I surface by the traditional wooden outrigger, under a bright crescent moon. I see why they called this Exotic Island.
 
It’s an early 5:30am start to Monad Shoal for my thresher shark encounter. I’m nervous: it’s not every day you swim with big animals, but what if they don’t show up?   The best time to see the sharks is at sunrise, when they are drawn to a natural cleaning station on the shoal located about 20 minutes boat ride from the resort.   Manta, devil and eagle rays, along with hammerheads, are seasonal visitors too.   We submerge and head to the edge of the shoal. Within minutes, Mimi’s flat hand is on her head.   A 6ft thresher comes into view, appearing out of the depth below us.   Its distinctive tail looks like an Ottoman sword.   There’s barely time to register before another appears, and another.  Judging Jules’ reaction, I’ve stumbled upon a bumper day on the shoal.  During our hour-long dive, we count about a dozen threshers.   One circles back and eyes me out curiously. That moment instantly converts me into a lifelong shark diver. 
 
Back on the banka, the traditional outrigger, there’s huge smiles on the faces of a dozen divers. “It was an effort not to see a shark today,” laughs Mimi.  At this remarkable spot in a remarkable country, nobody is going home disappointed.

Cold water diving is a different experience from the tropics: not better or worse, just different.  Fresh off Papua New Guinea, Hawaii and the Philippines, it was time to see for myself, and fortunately, I happen to live near one of the best places in the world to do it.    The waters off the coast of Vancouver, where I live, are renowned for their excellent diving.  Perhaps not as mind-blowing as sites further up the inlet off Vancouver Island - home to giant octopus and huge wrecks - but certainly a great place to start.
 
Greg McCracken’s Ocean Quest dive shop provided dry suits with all the trimmings.  Greg was our cold-water divemaster, and he’s one of the top instructors in Western Canada.   We hopped aboard Topline, the flagship vessel of Sea Dragon Charters.  Everyone on board, including experienced pros, sang nothing but praises for the large, comfortable boat.  There was plenty of space for gear and squeezing into those dry suits.
 
As I descended my first dive at a site called Pinnacle, I was amazed how comfortable I felt in my suit, and also how buoyant I was.  Visibility was pretty murky until we hit a ledge about 15 metres down and holy moly…a forest of huge, white plumose anemone exploded to create a complete otherworldly experience.  Thousands of brittle stars pulsed on the rock floor.  Massive cucumbers, starfish, nudibranchs…it was all there.  Greg explained that everything you’ll find in the waters of British Columbia is pretty much the biggest in the world.
 
Second dive was Halkett’s Wall, along the sheer rock face that descends off Gambier Island, one of dozens of islands that dot the waters off Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay.   Descending 18 metres (the rock wall goes down about 70 metres) I encounter rockfish, ling cod, various sculpins, cloud and chimney sponge, and a curious quillback rockfish. Jurassic-like orange sunflower starfish are as big as dining room tables, and a true feast for the eyes.
 
If you’re nervous about cold water diving, don’t be.  I found my dry suit easy to operate and maintain buoyancy. Definitely learn how to operate a dry suit and get certified before jumping in.  My two dives introduced me to just a fraction of what’s on offer in the waters off Vancouver.  The local community are friendly and supportive (this is Canada, after all), and you can’t ask for better instructors than Ocean Quest.  Sea Dragon charters run year-round from Horseshoe Bay, about 20 minutes from downtown Vancouver. 

More great dives to come...

​“Swimming with whale sharks” was always high up my bucket list, and in the space of two months, I did it twice: first in West Papua, Indonesia with my son, and then off the coast of La Paz with my daughter.  Very different experiences, with very different kids, and I’d bet very different whale sharks too.  The largest fish in the sea was utterly unbothered by our presence, and in both cases, conservation was front and center.   As with all ticks on a bucket list, as soon as it’s done, there’s a feeling of elation, followed by a strange emptiness, an exhaustion, a hole in the dream web. The experience itself is never quite how you imagine.   The first swim was sudden, taking advantage of proximity and timing.  The second was accompanied by cold, dark water and limits on time because we had to get two scuba dives in with sea lions (as one does).  It’s never how you imagine, but it’s exactly how it should be.  
 
It takes about a day or two for the spiders of the imagination to get spinning on the dream web, and we quickly move onto the next dream.  Take it from me, it’s a rare soul who ticks it all off and says “I’m done.”   Nope, dreams are a game of whack-a-mole: the more you experience, the more you want to experience.  Tick three things off at the top, and four more will pop up at the bottom.   ​

The highlight of my first visit to Baja California was an off-grid visit to Camp Cecil on the sand dunes in Magdalena Bay.   It’s a lovely camp that will be re-built each year, with access to a coastal wilderness and a bay that’s famous for friendly, spy-hopping grey whales.  The meals, star gazing and sundowner cocktails on the beach were magical, and owners Bryan and Sergio pay attention to the small details that make a huge difference.   
 
Rancho Cacachilas is an agro-tourism, glamping, farming R&D and adventure tourism initiative with some heavy financial backing.   Sharing an opportunity to ride mules into the desert scrub, make goat cheese and visit bee hives with my daughter was educational, memorable, and the kind of hands-on escape kids love most.     My top-of-mind memories:  watching the galaxies with my daughter at Camp Cecil, cycling the Malecon at sunset, getting covered in bees at the hives, and riding into the hills at sunset.  
 
You can read my full report from La Paz at Canadian Geographic, and the fun video we made below. 

​One B down, cue up The Bahamas.   It’s my first visit to the islands, and taking advantage of spring break, my daughter joined me on a week-long visit to the Exumas.   It’s a chain of islands with the kind of water that defies description, not that I didn’t try in my story.  I first heard about the swimming pigs from my niece, and I would have loved to have brought her because the little piggies did not disappoint. Neither did the rock iguanas, although I didn’t expect the baby nurse sharks to steal my daughter’s heart more than the baby pigs.  This is my daughter, after all.  
Hydro-biking to the Lazy River with Darren Clarke was another big surprise.  Impossibly blue water, lemon sharks, and a strong current to lie back and float to a natural sand bar.   We jet-skied and ate conch, raced hermit crabs and hiked out in low tide.  Exuma, I’m told, is a world away from Nassau, and it’s all the better for it.   My top-of-mind memories:   floating the Lazy River, looking for starfish at low tide on Exuma Point, ripping around the yachts in Elizabeth Harbour with my daughter and the young son of our PR representative, hearing the giggles and feeling their joy. 
 
Check out my full Exuma report on Canadian Geographic, and another fun video that will only get better as the years pass.

​The final B of the season was Bermuda, my first visit to another island paradise, this time in the North Atlantic.   Just 2.5 hours from Toronto or New York, the British Overseas Territory was polished and affluent, reflecting the fact that 90% of its GDP comes from offshore banking (it also sits in the world’s top 10 GDP per capita).   It was a short visit to investigate the Bermuda Triangle for a Halloween story later this year, and it got a little spooky when my BermudAir flight disappeared in mysterious tornado and teleported into an alien world.  For some inexplicable reason, my freckles made me a king, and I spent a lifetime ruling over peaceful, loving subjects, before being catapulted back to the present day through a wormhole under the Bermuda sea mount.  It’s quite possible I made that all up, which is all you really need to know about the Bermuda Triangle.   Scuba diving the Cathedral and the wreck of the ill-fated Greek freighter Pelinaion are two of my best dives ever.   Not a lot of marine life, but fabulous topography and diving wrecks are always a blast.  Great company, incredible food, and doubtful my last visit to Bermuda.   My top-of-mind memories:  diving into the crystal, cool waters of the cave pool at Grotto Bay Beach Resort and Spa; melting into the wagyu steak flight at the Island Brasserie; wahoo ceviche; navigating underwater canyons in the Cathedral.    A full report will run in Canadian Geographic later this year.   

Ever since discovering the ease of filming and editing videos directly on my phone, I’ve been having a lot of fun with my ‘family travel videos.’   I’ve been making travel videos in one way or another since the earliest days of Youtube, including an early video that went viral and has over one million views (See The World's Most Dangerous Hike below).  At the time, I had no idea what I was doing on Final Cut Pro, but I was able to stitch something together with a good soundtrack to make something short, punchy and engaging.  These early travel videos led directly to my TV show, as my raggedy clips effectively auditioned me for the part, showing I was the genuine article.   Unfortunately, the quality of my early videos don’t stand up in our 4K Ultra HD world, but they’re still make me nostalgic about a very different time and place. 
 
The first video I ever made simply stitched together a bunch of lose clips I had collected on my 3 mega-pixel Pentax camera. 3 mega pixels back then was state of the art!  The soundtrack was Bedouin Soundclash’s When the Night, and it captured the lunacy and innocence of my 12-month modern gonzo journey. I called it: Something to Make You Dream: 

After Word Travels, our little TV show that was too fast and flashy for its time, I continued to produce dozens of little videos to add value to readers of my Canadian Bucket List and Global Bucket List book projects.   By the late 2010s, I was still cranking out dozens of videos for The Great Australian Bucket List, again to add value to the reader.  This idea of adding value and sharing stories across mediums continues today with my ‘Bucket Listed’ Canadian Geographic column, only the production has improved dramatically thanks to better smart phone/camera/editing technology.  It also helps that Youtube lets me soundtrack my videos with any song I choose, since they compensate the artists and I don’t use my channel to earn income (which might come back to haunt me, but probably not).  

As I tell my kids, I’m not a Youtuber, but I do have a Youtube channel, I do make Youtube videos, and I like them a lot.  Some don’t get much traffic, some hit a nerve (like the one above to accompany a column I wrote about Winnipeg’s Activate Games).  Most videos are the length of a single song (4–6 minutes) although sometimes we do so much it requires multiple tracks and a longer video, as in the case of Switzerland above.  I choose my favourite songs or something that just fits for the vibe of the journey.  Sometimes I look for local artists, as in the case of my videos from the Inca Trail below and on Italy's Amalfi Coast.  When a cut lands perfectly on the beat, I get the reward of a sweet little editing buzz.  Music has always aligned with travel, and the right song can imprint a moment forever. ​

​I’ve put together 3 videos this year, and they all came out particularly great.  My son explores Raja Ampat with Seatrek with the perfect song from Canadian artists Walk off the Earth.   My daughter and I had an adventure of a lifetime in Mexico's La Paz, and we just returned from paradise, namely Exuma in The Bahamas.  

As you can see, my kids always steal the show, and I imagine them watching these short videos one day with their own kids, amazed by what they got up to around the world.  Although who knows, maybe 4K video will be as grainy and low quality in the future as my early videos are today.  Maybe Youtube won't exist at all.  In my closet are old Super 8mm reels that my grandfather filmed more than 60 years ago.  I transferred them to DVR tape about 20 years ago, itself now an obsolete medium.   In the end, it's all about capturing memories and sharing stories across time and space, and having some fun in the process. 

If you enjoy my videos, subscribe to my channel.  Here's a few more I'm particularly proud of: 

Every skier at every ski resort has faced the same conundrum: where do you find the best runs? In a resort like Whistler Blackcomb, with its 8,171 acres of skiable terrain, 270+ trails, 36 lifts, and 16 bowls, the choices are overwhelming, and analysis paralysis is a real thing. Standing in the line-up for the gondola at Creekside on a powdery Friday morning, I overhear the conversations of skiers and boarders planning the day’s attack. Opinions are floating around like the falling snow, with the debates continuing inside the gondola, all a variation of: “we could go here, or we could go there.” Or, you could keep things simple, easy, and just follow one of the Wonder Routes.
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To celebrate its 60th Anniversary, Whistler Blackcomb has launched a curated network of seven Wonder Routes to help guests of all abilities navigate the best of both mountains. The premise is simple: visit the website, download (or copy and paste) the suggested itinerary onto your phone, start at the first step, and let it guide you forward. The genius of this idea is evident by the enthusiastic response we receive when we tell people about it in the gondola and on various chairs. It’s all self-guided, so you don’t have to book anything in advance or pay anything more. What’s more, you can tackle the Wonder Routes by the letter, or amend, edit, and reference them as a starting point. With conditions clearing up, our group of two adults and two kids decided to go for the views first, with the aptly named: Top of the World.

From Roundhouse Lodge, the Top of the World Route guides us to the Peak Express where we exit the chair to a panoramic view. Some skiers are obsessed with powder and thrills, others with the natural outdoor spectacle. On a hike, I’m always telling my daughter to stop and smell the pine trees as opposed to running to the trailhead. Now at the top of Whistler Mountain, I encourage her to stop and smell the alpine views. We head down Matthews Traverse to Burnt Stew, connecting onto Jeff’s Ode to Joy—two greens and a blue ushering us to Symphony Express. It’s another chair up high into the peaks and a gorgeous connection of runs to the bottom of Harmony Express. Instead of debating where to go and what run to take, we let the 3-4 hour Wonder Route take the lead, sending us to the Peak 2 Peak Gondola and over to Blackcomb Mountain, where we take the easy Expressway to 7th Heaven Express and conclude our first Wonder Route with a hot lunch of poutine and Thai. The whole experience was efficient, easy, and wondrously devoid of FOMO.  

​The Après Route starts from Blackcomb and hits all the patios and lodges. The Glade Stashes Wonder Route guides you into the best tree runs, like Gnarly Knots, Gun Barrels, Outer Limits, and Raptors Ride off the 7th Heaven Express. This one is for advanced skiers eager to chase down black and double-black diamonds. Also for experienced skiers and boarders is the Gold Medal Route, which visits slopes and runs used during the 2010 Winter Olympics and 2025 Invictus Games. Kicking off the new 8-person Fitzsimmons Express lift, connect onto the Garbanzo Express to access the Dave Murray Downhill, which hosted the Olympic Men’s Downhill competition as well as the Super G course. Above the Timing Flats, look out for individual signs honouring gold medal winners from the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

For advanced skiers with 6-8 hours on their hands, the Alpine Sampler keeps things above the trees and in the bowls. You’ll take on legendary runs like Spanky’s Ladder, Overbite, and Garnet Bowl. It’s an epic day out. For our part, we decided to go with the all-green Family Certified Route as well as the more challenging Super Blues. With the flexibility of the routes, we figured we might as well enjoy the best of both worlds, linking the blue Cloud 9 to the green Expressway before taking the Peak 2 Peak back to Whistler (scoring the glass-bottom car with our timing) and continuing down Ego Bowl through the Enchanted Forest to the bottom of Emerald, before concluding our big Whistler ski day with a lovely run called Pony Trail to the top of the Creekside Gondola. At this point, the kids were committing mutiny for hot chocolate, so we downloaded, returned our rentals at Can-Ski Creekside, and rewarded them with extra marshmallows.

The Wonder Routes removed a lot of the guesswork, providing much-needed direction that we quickly came to trust and enjoy. Along the way, we discovered new sections of Whistler and Blackcomb mountains, and the kids enjoyed the treasure hunt of finding and completing both routes. Here’s hoping more routes are added in the future for different scenarios, like a Powder Route, a Surprise Route, or a Have-it-All Route. Maybe other mountains will get inspired to create their own Wonder Routes too. 
 
Click here for the latest conditions on Whistler-Blackcomb
Click here for more family-friendly activities on Whistler

This week I was interviewed by CBC Radio's Matt Galloway on The Current about flying: why people hate it, and how we got here.

Fact is, somewhere between the check-in counter and 35,000 feet, people often lose their minds. A fast-moving, crammed, pressurized cabin – not to mention the process of checking in and making your way through the theatre of security screening – is a lot to deal with.

As I discussed with Matt, there was a time when flying was aspirational, not transactional. It wasn’t just about cramming bums on seats and cutting costs by eliminating the free nuts. People dressed up to fly in suits and hats, and gourmet meals were served with tablecloths. Those days are long gone. The U.S. Transportation Secretary recently made the news with a cringe-inducing statement suggesting people should dress up again and return to this Golden Age of Flying, transferring the blame for airline incidents onto passengers instead of the system they’re put through.

Airline security is an absolute farce. There’s little consistency, we’re still removing shoes decades after one lunatic hatched a loony plan, and in some countries (mostly the USA), the TSA treats passengers with the respect of cattle in line at the abattoir. Various studies and trials have repeatedly shown the entire safety screening process to be ineffective at actually stopping a motivated passenger from getting onboard to do harm. Security theatre adds some reassurance, but a whole lot more stress and anxiety. I recently saw a mother arguing with airport security in Toronto about travelling with bottles of pumped breast milk. The baby was right there, but the bottles were over 100 ml, so it was clearly not milk but an explosive substance that would destroy the plane (likely detonated from a diaper).

All this stress chews people up. We become impatient, agitated, annoyed. Then throw in flight delays, poor communication, time changes, crying babies, and missed connections. Cram everyone on the plane and the real miracle is that the vast majority of people manage to keep it together.

The passenger in front of me is farting. One ripper after another. We can all smell it, but we can’t do anything about it. I put my nose in my shirt and smell my body odour, which isn’t great on a long flight but is better than the purple haze wafting over the seat. We’ve all had the restless kid kicking the back of the chair. My daughter is one of those kids. When we fly, I spend a great deal of time slapping her knees down as she contorts in her seat, and meeting the glare of the passenger in front of her. There are other challenges:

• The Recliner vs. The Knee Defender
• The Armrest Duel
• The Overhead Bin Squeeze
• The Oblivious Reading Light
• The Fart Monster

Psychologists call it deindividuation, a fancy term for: “I don’t know anyone here, and nobody knows me, so I’m going to behave however I damn well please.”

This kind of anonymity removes social consequences, but unfortunately, it doesn’t remove social impact. Flight attendants – one of the most under-appreciated professions, along with teachers and bus drivers – have to manage all this without it boiling over. When it does, planes are forced to land and police are called in. If that’s never happened to you (and it’s never happened to me, despite the prodding at the start of the CBC interview), you can credit a flight attendant. They’re heroes, these people. We should treat them as such.

I’m thrilled to announce the launch of a brand new, fully revised and completely overhauled 3rd Edition of The Great Canadian Bucket List.  It’s packed with dozens of new experiences, which is why I wouldn’t call it a replacement of the popular, bestselling Second Edition, more of a continuation.  To make room for new stuff, I had to let go of old stuff, because that’s thing about a Bucket List – the more you do, the more ideas keep popping up!

As you can tell from the cover, the new book is big, bold and beautiful, with a completely different look.  The folks at Dundurn Press did an amazing job, as one expects for a book about an amazing country.   My eye for unique, memorable, doable and bucket list experiences continues, from lakes in British Columbia to the Hudson Bay of Manitoba, from the East Coast Trail in Newfoundland to new adventures in Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and PEI.
The new edition also pays long overdue attention to Indigenous experiences across the country, with more national round-ups and page-popping photography.

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It’s an inspirational gift for students setting out on their own, newcomers, visitors, retirees, clients, members, and everyone who could use a little Canadian wonder.
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“The World Needs More Canada,” said Bono, and after several years of hard work and publishing fairy dust, not it has some.  The new books is widely available at your favourite independent or chain bookstore, as well as online through Amazon or Chapters.  Enjoy!

June

Things kicked off early this summer with a family adventure house-boating down the historic Rideau Canal.  You can read all about that adventure on Canadian Geographic – or watch the super fun video above – and either should get the point across.   Le Boat, Europe’s biggest houseboat rental company, have a range of boats stationed at Smith Falls Ontario, catering for 2, 4, 6, 10 and 12 passengers.  For this to work, the waters need to be calm, there needs to be ports to call on, and it’s all about the locks.  Later in the summer I went on another luxury houseboat experience, this time in France, but as with the rest of Canada, this Le Boat experience is an entirely different experience.  Forget the cheese and wine,  when you cross Big Rideau Lake or take on hundreds of lake islands, this houseboating trip is more rugged, adventurous, spacious that anything you’ll find in Europe, and you won’t have to worry about parking the boat with millimetres to spare in the locks. You also have the friendly lock masters from Parks Canada guiding you along the way.   My extended family joined me on this one, and we had a ball, spending a couple nights in Ottawa on the way.  I love Ottawa in summer.  The festivals, the buzz, the views… it just might be my favourite city under the sun.

July

Somewhat unusually for me, July was dominated by international travel to France and Ireland, where I could finally compare the Wild Atlantic Way to Newfoundland, and back up my claim that you’re simply not comparing Apples to Apples!     Only one will give you a much better appreciation about the country in which you actually live!   We had a fantastic road trip to Sligo, Derry, Belfast and the rock star attraction of Giant's Causeway. You can read all about our adventures in Ireland here.   Taking on active summer kid duty, I did shuttle the kids to Squamish for a wood-working lesson at Create Makerspace they both thoroughly enjoyed.  Teach my kids (and myself) how to use power tools.   You don’t have to travel far to tick off something on your bucket list.   I also took my aunt, visiting from Florida, to see Flyover Canada, as it’s a goose-bump inducing experience for any visitor to Canada, to get a sense of the overwhelming size and beauty of this country.  Given the high cost of everything these days, it’s also very well priced.  My aunt absolutely loved it.

A few days later, I found myself on a plane to Cusco, Peru.  It's a long way to go and yet I felt like I was merely travelling full circle.  20 years ago, Peru was my first port of call on my first big journey around the world, when I was just another backpacker with a wild dream for adventure and the discipline to somehow record it along the way.  I've been to Peru a few times since, but this was my first time back in Cusco, and now I was accompanied by my 12-year old daughter.   We had arrived to do a shortened version of the Inca Trail with an Indigenous-owned local company called Alpaca Expeditions.  I'd also be doing another story about the amazing food in Peru, taking a cooking class and a fabulous street food tour.  I brought along the kid with the adventurous appetite, hoping she'd be able to cope with the altitude and the pace of an assignment.  As you can see in the video, she did more than cope, she thrived.  Cusco looked exactly the same as it did 20 years ago, but a lot has changed too: the crazy traffic, the smart phones, the high-end restaurants and hotels.  Sprinkled among it all were the scraggy backpackers, heading to the Andes for the adventure of a lifetime.  Thinking back to my own adventure in 2005, I could never have imagined returning to Sun Gate - older, wiser, fatter - with so many once-in-a-lifetimes I've lost count, and with a beautiful daughter to keep me company.  Full circle indeed! 

Luxury river boats in France.  Road tripping Ireland.  Hiking in Peru. Racing horses (and a Mustang) in the Cariboo.  Helicopters to the island, Harley Davidsons and a Gold Rush.  How was my summer?   Epic, as always. 

Ideas for my stories are birthed from an unpredictable algorithm of curiosity, public interest, and outreach from partners in the tourism industry.  Looking back at the first part of this year, you can see this in action.

CURIOSITY: 
On rare date night, Mrs Esrock and I took an amble down Commercial Drive in Vancouver, strolling past a store that had just opened for business.  It was called Mocktails, and billed itself as the city’s first alcohol-free liquor store.  Between the craft beer, wineries, cocktails and distilleries, alcohol is firmly entrenched in the world of tourism, long associated with good times and fine living.   The dark side of it is well, kept in the dark:  alcoholism, drunk driving, binge drinking, the horrific impact of alcohol on social violence and domestic abuse.  You just don’t see this stuff in the tourism brochures.   With a precipitous (and one might argue encouraging) decline in alcohol consumption among younger generations, non-alcoholic cocktails, beers and wines are increasingly showing up on drink menus.  Here is a non-boozy booze store founded by a passionate advocate for the cause, spearheading a taste revolution as producers up their game to cater to a growing market.   The story I wrote for Canadian Geographic – Canada’s Non-Alcoholic Revolution – went down smooth and easy, and picked up writing awards in the Food and Wine Category from both the Society of American Travel Writers and the Travel Media Association of Canada.  Added to previous awards from both professional associations for Family Travel, Service Feature the Lowell Thomas Gold Medal for Best Blog (a Lowell Thomas is one of the highest accolades one can receive in my profession), it’s inspiring to know my stories can make a difference with both readers and industry.

PUBLIC INTEREST
Have you ever rented a houseboat down the Rideau Canal?   At the end of my travel talks at client events for Canada’s best wealth advisors, the floor opens up for a Q&A.  Sometimes the questions are practical: “Can you recommend a great place to stay in Portugal?”   Sometimes it’s life coaching: “My wife and I are looking for an adventure but nothing too crazy, do you think we should do it?”   Sometimes it’s travel advice: “Do you have any packing tips?”  And sometimes, it’s a lead I that inspires me to chase it down, like: “Have you ever rented a houseboat down the Rideau Canal?”   From an idea or suggestion to actually getting there and publishing a story usually takes a few years.  Many stars have to align, like calendars, marketing plans, editorial schedules, and partner interest.  Houseboating down the Rideau took a few years before it all came together, but unfortunately it was too late to include in the third edition of The Great Canadian Bucket List out later this year.  As a multi-generational discovery of southern Ontario and Canadian lore, the story –  Exploring Ontario’s historic Rideau Canal by houseboat: A scenic journey through Canadian history – sparked tremendous interest online, becoming the top story at Canadian Geographic Travel.   

PARTNER OUTREACH
Every day, I receive press releases about destination marketing initiatives, activities, hotels, and news from across the domestic and international tourism industry.  Travel media is the megaphone for an industry that generates 10% of global GDP (a staggering US$10.9 trillion) and accounts for an estimated 357 million jobs (source: WTTC).   You might have an incredible city, restaurant or cruise ship, but that doesn’t mean much if people don’t know about it.  Billions are spent on advertising, but until the day our AI Overlords usher us into Extraction Pods to harvest our energy (source: The Matrix), the most powerful form of advertising will always be compelling and authentic storytelling.  Outlets include print, broadcast and social media, and for me personally, have transitioned from newspaper columns to digital columns, and lately the stage.  All my platforms are hungry for content and I serve as a filter for peak travel experiences that capture the imagination.  A perfect example:   Cruising down the Nile with the kids, or hiking in comfort in the Australian outback, or snowmobiling in Ontario or kayaking under the stars in New Brunswick’s Hopewell Rocks.   I also love shining a light on innovations, like the fastest growing indoor recreational activity in North America (born in Winnipeg) and how the best travel can be inspiring, quirky, and inclusive.  None of the stories above would have happened if hard-working pros in the PR game hadn’t brought them to my attention, so that I could bring it to yours.

​NEW VIDEOS:
 
I often film and edit videos to accompany my written stories, building a visual repertoire of my most memorable bucket list experiences.  Although my videos have over a million views, I don’t consider myself a hardworking Youtuber, working the algorithm to maximize eyeballs.  Kudos to them, it’s a ton of work few can appreciate behind the scenes.  Hell, it’s a ton of work just making a video.    Since my first Youtube clip 20 years ago (called Something to Make You Dream), I’ve continued to produce punchy montage videos soundtracked to the songs I love.   Occasionally, I'll get help from friends, like award-winning photographer Jeff Topham.    Here’s some fun recent videos you might have missed. 

When you do what I do, unusual things sometimes happen.  Such as:  finding myself getting smashed with actor Dan Aykroyd as we drain bottles of his Crystal Head Vodka. We were at a remote dinosaur dig in Alberta during a celebrity fundraiser for a new dinosaur museum named after the real-life inspiration for the Sam Neill character in Jurassic Park.   Later I would share a day in a helicopter with the president of the illustrious Explorers Club, who invited me to be the Master of Ceremonies at the club’s infamous annual dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Following previous MC’s including Aykroyd, Dan Rather, and other celebrities better known and more qualified, I assumed she was joking.

​Months later it all actually manifested and off I went to New York to hold centre stage at a black-tie dinner with astronauts, ambassadors, billionaires, legendary filmmakers, explorers and scientific legends.  I would wear an oversize rental tuxedo with a bright orange tie, read from a teleprompter, and be introduced on stage by drummers from Papua New Guinea.  I didn’t write the script in a tightly managed, big-budget and choreographed evening, which happened to be the night before a board coup that ousted the lovely president who invited me, seemingly jettisoning everything she touched, myself included.   That evening, I sat next to director Ken Burns, an intense chap who read a monotone keynote about Lewis and Clark. I love Ken Burns documentaries, his keynotes less so.   I introduced and handed awards to some real legends, including astronaut Buzz Aldin, a man with a twinkle in his eyes who clearly knows exactly how to enjoy himself.  I also shared the stage with the late US wildlife TV legend Jim Fowler, and an iguana clearly delighted to avoid the dinner table.

The buffet at the annual dinner is legendary, stacked with delicious invasive species like grilled lionfish, water bugs, rattlesnake, iguana, emu, and delectable goat penis on a stick.   This is the Explorers Club after all.   As my mug appeared on big screens, I expect most people were wondering who the hell I was, and where my accent came from.  At the bar, I learned just how tense things were that year, politically, in a members-only society that should rival its competitor National Geographic for global renown.   After all, Hillary planted an Explorers Club flag on Everest, and Neil Armstrong took one to the moon.   Yet while National Geographic embraced the public with a magazine and TV shows, the Explorers Club retreated into a shadowy elite organization, sequestered behind impressive stone walls in its old-world rowhouse headquarters in New York.  
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Things have long since improved under a revitalized new board, but when I stepped into the building the morning after the event to learn more about the club and conduct some interviews, intrigue and ego dripped from the walls. A prickly atmosphere clashed with the medals, curios, awards, and photographs of illustrious members accomplishing otherworldly things.   Yes, there’s a full sized stuffed polar bear in the library, and yes, the Explorers Club has counted US presidents, titans of industry and today’s most famous billionaires as members.    In case you’re wondering, it’s a process to join this Freemasonry of Adventure. 

​Joining me that weekend in New York was my friend and filmmaker Ian Mackenzie, and we thought it would be fun to capture the absurdity of our adventure by paying tribute to the mystery of the organization.  So, I wrote something up and adopted an accent as bad as my rental tuxedo, narrating a film noir video that does actually take you inside the dinner and organization.   Shooting it for Matador in a brief moment of time when the organization didn’t mind some public attention, I thought it would be fun to unearth that video and share it here.

As for the dinosaur dig that kicked it off, in attendance was also Robert F Kennedy Jnr, who is a lot better known now than he was back then.  I brushed away dirt from fossils with the Aykroyd family, and the Philip J Currie Dinosaur Museum just celebrated its 10th anniversary in Grande Prairie.    I collected a few more experiences too weird to make up, and because of that chance encounter with ambassador of Papua New Guinea at the event, I ended up learning to scuba dive in a truly remarkable part of the world.  I was never invited to join the actual Explorers Club, but several of my friends are members, and I’m perfectly happy to be a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society instead.  In the end, we’re all on our own personal adventures.