Nearly three-quarters (73%) say they would consider travelling specifically to visit a unique business or attraction, and 63% plan to research shops, restaurants, and activities before they go.
“It’s encouraging to hear that Canadians are planning to support local small businesses as part of their vacation plans this summer, as it helps both entrepreneurs and our local economies,” said Julia Kelly, Vice President, Small Business Banking at TD. “It’s particularly welcome news, as many of our small business customers have been concerned about consumer spending slowing down.”
The survey also found strong interest in cottage country travel, especially among younger Canadians. Forty-six percent of Gen Z and 42% of Millennials say they plan to visit cottages this summer. Of those, 96% intend to support local establishments including restaurants, shops, and marinas.
- Ormiston Pound – West MacDonnell NP, Northern Territory
- Cradle Mountain Summit – Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair NP, Tasmania
- Carnarvon Gorge NP, Queensland
- Light to Light (northern section) – Beowa NP, New South Wales
- Spit Bridge to Manly – Sydney Harbour NP, NSW
- Bunyeroo and Wilcolo Creek Hike – Flinders Ranges NP, South Australia
- Tongariro Crossing – Tongariro NP, New Zealand
- Rob Roy Glacier Track – Mount Aspiring NP, NZ
Read the article for more details.
We had just set out on the 837km Route of Caravans: Morocco Traverse (North), the second leg of a recently completed two-tier cycling trail traversing the length of Morocco from the town of Tiznit on the country’s south-western coast to Tangier in the north. Since a digital map of the route’s northern leg debuted on the adventure-cycling website Bikepacking in autumn 2024, it has lured bikepackers (off-road cyclists who carry overnight gear) to wind, slalom and climb their way from the town of Imilchil in the High Atlas Mountains past rolling hills and alpine passes to the Mediterranean port city, where they can catch a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain.
Tracing its arc from southern desert to northern beaches, the trail’s two legs make use of ancient caravan roads trod by camels’ hooves and shepherd paths used by the country’s Indigenous Amazigh (long referred to as “Berber” by outsiders) communities who have called Morocco home for some 20,000 years. The route is the result of a long-held dream of a handful of adventurous international cyclists keen to forge a path through some of Morocco’s least-visited regions.
The Badger Divide, is a 210-mile off-road route that winds, climbs, dips and slaloms through the Scottish Highlands from Inverness to Glasgow. Along the way, it passes through some of Scotland’s greatest lochs (including Ness and Laggan), most expansive glens, least touched moorland, richest forests and the 25-mile Corrieyairack mountain pass.
The route attracts a growing number of long-distance, off-road cyclists who carry their gear with them on two wheels. Known as “bikepackers”, these self-propelled adventurers are eager to test their physical and mental resolve on the Badger while also getting to sleep under the stars, wild camp at lochs and experience remote landscapes.
But for all its splendour, the trail isn’t found on any official map or signpost.
A car that’s been sitting at the bottom of Lake Minnewanka for more than eight decades has been located and photographed by a group of divers.
It’s believed the 1928 Hudson Essex Saloon broke through the ice and sank some 85 years ago and has been sitting 55 metres below the surface ever since at the popular lake in Banff National Park. The lake is a big draw for scuba divers because a dam built in 1940 forever submerged the summer village of Minnewanka Landing.
Three divers from Alberta and B.C. recently made the journey to the lake’s dark and icy depths and took some spectacular pictures of the car.
Calgary’s Alan Keller was interviewed by CBC’s Loren McGinnis.
Setting off from the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral in London in April 2015, Lake travelled clockwise around the island, breaking the epic journey up into legs ranging from two days to two months. In total, he walked for 454 days, covering more than 6,835 miles, camping along the way.
Having spent much of his career as a photographer in far-flung locations, his British coastal expedition was a deliberate decision to seek out artistic inspiration closer to home. By the time he’d completed the journey, closing the loop in September 2020, he not only had thousands of photographs and a remarkable visual archive, but a deeper understanding of the island’s history, geography, industry, architecture, nature and identity.
At age 34, Danish traveller Thor Pedersen left behind a stable career and a relationship to take on an extraordinary challenge. He spent the next decade working towards his goal. On May 23rd 2023, he reached the final country, Maldives, completing the project. Today, Torbjørn C. Pedersen is the only person to have reached every country in the world without flying.
- Human generosity can be astounding
- There are still some hidden and spectacular natural wonders
- People’s resilience is powerful
- Isolating yourself is a mistake
- What you want and what you need are not the same thing
- You can form connections without sharing a language
- Slow travel teaches you how big the world is
- The constant challenges of travelling provide an education
Walking is a congenial way of stitching a community together; when I head out at 6 a.m. on jet-lagged mornings, it’s to see many of my mostly retired neighbors taking themselves and their dogs on sociable constitutionals. Nobody is ever jogging unless it’s a foreigner. Walking is a way to slow oneself down, to cultivate attentiveness and to return to the elements, as the roundabout entrances to the museums on the islands of Naoshima and Teshima encourage visitors to do. A country that lacks Western-style addresses, where simply extricating yourself from a train station can take 10,000 steps, is made for the flâneur who recalls the German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s observation that not finding your way is very different from getting lost.
The Véloroute Gourmande is a 235km paved and gravel cycling trail connecting Montréal and the city of Sherbrooke in southern Québec.
Launched in 2022, the path threads Québec’s bucolic villages and lake-laced landscapes, passing more than 100 culinary stops from Montréal to Sherbrooke.
Much of the trail follows a portion of the Route Verte, whose 5,300km crisscross Québec and comprise the longest network of cycling paths in North America. But aside from its length, the main difference between the two routes is that the Véloroute Gourmande was essentially designed as a slow travel food tour. While pedalling across Québec’s countryside, cyclists can stop to refuel on gravy-slicked French fries, tarts filled with blueberry jam, coffee gussied up with maple syrup or booze flavoured with boreal herbs, forest mushrooms or wildflowers.
The Véloroute’s interactive map features 120 icons – including tiny forks, beer glasses and squat jam jars – that denote places to stop for things like golden panini stuffed with house-cured ham and bloomy rind cheese, dark ale delicately scented with spruce tips or wedges of cheese to squash into one’s panniers and nosh by the side of the road.
The 1,400km Via Transilvanica, runs diagonally across Romania from north-east to south-west, mostly through the mountains, forests, and villages of the Transylvania region.
It joins together some of Europe’s most traditional landscapes and communities with 12 Unesco World Heritage sites.
The route was launched two years ago (it’s already the winner of a Europa Nostra Award recognising outstanding heritage conservation initiatives) and passes through some of Europe’s most traditional landscapes, rich in bears and wolves. It also ticks off 12 Unesco World Heritage sites and brings new life (and revenue) to remote, rural communities – communities that still scythe hay by hand, travel around by horse and cart and eat food they’ve grown themselves.
And crucially the route also connects some 18 different ethnic and cultural regions in the rich tapestry that constitutes modern-day Romania. Which is why it has been dubbed “the road that unites”.
