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Home > interviews

interviews

Interview with Kristen Sarah of Hopscotch the Globe

Toronto-based travel blogger and actress Kristen Sarah started her blog, Hopscotch the Globe, two years ago, after she already had quite a bit of global travel under her belt. She’s added more than a dozen countries to her list since then, has logged more than a year of combined travel time and spent 10 months travelling the world non-stop in 2011.

Her videos may be what most differentiates Kristen’s blog from other travel diaries. As an actress, she’s a natural performer and posts comedic, informational travel videos every week. In her So You Want to Travel the World video series she shares tips on round-the-world travel, like how to budget for a round-the-world trip (while still eating five meals a day) and what to pack—in which she amazingly fits everything into a single carry-on. (more…)

Meet Rick VanSickle: Wine Writer and Niagara Wine Region Expert

In the 1990s, few wine writers were focusing on Canadian wine. Rick VanSickle, then the executive Sunday editor for the Calgary Sun, was a frequent visitor to Okanagan Valley wine region from his then home in Calgary and when the wine writer position at his paper became available in 1999, he snatched it up himself (it helps to be the boss!) and started peppering his wine coverage with stories about homegrown wine varieties. He later branched out, writing wine columns in Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto and Winnipeg, and eventually moved to his current  home in St. Catharines, Ontario (he’s a Toronto native), to focus on the Niagara wine region. (more…)

Meet Vancouver Food Writer Tim Pawsey

Tim Pawsey likes to say that he’s been writing about food and wine for 25 kilos. That badge of honour wasn’t achieved overnight: he has worked as a wine, food and travel writer for 25 years to get there. A longtime resident of Vancouver’s West End, he specializes in B.C. cuisine, but has been known to dip into other areas of Canada and—in terms of wine, especially—around the globe.

Tim’s food-and-wine-writing career started with a bang: a three-month race around the world with Charles Heidsieck Champagne. Today, Tim frequently judges wine competitions (such as the Okanagan Wine Festival) and is a frequent contributor to Where Vancouver magazine. (more…)

Meet Moose Travel Network Guide Brian Lihou

The Moose Travel Network is a Canadian tour company that buses young and “young-at-heart” backpackers to locales throughout Canada and the U.S. for adventures like sea kayaking in Cape Breton; luge-ing in Mont Tremblant; horseback riding in Banff; and bungee jumping in Whistler.

Brian Lihou has worked for Moose Travel East as a guide since 2007. He started guiding tours in Niagara Falls and Algonquin Provincial Park and graduated to larger tours through Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes and the U.S. He’s on the road with Moose Network tours almost nonstop between May and October and often in his “off-season” as well. (more…)

Meet Food and Travel Writer Cinda Chavich

Cinda Chavich knows food, and Canadian food in particular. She has 30 years of journalism experience—20 of them as a food and wine writer—under her belt and  is a regular contributor to Avenue magazine (Calgary), West magazine and the Canadian Tourism Commission Web site. She is the cooking columnist for Alberta’s CBC radio and has written five cookbooks, including bestsellers High Plains: The Joy of Alberta Cuisine, The Girl Can’t Cook and The Guy Can’t Cook.

A product of the Prairies, Cinda was born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan, and has lived in Lethbridge, Saskatoon and Calgary. As we speak, she’s pulling up her deep Prairie roots to set up shop in Victoria, B.C. (more…)

Meet Outdoor and Adventure Travel Writer Meghan J. Ward

Meghan near Everest Base Camp in Nepal (Photo: Paul Zizka)

Adventure travel specialist Meghan J. Ward lives in one of the best locations on the planet for outdoors enthusiasts: Banff National Park. The content specialist for Banff Lake Louise Tourism, editor of Canadian Rockies culture publication Highline Magazine, and freelance writer for Parks Canada, Travel Alberta and numerous outdoors publications, Meghan is someone you want to listen to if you’re planning a trip to Canada’s adventure capital. You can also read her musings on everything from waterproof sneakers to climbing Mt. Everest at her blog, The Campsite.

Born in Calgary and raised in Ottawa, Meghan headed back west for summer jobs in Banff during university and relocated to Banff for good in 2008. She travels extensively throughout Canada (to six provinces and Nunavut in the past two years alone!) and recently spent nine weeks in Nepal, where she hiked to Everest Base Camp and through Upper Mustang, among other adventures. (more…)

Meet Travel Writer Carolyn Heller

Carolyn B. Heller is one of those veteran travel writers you want to talk to, whether you need advice about travelling in Ontario or China. In her more than 15 years as a professional travel writer she’s authored or contributed to more than 50 guidebooks for Avalon Travel, Lonely Planet, Fodor’s and Zagat and covered destinations in more than 40 countries across six continents. (more…)

Meet Travel Writer Mariellen Ward of BreatheDreamGo

Read a bit of Mariellen Ward’s blog BreatheDreamGo and you quickly realize this is not your average travel blog. She specializes in the transformational and meaningful aspects of travel. Her own travel awakening came with the fulfillment of a lifelong dream in 2005: six months travelling in India, which she says completely changed her life, and she now refers to India as her “soul culture”. One of those life changes was the evolution of her career from corporate writing and editing to travel writing and editing. (more…)

Meet Rebecca Bollwitt of Vancouver Blog Miss604

Perhaps better known as Miss 604, Rebecca Bollwitt is a prolific Vancouver-based blogger who clues her readers into daily happenings in and around Vancouver, writes about short getaways from the city and shares interesting tidbits about the Vancouver’s history (including daily city archives photos).

She’s been at it since 2004 and in that time has been voted one of BC’s Top 100 Women of Influence by the Vancouver Sun and received various accolades for her blog, including Best Vancouver Blog by local weekly the Georgia Straight for three years in a row.

Rebecca also operates a WordPress design and development firm, sixty4media, and has written a book, Blogging to Drive Business, being released in its second edition this fall. (more…)

Meet the Montreal Food Blogger Behind This Is Why We’re Fat

Some of the many mouthwatering food photos from This Is Why We're Fat

Montreal food blogger Erika David says the most important qualification in her bio is that “I LOVE to eat!” Her passion for food and for her native city of Montreal definitely come across in the restaurant reviews on her blog, This Is Why We’re Fat, which she started in December 2010.

Each review is accompanied by multiple mouthwatering close-ups of food. We also love the lack of pretension: she covers everything from “crummy hole in the walls to stuffy, stuck-up eateries” and doesn’t mince words when highly rated places fall short of expectations. (more…)

Interview with Trish Sare of BikeHike Adventures

Trish Sare started her adventure tour company with a single trip to Costa Rica in 1994 from her then-home in Toronto. Today, Vancouver-based BikeHike Adventures offers multi-sport tours in twenty-nine countries on six continents. Trips range from horseback riding in Romania and caving in New Zealand to volunteering at a school in Thailand (along with biking the Golden Triangle) or adventures closer to home, sea kayaking, whale watching, hiking and more in Canada.

(more…)

Meet Kelly and Lee of Global Goose Travel

Kelly and Lee of Global-Goose.com at Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland

Kelly Dunning and Lee Carter set out from their respective homes (she from Canada and he from the UK) to see other parts of the world in 2009, met in New Zealand and eventually decided to make a nomadic life together, working on the road and living “with no other possessions than the ones that we carry in our backpacks”. (more…)

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