Unlikely road-trip. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com CANADA

A road-trip through Quebec’s Magdalen Islands

(Old Harry) You can’t escape the irony of talking about a road-trip when traveling along a single road of a sparsely populated set of windswept islands in the middle of the Gulf of the St-Lawrence. While the road here is long it only meanders slightly; you never really get lost. You do make stops on the journey, though, listening to the tales of island storytellers; fishermen or wanderers who somehow chose to make Quebec’s Magdalen Islands home.

In this unlikely setting I discovered a landscape peppered with small colourful houses and dreamy vistas. The eclectic mix of people who live here run the gamut from those who settled on these islands centuries ago and who live off of the fruit of the sea.

A lighthouse at sunset attracts crowds here and from one area to the next the language spoken, the dialect and even the flags flown change. The population of these islands includes a mix of descendants of survivors of the over 400 shipwrecks that landed here over the centuries. Their inhabitants are an assortment of both English and French speaking people to those whose ancestors were Acadians who once took refuge here, to those who simply chose life on the periphery.

The journey to the Magdalen Islands
The trip to Cap-aux-Meules, the main port settlement, began for in Montreal on the St-Laurence River on the CMTA Vacancier. The ship is a clunky ferry that runs tourists from Montreal to the Magdalen Islands every summer. It stops in Quebec City and Chandler, passing the scenic Gaspé Bay and it’s iconic pierced rock. This is no luxury-liner but a comfortable sail with a swath of Quebec society; many head to these islands like a yearly pilgrimage.

The winter months on the Magdalen Islands are cold and bleak until spring comes to life and local fishermen head to sea, while others prepare for tourists to flock to the shores. From the port at Cap-aux-Meules, south to Île du Havre Aubert, to small settlements like Pointe-aux-Loups, or up north to Grosse Île, most of the islands are interconnected along one singular route.

As I walked off of the ship in Cap-aux-Meules, a small hatchback was parked at the side of a road. The doors unlocked and the keys were simply placed on the windshield, left to me for this road trip. It was a matter of starting the ignition and rolling away towards the blue skies of Île du Havre Aubert. 

I turned on the radio to U2’s “The Sweetest Thing”, the windows open, I felt the exuberance of a carefree existence.

The journey south began to a setting of flocking birds, sandy beaches and small rural villages. Eventually I turned off from Route 199 – what some locals like to call the ‘Trans-Magdalen’ route – and onto Île du Havre Aubert’s scenic highway with its porous terracotta cliffs perched high over the sea.

The Magdalen Islands are a set of scenic and sparsely populated set of windswept islands. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com CANADA

At Le Site D’autrefois, translated ‘the place of other times’, a sole fisherman sat vigil at this miniature recreation of an old-time fishing village. He recounted stories of the life of the early ‘medelinots’. He talked of how one local once brought in a twenty-six pound lobster, then the rise and fall of island fishing. He even confronted the contentious issue of the seal hunt and the intermittent comings and goings of activists onto the islands. Seal hunting has been practiced here for generations, and famously international celebrity Martin Sheen was chased away from a hotel in the Magdalen Islands in 1996 when he arrived here to protest the practice. It is in small communities like this that the concepts of urban life clash with the long-honored traditions of a local community.

The storytellers of the Magdalen Islands
The next day I head out to sea on a fishing boat with island storyteller Elaine Richard. She tells the tales of the organic geological birth of the islands, stories of one-time shipwrecks or the origins of the peculiar local accent. The Acadians who came here in the 19^th century dropped a letter from their speech, she says, so repugnant was the idea of even pronouncing the first letter of the word ‘roi’, or ‘king’.

“I became a storyteller because I was motivated by the idea of telling our stories to the children before they leave the island,” she says, recalling the large number of islanders who set off every year towards more prosperous urban areas. “At least this way they can make their own judgment about whether to stay.”

Richard tells the stories and histories of the people of the islands to local schools during the winter months, and at local or international festivals. The fact that she remained on the islands is a twist of her own fate. Her father could only send one child to school, and she was the one who ended up staying. 

They lived, she says, in the abundance of the strict minimum – but as a result today she appreciates what she learned of island folklore. “We have to be conscious about our stories,” she says.

About halfway up the island chain is Aunt Emma, another notable island storyteller. Her tales come with vibrant musical accompaniment at a local bar. One of seventeen children and raised in the small northern community of Pointe-aux-Loups, she tells and sings the tales and local legends, and pokes fun at linguistic quirks or rivalries between neighbouring islands.

The Café de l’Est
The last leg of my trip had me heading northwards toward the more remote corners of Grosse Île and Old Harry. I stop at Le Fumoir D’Antan, a boutique and herring smokehouse where a family is reviving a tradition that largely died out with the decline of the fish stocks here during the 1970s, and then haphazardly meet with characters like Byron Clark on Grosse Île, who painstakingly repairs old organs on the edges of a remote island road.

The clouds rolled in as I headed towards the most northern and distant of the Magdalen Islands, passing small churches, beachfronts and even a salt mine.

A lighthouse at sunset attracts crowds at the Magdalen Islands. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com CANADA

At Old Harry, on Grosse Île is Café de L’Est, a small marine-blue eatery off of a verdant field with hardly a neighbor to talk about. A jovial Shyam Amsel, an ethnic Hungarian-Slovak-Jew who grew up on the streets of Montreal, waits on the restaurant that serves the best clam chowder that I’ve ever had. 

Amsel traveled the globe in his 20s, venturing as far as India looking for meaning and spiritual enlightenment. He also visited the Magdalen Islands in his youth, but it was only much later that he took the leap of faith and head over here, trying to invent coffee-culture on these remote islands.

“Then I learned that the reason that there was no café was that the madelinots were not that interested in cafes. The rhythm of life was different here.” While he knows that he will never be an ‘islander’, he does feel a part of a diverse but nourishing community.

“The horizon goes on forever here and my eye wanders out into the eternity, and that touches the eternity within me,” he concludes, “Wherever I hang my hat is home and all of the people are family. We are all brothers and sisters here, not by blood way, but it’s all right.”

DIVERSE MIX. Members of the Mile End Chavurah in Montreal hold a service. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com CANADA

Montreal’s Mile End Chavurah takes a novel approach to Jewish identity and ritual

At a recent service of a nascent Jewish group, a woman announced her coming out in front of her community. But the point was not that she was gay. Her friends already knew that, she said. It was because, she admitted, she didn’t believe in God. But her lack of faith didn’t impede her desire to participate in Jewish ritual and spirituality. She was comfortable surrounded by a community with whom she could explore Judaism.

Shortly thereafter, the Mile End Chavurah’s spiritual voice, Rachel Kronick, guitar in hand, followed suit in admitting her own atheism. For this exceptional service, having taken place in the presence of a Torah, she offered to pretend. While some members of the group may individually profess ambivalent views toward the notion of God, this vibrant community is united in its desire to explore Judaism and its rituals.

New ways of connecting
Its approach values individual journeys toward Judaism in an open environment. This is self-serve Judaism, where one can take or leave or even adapt traditions, depending on personal convictions.

“There are so many people who don’t fit anymore in the boxes of traditional synagogues,” says Kronick, “There are so many people who identify with Judaism, and approach Jewish identity with a sense of ambivalence. They might not have a straightforward, uncritical view about Israel, or they may have married non-Jews.

“While they are deeply curious about Jewish spirituality, they are uncomfortable with the orthodoxy that exists within many synagogues. They just want something that feels heimishe.”

Kronick begins some services with a sort of poetic ode. She welcomes a diverse lot that range from those whose backgrounds are anchored in Jewish life to others for whom Jewish rituals are altogether new. “Some of us were dragged here – by our partner, by a parent, even by a child – and we aren’t convinced we even want to be here,” recites Kronick. “Some of us are Jews by choice… Some of us are not Jews. »

“Some of us don’t read a word of Hebrew,” she goes on, reciting at a metronomic pace. “For some of us, Hebrew is our mother tongue. Some of us keep kosher. Some of us keep kosher at home and eat bacon out.”

Mile End Chavurah's Rachel Kronick (right) and Layla Dabby (left) leading a musical Hanukkah service. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com CANADA

Founding a community
The Mile End Chavurah grew into a community from a small group that Kronick gathered together for a founding meeting in a local café in the spring of 2009. She set out to develop a grassroots, innovative community that she felt would fill a need for an open space to study, a place to debate and explore Judaism and its rituals.

“It was intriguing because suddenly I was meeting other people who had similar things to say about their relationship with organized Judaism,” says Layla Dabby, a founding member, recalling the first meeting. “It was responding to a sense of alienation or disconnect, of not feeling represented. It was surprising to me; up to that point I didn’t realize that other people existed besides me that felt that way.”

The group began by celebrating small Shabbat dinners at each other’s homes, initially with 10 to 20 people attending. They later adopted a church and cultural center which was once a synagogue. This is where the group holds services that include Shabbat dinners, holiday celebrations, guest speakers and meditation in the context of potluck vegetarian meals.

The group follows in a tradition of havurot that date back in North America to the 1960s and 1970s. These fellowships were initiated to hold holiday prayer services or facilitate Shabbat dinners. They have traditionally favored an egalitarian approach, rather than hierarchical structures.

“Most fundamentally I get a community,” says Dabby, who has since been joined by other family members. “I have this group of people that I can see myself getting older with, going through different stages in my life and with whom to share major events, of sharing and exploring an identity. It is a great gift that I never expected to have, and I am very grateful for it.”

New ways of thinking, new approaches
Among its growing number of programs and events, the Mile End Chavurah recently held a community-wide educational event featuring Rabbi David Ingber of Romemu, a progressive New York-based Jewish community, to share the approach of a more inclusive form of Judaism.

These groups are two of several North American movements that are challenging stratified notions of Jewish celebration. They are taking religion out of the synagogue and into people’s homes, encouraging the adaptation of traditions to individual desires. The Mile End Chavurah welcomes gays and lesbians, and offers the space to approach traditions with a critical eye.

“We are not trying to do flashy cool things, but we are simply trying to engage in an authentic spiritual inquiry together,” says Kronick, herself the product of a mixed marriage whose mother converted to Judaism.

“There is nothing that we are not open to. Someone can come to chavurah and say that ‘I am really uncomfortable with Judaism,’ or ‘I am uncomfortable being a Jew.’ There is space to explore. People can come in and say that I feel really committed as a Jew, and there is space for that, too.”

In a matter of months, the Mile End Chavurah went from intimate Shabbat dinners in people’s apartments to members par- ticipating in regional retreats and conferences. It even surprised some in the community when some 250 persons attended High Holy Day services, and potluck dinners also began to attract a wide variety of new members.

Through a newsletter and social media, the group mushroomed and finally received granting from Gen J, a funding body of the mainstream Jewish community which is intent on attracting a new demographic into the larger Jewish community. The group now includes a diverse array of members whose interests include ways to express Judaism in environmental, gastronomic or spiritual terms.

Tamara Kramer brings an international flair to the table with her radio program Shtetl on the Shortwave, which doubles as a Jewish cultural magazine. The program has a dizzying array of themes from in-depth interviews with proponents of this city’s vibrant musical scene to a talk with the spiritual leader of the Abayudaya, a Jewish community in Uganda.

More openness, an inclusive space
“The new generation wants much more freedom in how they define their way to be Jewish,” says Andres Spokoiny, chief executive officer of Federation CJA in Montreal. “They demand much more openness, an inclusive space to be able to express their Judaism in the way that they choose to do so.”

While the definition of openness put forward by Spokoiny differs markedly from that of the Mile End Chavurah, the CJA has welcomed the group at arm’s length, but significantly with financial support. One key to understanding the shift is a changing demographic among the community here.

Montreal’s Jewish community has become increasingly multicultural, multilingual and multi-ethnic. From a predominantly Anglo- phone and Ashkenazi face, migrant populations, Russians, a vibrant Sephardi community, Jews from South America and even Israel have now enriched it.

Yet while Spokoiny talks of inclusion in terms of mixed marriages between Ashkenazim and Sephardim or integrating Jews of various ethnic backgrounds into the greater community, the Chavurah remains much more open-ended.

For the traditional Jewish institutions of Montreal – one of North America’s most dynamic communities – associations like the Mile End Chavurah also represent a strategic interest. For them, opening to those with less traditional approaches to Judaism comes down to demographics.

There can be beauty in people disagreeing, says student Simone Lucas. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com CANADA

These movements act as a catalyst to attract new segments who don’t feel at home with the more traditional institutions.

Contentious issue of Israel on the table
“There can be a beauty in people disagreeing, and in the Jewish community, it is a kind of a stereotype,” says university student Simone Lucas, who attends Mile End Chavurah events. “I think that with this group there is more of a willingness to discuss without having to arrive at a conclusion. There is a willingness to make things work with what we have without having to put boundaries attached to one view or perspective. Those are the underlying values.”

Lucas was attracted to participating in Jewish ritual, an open-ended approach to Judaism and seriously prodding intellectual questions. But for her, it doesn’t stop there. Being exposed to the contentious issues surrounding Israel on the university campuses led her to seek a space where openness existed to talk about these issues without preconceived notions.

“There is a lot of talk about Israel and a lot of activism around Palestinian liberation, but there is an emotional difficulty in talking about it,” she says. “Hillel, for instance, doesn’t respond well a lot of the time. We have been fed a lot of narratives and stories that are hard to detach ourselves from. Sometimes there is a need to talk about it, because it is really important. Jews feel certain accountability for it.”

The writer is a member of the Mile End Chavurah. He visits and reports on diverse communities around the world, and is the edi- tor of the travel website ontheglobe.com. This article first appeared in the Jerusalem Post Magazine.

‘Shtetl on the Shortwave’
Mile End Chavurah member Tamara Kramer brings edgy alternative Jewish Montreal to the world, and global stories of her own to this city. Astute and always seeking the unusual angle to all things Jewish, Kramer is the host of Shtetl on the Shortwave (shtetlmontreal.com), an online alternative Jewish cultural magazine and radio program. The show features interviews with an array of artists from the suave, musical or edgy to the quirky or the simply curious.

“People have an interest in Jewish culture, whether they are Jewish or not. They want to access it, but they do not know how,” says Kramer. “The traditional routes to find out what is going on in the Jewish world don’t always speak to everybody.”

Of her show, she says, “It’s bringing together what is important, interesting and deep about Jewish life. Showing how it is relevant to young people who might not be interested in going to a synagogue or who are disenchant- ed with the Jewish world but who still want to have a connection but don’t feel comfortable in traditional Jewish spaces that we have here in Montreal.”
Kramer has featured a vibrant mix of guests. They have included an inter- view with a spiritual voice from the Abayudaya – a Jewish community in Uganda – as well as in-depth inter- views with the likes of local musician Socalled, who performs in porn halls and then causes a stir as he attempts to play with a female singer in an Orthodox synagogue.

She even points to one of her more unusual voices, Zohar Weiman Kel- man. She is an Israeli doctoral student who approaches Judaism from the study of Yiddish poets of the early 20th century in Poland – all while heading out to queer Jewish spirituali- ty events in California and performing as Shabbes’dik, a drag-king performance based on a likeness of her rabbi grandfather in his youth. The package results in a unique, amusing and entertaining mix.

“A lot of Jewish people and people in general are really in the closet with a lot of their questions,” says Kramer. “It’s true that in a traditional setting people can’t say, ‘I’m married to a non- Jew’ or ‘I’m bisexual and interested in Jewish arts and culture and religion.’ But that is the reality with a lot of Jewish people today. They might be inter- married, part of the secular world or just part of global culture. But they still want to find a connection to the Jewish culture.”

Branding-day offers a glimpse at the pioneering western lifestyle. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com CANADA

Branding day in Saskatchewan gives a glimpse into the true western experience

(Cypress Hills) I may have looked silly rounding up cattle on the western prairie. What kind of a cowboy wears a helmet and rides a stubborn half-breed painter horse through the Western Canadian landscape? Yet while I may have been a strange looking cowboy, there was nothing unauthentic about my experience on the edges of the baby-green rolling Cypress Hills in the southern corner of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.

“When people watch cowboy movies they come out here thinking that that is how it goes. I just tell them not to believe everything they see on TV,” said eighteen-year old Leanne Reesor, a fifth generation rancher and the youngest child living on the The Historic Reesor Ranch. “I don’t even like watching movies with people running around and yelping heehaw and throwing their ropes. That’s not the way it is.”

But here the unfamiliar quickly became comfortable as I went on to eat prairie oysters and an end-of-day feast with the extended Reesor family. We watched the sun go down while her cowboy-poet father Scott Reesor recited verses about life on the ranch. This was after a day rounding up about two hundred cattle and the branding, castration and inoculation of dozens of calves.

But this is a century-old tradition for these folk, a tradition that is quickly eroding as the urbanization of this prairie province continues. Smaller ranching operations like these are simply sold off to the highest bidder with their replacement by vast mechanized operations. My experience visiting this old-style ranch was all about connecting with a culture that struggles with very basic existential questions.

Don’t let your horse take you for a ride
The Reesor Ranch is nestled on the northern edges of rolling Cypress Hills. This is the rugged area where in the 19^th century the North-West Mounted Police and their cavalry of men later known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police first took control of Western Canada.

The historic Reesor Ranch is one of a handful of working cattle ranches in this flat prairie province that have opened their doors to tourists as a way to supplementing income and passing on western traditions to interested tourists. These experiences give visitors the opportunity to become familiar with the lifestyle of the pioneers who settled the West more than a century ago.

Just be sure not to make the mistake of naming them farmers; you will quickly be told that ranchers keep their grass right-side-up, while farmers turns theirs upside-down!

The Historic Reesor Ranch offers packages that include horse rides into Cypress Hills, cattle drives or even western-style cowboy cabin rentals. La Reata Ranch in the Saskatchewan River Valley on the shores of Lake Diefenbaker is a scenic spot with wide-open prairies, ranges, canyons and sandy beaches where guests horseback-ride or experience a western Rodeo.

The Trails End Guest Ranch north of Moose Jaw takes you to historic landmarks including native teepee rings or one-time buffalo rubbing stones. Other ranches open to tourists in the area include the Sturgeon River Ranch, the Eastview Wilderness Ranch or the Reedan Ranch.

Leanne Reesor believes that the mass media portrays many misconceptions about her lifestyle. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com CANADA

Taking over the family ranch?
I lived on the upper-floor of the Reesor family ranch, a century-old homestead decorated with family pictures, old cowboy hats, and even old poems and letters written by ancestors.

Leanne and her friends gathered like and excited poesy on branding day. At 18, Leanne is the youngest in the family, but is steadfastly committed to ranching and the lifestyle that goes with it. Maintaining the family traditions is just as important to her elder sister Joan, 24, but she is more likely set for a road-trip, trying her luck at a more urbane lifestyle. When I visited their brother Jason had gone off to a well-paying job in the north to work as a welder. I was told that he has his own philosophy about the future of the family ranch.

Just where the future lies for their ranch is as very real dilemma for parents Theresa and Scott Reesor, as it is for their children.

“Scott and I have always tried to share the idea that it is not what you can get out of the place, but what you can bring to it,” says Theresa Reesor, “We want them all here. If they can find a place where they can generate income. The question is always what they bring to the table to keep this place growing.”

“They all have wonderful gifts. But we don’t know what the future holds,” she adds.

Riding Darby, the chunky cream-colored painter horse
While the cattle spend much of the year roaming the fields unattended the highlight of any rancher’s season is round-up and branding day. It’s a community affair as families gather, helping each other collecting the cattle, branding, inoculating and even unceremoniously castrating the young male calves. Ultimately it ends in a boisterous affair of food, drink and a real communal party.

We woke at sunrise to saddle up the horses as clouds blurred the landscape, fault of a forest fire in the distance. There were about a dozen of us who each headed in different directions as the morning sun bounced about. I rode Darby, a hardheaded chunky looking cream-colored half buckskin and half painter horse. Darby didn’t want much of my directions.

We headed up the sloping hills and through the wooded enclaves with Darby not the slightest bit interested in the goings-on. He just wanted to wander the green fields. The Reesor-clan and the handful of tourists helped guide the growing numbers of cattle that began a chorus of whining cries with their young not far in the distance. Scott, Leanne and Joan orchestrated the migration, periodically consulting with each other on the best strategy to move the cattle without them getting caught up in fences or being separated from their young.

Rancher, cowboy-poet Scott Reesor. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com CANADA

Lessons from another era
Scott Reesor was latecomer to ranching, at 39. This was after he and his wife Theresa had meandered north on the Alaska Highway, then imagining that they would buy land and settle after getting involved in an operation of selling portable band sawmills. Finally in 1997 his parents invited the couple to take over the family ranch, which by that time was already doubling as a bed and breakfast.

“It’s a big house and there is lots of room and Scott’s mum always had people here,” remembers Theresa, “I could not imagine this place without people or visitors. It was built for two families, but for generations there have always been visitors here.”

Even then the couple knew that with a few hundred cattle, ranching was no get-rich-quick scheme. History speaks loud and from far back. The family homestead here was founded after a 1903 spring storm killed some 350 cattle. That tragedy prompted Scott Reesor’s forbearers to establish a ranch where it stands today, from its one-time shanty.

Scott and Theresa continued to raise cattle, host tourists, all while running a spring-water operation.

“We hope to develop something that our children can be a part of if they want which will support multiple families,” says Scott Reesor, “Our land-base is too small to support even one family really well. With these other businesses if our kids all want to be a part of it and bring their gifts and abilities, who knows what we can develop?”

“You never know how it will end up since lot depends on the relationship between the siblings, which is such an important part of the formula. It’s a real miracle that it’s come this far.”

Branding day on the ranch
The Western tradition of livestock branding is a complex fire-heated system that has its origins in ancient history. Newer ranches use mechanical systems that relegate traditional branding techniques something of a dying art. Here branding day is still a community affair of family, friends and neighbors. Ranchers still rope, castrate and brand the calves in much the same way as might have been done a century ago.

“No one does it anymore. Everyone rides quad and nobody rides horses anymore; it’s just starting to become obsolete. I remember brandings with my uncles, and I want my kids to experience that, and my kids-kids,” says Joan Reesor, “I want them to pass it on from one generation to the next.”

Branding day at the Reesor’s was like a military operation, with the mass of cattle moaning around the dusty enclosure. Like a general before the battle Scott Reesor read out the marching orders to the troops; his family and friends. Everybody knew his or her role. A horseback pair roped the calves while Leanne branded the calves with hot rods in a smoky haze with her mother by her side. Five or six others wrestled the calves down while yet others tagged and Scott inoculated them.

Meanwhile a slightly self-satisfied, mischievous and amusingly sadistic knife wielding Joan learned the art of castrating, contentedly collecting prairie oysters in a small white bucket.

Branding day at the Historic Reesor Ranch. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com CANADA

Decisions on the horizon
As the day progressed the processing of the cattle became much like clockwork, ending in a jolly atmosphere. The horses were brushed and sent into the fields, and the meal began as Joan proudly served her prairie oyster, the calf testis that tasted something like a hardier version of deep-fried mushrooms.

If there was one cloud looming over this feast, it was the weight of the future of the ranch. If any young persons most important decision is choosing a life partner, that same choice seems even more daunting if you are a young Reesor. Although she still wakes up later than her parents and might spend her days doing light fence work, moving around cattle or riding trails with tourists, behind the daily routine its the decisions that she will make in the coming years that she seems most aware of.

“I actually think about it a lot more than I should,” admits Leanne, “I’m only eighteen and I don’t think I should be thinking about who I am going to marry. It’s easier for a woman to marry into a rancher’s lifestyle than it is for a man because. Most women will be in the house and the kitchen so they wouldn’t have to know a whole lot about ranching.”

“A rancher, a guy, can marry a girl from a small town or a city and she will be just fine. But compared to me; I’d have to marry somebody who grew up in it and knows what he’s doing. So I do consider that quite a bit.”

Lufthansa charges for second baggage, claiming new industry norms. Courtesy Lufthansa

(Montreal) Airline industry officials this week began what became a chorus of calls to take a second look at security procedures when flying to the United States. The move began earlier this week when British Airways boss Martin Broughton labeled some US-government imposed security checks as ‘redundant’ and inconsistent with requirements levied on local US airlines.

Many passengers are required to remove their shoes before clearing airport metal detectors, and are also prohibited from taking liquids in their carry on bags as a result of a series of threats. Laptops are also scanned separately, a requirement that has been questioned in some circles.

A senior official with the German aviation giant Lufthansa, in Montreal for an industry event this week, echoed the BA claims and called on European and US officials to forge a consistent set of standards.

“We put it in a broader sense that since the years following 9/11, security build up has been constant but not necessarily consistent,” Jens Bischof, Vice President for the Americas of Lufthansa said, “and this is a challenge for the traveling public. A harmonized system is the goal in order to make it more efficient.”

Consumers ready to submit to security procedures
The airline industry calls come despite the release of a study earlier this year that revealed that nearly three quarters of Americans were either ‘somewhat’, or ‘very’ satisfied with airport security measures. According to the nationwide study conducted by the corporate and leisure travel firm, Travel Leaders.

The poll was conducted with 800 consumers throughout the United States, and revealed that almost 82 percent were not even concerned about the use of full-body scanners at airport security checkpoints.

Yet while airlines cry foul over concerns about security directives, I wonder why they are avoiding addressing passenger frustrations that have altered aviations basic passenger services. In addition to security issues; for many, flying has become a frustrating a la carte menu of fees and levies.

With less flights taking off, airlines have increased prices and passengers are forced to grapple with a plethora of taxes, fuel surcharges, baggage fees and pay-for-service in-flight entertainment and even food and beverage services. Passengers are forced to acquiesce to a flying experience that has turned into tollbooth-style air-travel.

In 2009, Airlines earned a reported $2,7 billion in baggage fees alone, with airline ancillary fees estimated to top $10 billion.   As a result, some US lawmakers have called on government to re-regulate an industry that was set to market forces in more than three decades ago. US of regulation could eventually result in the imposition of government agencies to set standards on airlines entering the aviation market.

Bischof claims that Lufthansa is simply adapting to market needs.

A plethora of fees
“It would be nice to experience the good old days of two bags free and flexibility with carry-ons,” says Edward H. Sanborn IV of Sanborn Capital Management, a member of the ontheglobe.com facebook group. “But I don’t know how to effectively complain.”

“Being an airline owner has almost never been a get rich quick scheme,” he adds, “I am resigned to paying more as the ‘cost’ of insuring a viable and competitive market. But two bags free and all kind of other former perks are sadly missed.”

Fees on check-in bags are only the start for consumers. On a recent 14-hour flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong that I took with United Airlines, personal entertainment units were on offer for a $10 rental fee. A pillow and blanket set on Jet Blue sets you back $7, while processing fees to purchase reward tickets have also been introduced by many airlines. Many US airlines also charge $20-35 for check-in bags.

A USA Today survey of 15 airlines found some 19 chargeable products or services from bag check-ins, preferred seating, or telephone ticket purchase levies.

Even Lufthansa, which prides itself as providing a premium product, has a $50 levy for a second checked in luggage on their Europe-bound economy tickets.

“We are only synchronizing and being consistent with changing worldwide standards,” says Bischof, defending his company as it follows changing industry practice, “the second bag fee is now a worldwide norm.”

Meditation and healing at boutique hotels like Hotel du Lac in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains. Courtesy photo, Hotel du Lac. CANADA

The boutique spa-hotels of Canada’s Laurentian mountains

(Mont Tremblant) Looking onto the glasslike sheen of an infinity pool after having been pampered with massages, facial masks and various fancy treatments; I suddenly felt like I had a clear idea of what it must be like to live a life of true glamour. This was learned in a weeklong adventure in the Laurentian Mountains in something akin to a hybrid of the care and pampering of a European aristocrat with a good dose of the excess of the lifestyle of rich and famous Hollywood stars.

But my mission to the spas of Canada’s Laurentian mountains was about something a little different. While I set out on a journey to experience luxurious spas in order to tiptoe into the good life, it did have the inadvertent result of undoing some of the tension that I had acquired during a long and painful year living with a severely herniated disc. More than pampering; this became a journey of healing.

The Laurentians are one-hour north of the city of Montreal and are akin to the Catskill Mountains in size. The setting is wilder than it is bucolic and the mountains envelop the space creating a sense of being hidden away amidst the dense northern forests. In my week here I discovered a series of independent spas, each striving to their own brand of rest and relaxation.

The Laurentians boast some 32 spas, 21 of them resort spas; most of which have been developed in the past fifteen years. While on this trip I visited The Ofuro Spa, Quintessence Spa and Resort, the Hotel du Lac and Spa Scandinave; while other notable area properties include the Le Westin Resort & Spa, the Fairmont Tremblant, L’Oasis de l’ Île and the Polar Bear’s Club.

The Ofuro Spa
Ofuro Spa is located in the town of Morin Heights and has a distinctly east Asian theme. The feel here is Rococo Zen; when entering the long driveway I was greeted by gigantic Buddha sculptures that offer an immediate sense of calm. For those wanting to spend the night there are five rooms, each decorated with modern boutique décor, flat screen TVs, bamboo flooring and mountain views.

The fire behind the Ofuro Spa is owner Jacques Aubry, a former restaurateur who had the vision to build this sanctuary 10 years ago. His plans quickly changed when, while working on the roof of the main building he fell some 25 feet onto hard rock. He would go on to spend much of a year in hospital and was even told he might never walk again.

But like a Phoenix rising Aubry was determined to build his vision of the spa and Nordic baths, which he says healed him. Now he has no shame at showing off the scars of his injuries and he even flaunts them like war trophies.

“If it hadn’t been for the spa, the treatments, the Nordic baths,” says Aubry, “I would never have walked again”.

Quintessence is the brainchild of Tom and Nancy Clagett, who fell in love with the region after visiting Mont Tremblant Lodge from their native Ireland. Courtesy photo, Quintessence Spa & Resort. CANADA

Visitors enjoy the Nordic baths early, loosening up the body before their treatments. The masseuse Ginette, who has studied in Italy under a shiatsu master, reminds me that the Laurentians were once as tall as the Himalayas, and it is that old mystical energy that contributes to the feeling of being elsewhere. After an outstanding  Swedish- Shiatsu massage combination and facial, I am left feeling as special as the spa itself.

Quintessence Spa and Resort
Quintessence Spa and Resort is my next stop. It’s easy to miss, carefully remote from the masses yet right across from all the action of Station Tremblant. The Tremblant area even has its own private airport and is a secret haven for stars – both local and international.

Quintessence is the brainchild of Tom and Nancy Clagett, who fell in love with the region after visiting Mont Tremblant Lodge from their native Ireland. They would buy the land here from a woman who apparently went ‘shoeless’ in her house while entertaining. Hence the spa name, Sans Sabots (without shoes).

Quintessence is a boutique hotel with 30 loft-like rooms that each includes a fireplace, a voluminous jet tub, a wall of windows and a balcony overlooking the resort’s infinity pool and, in the distance, Lake Tremblant. This resort was the first in the area to have in room massages and with suites like this, it is a most welcome treat. The space is intimate and warm for what could otherwise be a swank and unapproachable grandeur.

This beautifully situated lakefront spa has French doors leading onto a Jacuzzi and an infinity pool. Here I opted for the Revitalizing Body Rénovateur, a sound treatment that included a scrub, a body mask and a rinse, followed by cold rocks on the face and hot stone therapy on the body.

While the staff was attentive the treatment itself was too busy, demanding too much interaction on my part to actually relax. Just as I finally started to unwind I would be coaxed to flip over to receive another part of the treatment. Again disrupting the mood I then had to traipse across the waiting room area, covered in mud – rather than shower in the treatment room itself. That said the new general manager, I was told, plans to revamp the treatments.

Ofuro Spa is located in the town of Morin Heights and has a distinctly east Asian theme. Courtesy photo, Spa Ofuro. CANADA

The staff at Hotel du Lac are delightful and the atmosphere is that of European congeniality. Using select products this spa goes to great lengths to have the crème de la crème of treatments with precious re-mineralizing ingredients, and they even offer a kid’s spa line.

The hotel is owned by the jet setting octogenarian aristocrat, the Belgian Marquis Alain De Rosanbo, who visits twice a year to test out the treatments himself. I opted for a Sea Treasures, which is hydrotherapy plus a massage, followed by a body wrap and then a dip into a 144-jet tub; apparently this is the Marquis’s treatment of choice.

As I floated in the sea-salts of the massive tub, I too felt like aristocracy, and came to understand that I could easily get used to this kind of a life.

This spa prides itself on service, attentiveness and the level of relaxation is magnificent as a result. Once done the spa, juice and fruit are served as part of the relaxation process and guests can sit contemplatively on the porch overlooking the lake. What a perfect way to unwind…

Spa Scandinave
The last stop was the now lingering pioneer in this area, a Nordic spa appropriately called Spa Scandinave. An oasis just off of the highway it is surprisingly silent behind the busy adjacent roads. The difference in attentiveness between the boutique hotels and this stand-alone spa was evident from the beginning. The staff here has little to do with the hospitality of the more intimate boutique resorts.

Fortunately the curt front desk service that I experienced was compensated by an outstanding hot rock massage that worked hard to undo months of tension with its combination of saunas and baths and an array of relaxation rooms. The setting was supplemented by with all the necessary yoga, meditation and spiritual magazines that even allow you to almost to pleasantly fall asleep.

An attendant, however, was constantly prodding guest here to maintain silence, as clients were apt to chitchat. Nonetheless, for a spa-lover like myself there is no better way to spend a rainy day hopping from sauna, to cold bath, to hot tub to relaxation lounge.

Each spa in the province of Quebec’s Laurentians offer a very different experience in terms of their staff, the atmosphere and treatments. It’s all a part of the rainbow of spas that have dotted this landscape here in recent years. Through my journey I discovered that while I was neither a countess, nor a contender for Lives of the Rich and Famous; a good pampering is tantamount to healing no matter who you are.

The staff at Hotel du Lac are delightful and the atmosphere is that of European congeniality. Courtesy photo, Hotel du Lac. CANADA

Interior room-view. Courtesy photo, Spa Ofuro. CANADA

Interior-view. Courtesy photo, Spa Ofuro. CANADA

This beautifully situated lakefront spa has French doors leading onto a Jacuzzi and an infinity pool. Courtesy photo, Quintessence Spa & Resort. CANADA

While the staff was attentive the treatment itself was too busy, demanding too much interaction on my part to actually relax. Courtesy photo, Quintessence Spa & Resort. CANADA

Lakefront view. Courtesy photo, Hotel du Lac. CANADA

Cultural navigator Andrew Princz dancing in Nigeria at the first Abuja Carnival. Photo © Jura Nanuk, ontheglobe.com

Culturally aware tourism contributes to global challenges

(Montreal) The recent volcanic chaos over the skies of Europe were a jolting reminder of our society’s dependence on air travel, accustomed as we are to jet off to far-flung lands. But do we really know about the cultures of the places that we visit? All too often left out of the mix of our busy lives are the very reasons why travel and tourism are so magical.

In my travels I have named the special moments when we actually communicate and interact with the cultures and peoples that we come across. I am a cultural navigator.

Moments of cultural navigation are the bread and butter of my mission of tourism done a little differently. Cultural communication and knowledge of sometimes-distant lands are the ingredients of this mission with ontheglobe.com that has taken me to almost sixty countries of the globe; from the storied far-flung regions of India to the lush landscapes of Colombia, from the arid canyons of the once sealed-off nation of Kazakhstan to the cultural oasis that is Samoa or the heights of the one-time heart of the Inca empire of Machu Picchu in Peru.

But in too many destinations I have witnessed tourists ferried to hotels and resorts or ports of call where visitors tend to live in a bubble; having little interaction with the local communities that they travel long distances to see.

During a visit to Cuba last year, for instance, I witnessed semi-inebriated guests of all-inclusive resorts who had traveled thousands of miles only experience more drunken encounters with their home-town neighbors than any citizen of their host nation. These people may be missing the wonderfully welcoming attitudes of the good peoples of Cuba from the private accommodations in the eastern village of Baracoa to the western mountains of Pinar del Rio.

And with the arrival of the fresh spring air Europe’s glitterati will soon head toward the sunny island of Hvar in Croatia, few are likely to take an interest in the fact that less than two decades ago the nations hotels were literal refugee hostels for locals fleeing war and conflict. Why not try to understand the real-life stories of the Croatian people who have struggled hard to develop their scenic coastlines into today’s tourism paradise?

My quest for cultural experiences has lead me to dance among Nigerians at the Abuja Carnival during a hypnotic cultural feast of that sub-Saharan country’s many and colorful ethnic groups. I was also among the first tourists of Sub-Saharan nation of Angola, standing high above the African savannah at the giant rocks of Pungo Andongo in the remote province of Malanje.

Most recently I trained atop an Asian elephant at the Anantara Golden Triangle Resort in Thailand, becoming acquainted with the lives of the centuries old tradition of the mahouts, a sub-culture of peoples who speak with their own dialect as they live side-by-side their beloved elephants in Thailand. Days ago I returned from the South-Pacific island of Samoa, home to a nation who to this day proudly conserve their chiefly traditions and their three-thousand year old social fabric.

In a fundamental way empathy in tourism and cultural communication could walk hand-in-hand without taking away from the leisure aspects of travel.

The urgency for cultural and social interaction among global communities came to me almost seven years ago during an interview with South-America’s elder statesman, the former president of Brazil Ferndando Entrique Cardoso for the Budapest-based diplomatic magazine DT-Diplomacy and Trade.

Mr. Cardoso set out the realities of the multilateral world that is today is becoming a reality. With the emergence of stronger Asian economies and emerging global markets, groups of medium powers around the world are quickly replacing the shrinking US world dominance with a global web of political alliances.

But this new world order leaves all nations even more interlinked than before. An eventual economic collapse in Greece can reverberate on the European and North American economies, just as disruption to oil production in Nigeria will effect what a Canadian will pay for gas at the pump. The credit-crunch in the US also had a hard-hitting impact on the real-estate boom of the far-off Kazakh capital of Astana.

Our globe has become one big organic family. It’s not a bad idea to know more about lands far and wide, and the people, cultures and histories of those who live there. After all, today they affect our every-day lives.

Other cultures solution might even provide us with some answers to our own challenges. The government-supported longhouses of Malaysian Borneo may provide key solutions to our ailing healthcare or social aid systems, just as the Central American nation of Belize may demonstrate the benefits for all of us in maintaining their rare coral reefs or rainforests. The archeological discoveries about the deforestation inflicted by the ancient Maya in Guatemala at El Mirador may provide keys to how we can avoid the same fate in our treatment of our natural environment.

More culturally astute and aware tourism is likely to achieve partnerships and result in a safer, healthier and more prosperous future.

Indeed tourism to less traveled roads also helps the people on the ground. The United Nations World Tourism Organization, for instance, has long recognized the importance for tourism in the developing and least developed nations. Here we’re not only talking about four and five-star tourism. Much more helpful to local communities are the adventurous backpacker who travels to Angola, Colombia or Thailand. Those dollars put in the hands of local communities go a long way to helping these countries to build prosperous and entrepreneurial individual futures.

So next time you travel; think of the places that you may not have been. Be a cultural navigator. Engage yourself in a community, because this is the basis of the traditions of human exploration. These are the stories of cultural navigation that we can all write.

The Quartier Petit Champlain, a series of creative cooperatives. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com

(Quebec City) When Amilcar Rojas – known as ‘Micko » in creative circles – fled the town of Tarma in the Andean nation of Peru almost three decades ago, he was looking for a place far from the conflicts and political turmoil that his native land then afforded him. It’s been twenty-nine years since Mr. Rojas left the Amazonian region of South America and settled in historic Quebec City, a city that not long ago brought out the bubbly and regally celebrated its 400th anniversary. The massive party included a grandiose series of events like open-air concerts with hometown favorite Celine Dion and international stars that included one-time Beatle, Paul McCartney.

Yet while Quebec City may be a world away from Rojas’s birthplace, the creative entrepreneur has found ways of bridging the cultural divide of his native Peru and its centuries old history, with the well preserved historic northern crossroads where he was welcomed.

Quebec City is very much a community. It takes advantage of a small-town atmosphere to hone an ambiance of artist friendly spaces where creative collaborations work side-by-side socially innovative concepts.

Multi-talented, Mr. Rojas, who greeted me in his Lower City boutique; is a painter and a sculptor who teaches Peruvian dance and music. He even recently produced a project that brought together traditional musicians from Peru and Quebec First Nations musicians to create a cultural fusion of sorts. “The whole area around here is one co-op inside of another, we work together,” Mr. Rojas told me at Vert Tuyau, a small Quebec City co-operative boutique that he co-founded a little over a year ago, “We try to make innovations in the works that we present to show tourists how Quebec people work.”

“This is through recycling; recycled clothes, tapes, anything. It is important for us.”

A showcase for the works of local artists and artisans, Vert Tuyau – literally meaning a ‘green pipe’ – is small store that towers with creativity. Here you can find inventive ecologically friendly ideas from handbags made of recycled cassette tapes; quilted belts that look much like modern-day versions of those originally worn by early Quebec settlers, to simple but beautifully put together patchworks made of colorful hand-me-downs.

Vert Tuyau is located in the shadow of the city’s iconic Chateau Frontenac, an upscale hotel that has for centuries been the landmark of Quebec City, which is separated by an upper and lower town. A quarter-century ago the old town was named a World Heritage site by UNESCO.

The Quartier Petit Champlain, where Mr. Rojas keeps vigil, looks much like it might have centuries ago with its narrow winding streets and one-floor 18th century stone construction edifices. The area houses a wide array of small boutiques, jewelry stores, zany fashion houses, European-style restaurants and bistros.

A new addition to the area is La Fudgerie, which makes a wide array of fudge-based goodies that even include long sausage-like fudge-bars that from a distance had me thinking that I was entering a simple butchers shop. How surprised I was to enter this magical little shop of sinful delights. Rather than the showy or the flashy in a city, here it is the community-minded nature of Quebec City that shines through in its hotels, microbreweries or artist-run spaces. Even its more grungy side is piquant. Billed for its cultural flair, a little off of the old-town center is the Nouvo St-Roch district, an artistic area that looks much like a grimy urban space. The world renowned Cirque du Soleil which had its roots outside of Quebec City even performs free shows in the summer months under a random bridge in a graffiti worn setting.

While on the surface the Auberge L’Autre Jardin in Nouvo St-Roch, where I stayed, has the feel of its one-time office complex function; the slightly disheveled inn can even itself be considered a recycled space of sorts. Despite it’s worn carpets and when I arrived – dysfunctional plumbing – this hotel prides itself in its social awareness. The in-house boutique sells the likes of fair-trade coffee from around the world, silver jewelry from Niger or ceramics from Vietnam.

Personally, I might have preferred staying a half an hour’s drive outside of Old Quebec at the Huron-Wendat reserve, a small enclave which houses a First Nations peoples who were part of what was known as the Confederacy of the Seven Fires of the St-Laurence Valley, or the Seven Nations of Canada. The history of the Huron-Wendad reveals a nation that was in an influential position towards both towards the French and English in the early days of colonization. The Huron-Wendat became known for their diplomatic savvy and military prowess that was courted by colonizing powers.

The Hôtel-Musée Premières Nations is model complex showcasing the history and contemporary life of some of Quebec’s First Nation peoples. The site includes a first-rate hotel in an expansive contemporary architectural setting, a gourmet restaurant that serves First Nations inspired cuisine and a unique museum that brings to life the cultural heritage and history of the continent’s aboriginal communities.

While the site itself may be relatively new, it opened two years ago, tourism here began over a century and a half ago when the Wendat first produced mementos in Victorian-style for European consumption, Danny Robertson of the Musee Huron Wendat tells me. He points to a 19th century calling-card basket made of birchbark inlaid with intricately designed floral patterns embroiydered with fine moose-hairs.

„Native people do like flowers and we do use them on our designs, but these are really made for Victorian people and in Victorian-style and fashion,” he says, „Native people’s designs would have been more pragmatic, while these decorations are simply embelishments.”

Returning to the Lower Town of Quebec City I visit La Caserne, a refurbished fire-station that is the home to Ex Machina, the creative nucleus of the city’s cultural icon. Playwright, actor, film-maker and all-round Renaissance-man Robert Lepage is recognized as one of Canada’s most preeminent contemporary theater practitioners. His work has redefined the stage. While Mr. Lepage could well have chosen the larger provincial metropolis of Montreal to be based, he honed his creative team here.

“It’s the opposite to the idea that he could do it anywhere in the world,” Lepage producer Michel Bernatchez of Ex Machina tells me, “He does it in Quebec City because he loves it here.”

As an ode to his home-town for the 400th anniversary in 2008, Mr. Lepage and a group of local and international artists transformed an unsightly grain silo in the Old Port on the St-Laurence River into a giant screen measuring a mind-boggling 180 meters wide by 30 meters high for a forty minute presentation.

Mr. Lepage saw the symbolic dimension of reinventing a building that for a century has been at the junction of cultures and continents. The large concrete mass is the place where grain traveled from Western Canada and was shipped off to points in North America and Europe. It was at the junction of the old and new worlds on which Mr. Lepage created an inward-looking window into the city’s own history.

The Image Mill is now projected in the summer months and is an architectural performance that tells the story of the city’s four-century history, its upheavals, controversies, and its pivotal political and popular moments.

“The artists gave themselves a series of rules in tracing the city’s four hundred year history,” Mr. Bernatchez says, “”and divided it into four parts, meaning one for each century using music and sounds.”

“It’s not a traditional narrative, but instead something more impressionistic. It makes references to the city; it’s inhabitants and the artists who worked here and how they were inspired by the city.”

The value of cultural industries do not stop with Mr. Lepage. The weight of cultural industries and their community-based efforts to develop Quebec City’s cultural values has not gone unnoticed in the provincial capital’s halls of power either. The Quebec Tourism office even appointed a special advisor in charge of developing and marketing specific attractions that highlight the city’s history, culture, and the visual or contemporary arts.

“It is really a question of identity,” says Vincent Aubry, Tourism Development Advisor with the City of Quebec Tourism office, “There is a sense of community that is very strong here, and that is linked to the history of the city and the province.”

“There is also a corresponding to necessity for cultural institutions to regroup themselves to be stronger, get financing, and to put their tools and resources into a common space to get a new clientele by developing new products.”

Mr. Aubry recognizes that creative industries like those found in Quebec City are significant contributors to the economy, and grow faster than the economy as a whole. In the UK, for instance, that country’s department of culture tags creative industries as having their origin in individual creativity, talent or skill as accounting for some 7.9 percent of GDP. Quebec City has pinpointed religious and military patrimony, as well as the creative industries that grow out of the likes of Robert Lepage, the Cirque du Soleil and the numerous cultural events and festivals organized throughout the year. In early June, marking the city’s 25th anniversary of being declared a World Heritage Site, Quebec City will play host to a UNESCO conference entitled “World Heritage and Tourism: Managing for the Global and the Local”.

“The reality in Quebec City is that it has changed since the 400th anniversary,” Mr. Aubry says, “We realized the value and impact of one-time events of international caliber from the Moulin a Images by Robert Lepage or the Cirque du Soleil.”

Getting cold, tired and hugry is par for the course, says Kyla Boivin. Photo © Andrew Princz, ontheglobe.com

Bush-girl, musher and poet Kyla Boivin’s journey at the Yukon Quest

(Dawson City) She was an unlikely poet, being a bush-girl and all. But she was not an unlikely musher. Kyla Boivin looked awkward last year at the banquet of the Yukon Quest dog sledding race in her small fitting black dress, freshly painted red nail polish and dancing shoes. Her appearance led me to a double take. After all this was a gathering of the rough and tumble setting off on a very lonely and blistering cold trek through the Yukon’s most unforgiving of landscapes.

But she was well aware of the sleepless nights that were to come; they were even second nature for her. Boivin had run dogs since she was sixteen years of age. She was precocious and no pushover. She was endearing but in a very peculiar way.

The quote on Kyla’s facebook page today reads, “Do the thing that scares you the most.” On the same page she also describes herself as ‘an asshole’. But I don’t believe her. It’s just a mixture of her contrarian nature and an upbringing far away from settled lands, I suspect.

Freshly painted nail polish and dancing shoes
Needless to say, her appearance all decked in freshly painted nail polish and dancing shoes at the banquet was incongruous. She had spent much of her life driving along tracks etched in the snow, often with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She learned early to lead teams of old-style Yukon trapping dogs across some of the most bitterly cold, wild and rugged landscapes of the north.

You would hardly have guessed that this almost dainty yet altogether rough around the edges young woman of twenty-six was about to set off on the Yukon Quest; reputed to be the world’s most grueling of dog races.

“You get tired and you get cold and you get hungry; and that’s par for the course,” she told me at the banquet without a hint of hesitation, “If you want to be comfortable then just stay home.”

“For me it feels like that’s where I’m supposed to be. It’s the best place in the world to be; watching the dogs run. That’s why I just keep on coming back I guess.”

Kyla had run the race a stunning six times since her debut when she was eighteen. The year before she had won the ‘Red Lantern’, a quirky accolade awarded to the last participant to cross the finish line. But she crossed it. And by now she was considered a veteran. She was hoping to finally get closer to the top-tier finishers that she referred to as ‘the professionals’. It was a goal that continues to evade her.

The professionals are those mushers who regularly finish in the top ten of the Yukon Quest or its better-known yet less rugged Alaskan nemesis, the Iditarod. Most participate in both. In recent years these races had become so competitive that mushers had to spend top dollars putting together their dog-teams. In this race just to get to the starting line might set you back some ten thousand dollars.

The top tier racers setting off on the next day’s Yukon Quest included the likes of the German-born Sebastian Schnuelle, the Austrian Hans Gatt or the Swiss-born musher Martin Buser. These mushers made a life and a business out of racing. Their participation in each event could well depend on the purse. It’s an expensive competition for everybody and they race to win; it’s a business decision of sorts.

Each of these mushers are also tied to a parallel business. Named after his first dog Blue, Schnuelle runs Blue Kennels; while Gatt constructs sleds for fellow mushers for his firm Gatt Sled and finally Buser raises sled dogs at his Happy Trails Kennels.

Funding the journey to the Yukon Quest
Kyla Boivin had no such business. She had funded her journeys on her own steam, given an initial push by her supportive parents. She had also developed a posse, a group of local friends who cheered her on and helped her along the way. She was on a mission to bring Yukon dog sledding history to life. She was motivated in her own way; although she admitted that her passions may have kept her from having a good job, maybe some money and certainly a life other than her dogs.

But at that moment in her life she was motivated by the prestige of finally finishing in the top-tier of the Yukon Quest. She still had the energy to fuel her own mission.

In contrast to Kyla’s coquetries that evening, on entering the vast hall you might have mistook the launch banquet for a bingo-hall evening. The chatter overshadowed a live rendition of Leo’s Song, a tale of brown-eyed puppy love of a lowbrow scruffy pound dog Leo for the ‘hot’-dog Sara, a wonder-dog whose ‘got papers’ and just won’t give poor Leo a chance.

A silent auction sold books on the Quest; calendars, or other paraphernalia. Hard-core quest journalists buzzed about the room looking for their angle. There was the unlikely story of the Jamaican musher Newton Marshall who had been trained by three-time Quest victor Hans Gatt. There was the noted absence of the record-breaking four-time Yukon Quest winner Lance Mackey, who was not around to defend his title. There were volunteers, family members, kennel owners and team sponsors. It was all taking place in a familial atmosphere.

A test of physical and mental endurance
The Yukon Quest is respected among hard-core mushers as the real thing; a test of physical and mental endurance known to be the toughest sled-dog race in the world. It follows the historic Gold Rush and mail delivery dog sled routes that date from the turn of the 20th century. During the ten to sixteen day trek temperatures can dip lower than minus forty bellow Celsius, you can see one hundred mile-an-hour winds and face dangerous jumble-ice conditions, when loosened ice formations protrude from the otherwise frozen rivers.

Alternating in directions every year, last year the Yukon Quest started in Whitehorse in the Yukon, and made its way to Fairbanks, Alaska; passing over five mountain summits and winding down the Yukon River. Mushers run the race with mandatory equipment that is verified at ten designated checkpoints which are up to two hundred miles apart. In-between these, you are basically on your own.

The banquet that evening was the last hefty meal for the group of twenty-nine mushers before they and their dogs melded into the landscape. The next morning the intense race would begin. It was a time when some teams were nervously tweaking their strategies.

Kyla stumbled onto the stage. She thanked a sponsor for lending a truck used by her handler, Kristie Falkevitch. Kristie would follow Kyla over the course of the race, providing provisions at the checkpoints and picking up the dropped dogs. Veterinarians inspect the dogs at any stage of the race and the injured or those unable to go on are left in the care of the handler. This is called ‘dropping’ a dog.

The coming days and nights would be spent in what Kyla’s poetry referred to that evening as ‘dog dreams’, where the rhythmic pace of dog paws sounded like music to her as they scratched their way through the snows of a vast landscape.

Kyla reads her poem, Dreams of the Long Run
In contrast to the speeches of the other mushers Kyla read her poem, Dreams of the Long Run. The room froze to silence as she narrated in poetic terms the life that she would lead in the coming days. Gone would be the small black dress as her sled would become her home. She would be left to her thoughts, to ‘drift free in the grand peace… and the mighty chaos of this journey’.

The next morning you could hear the multiple dog barks from my second-floor room at the Edgewater Hotel. Originally the Windsor, the hotel had stood at the very same place since the 19th century Klondike-era. The Yukon Territory is a vast swath of majestic lands, the settlements of which seem haphazard but retain the rustic charm of a century ago.

I found Kyla, her posse and her gear dispersed on the snow as she hammered away at a new and lighter sled that was lent to her at the last minute. She wasn’t fazed in the slightest but was just itching to get out of the starting gate.

As start-time approached a blanket of haze enveloped the scene as crowds gathered on either side of 1st Avenue in the centre of the small city. As the mushers and their dog-sled teams charged out onto the trail, their bulky masses pierced the condensation.

The sun shone brightly and the sounds of the barking dogs became louder. The canines understood that the moment for setting off had arrived, and their excitement was palpable. One by one the mushers lined up and made a last check, caressed their dogs before the buzzer sounded, and the long run began.

“I really love the trail,” Kyla told me, “Helping a dog team run a thousand miles is incredible. It never gets old for me.”

“Watching them get up after six hundred miles, and eight hundred miles, and nine hundred and fifty miles and they’re wagging their tails saying yea, let’s go! That just blows me away every time. I just love that.”

Kyla’s team was the second to head out towards the Braeburn checkpoint that morning. She had a team of young dogs and was careful not to push them too hard. She had raised these dogs herself; she didn’t have a big kennel to work with. But it was clear that this was a pivotal year. She wanted to become a player in the Yukon Quest.

For the coming days, the snowy landscape and the stars would be the guides for this spunky musher who was most in her element on the quiet trail. She disappeared around the corner of the track and headed for the lonely remote forests of the north.

Living my own adventures
As Kyla and her team made their way, I lived a set of my own adventures in the Yukon. I got my own taste of the wide-open landscapes, albeit a more tame view. I traveled north of Whitehorse to Lake Laberge where a seasoned musher took a group of us on trail over the frozen lake on a sunny day.

Then close to sundown we visited Muktuk Adventures, a kennel located close to the Takhini River and run by one of the most seasoned Yukon Quest mushers, Frank Turner. He took me out to see his one hundred and twenty seven Alaskan huskies, each of which lived in a green box with their names painted onto the outside. There was Kirby, Beethoven, Tucker, Oreo, Kaze… As we walked Turner suddenly yelled out a long cry; which was swiftly answered by a canine symphony. The dogs really answered to him.

Frank Turner had participated in the Yukon Quest all but one year of the twenty-five runs of the race. When he wasn’t running, he was supporting his son in the adventure. Last year was the first year that he didn’t have a team running in the Quest.

“To get in the top-ten you really have to believe in yourself and in your team. You also have to work like heck,” he told me. “You have to establish really good goals and then a plan that is going to achieve those goals. You can’t switch your plans in mid-stream. You’ve got to believe in the plan.”

Before flying northward to the Dawson City some three hundred miles away to meet up with the Quest teams, we took a flight over Kluane National Park on a small floatplane. Almost the size of Switzerland, from above we witnessed the open waters, steep banks, and High Mountain landscapes. We saw moose, evidence of wolves and endless fields of white-carpeted snow pierced only by towering ice-blue glaciers and northern forests.

By the time we arrived at Dawson City, the first mushers had already begun to check in to the camp across the frozen Yukon River. Mushers and their teams have a mandatory 36-hour layover here before continuing on their 1000-mile journey.

Kyla Boivin arrived at Dawson City eager to set her dogs to rest at the camp in a straw blanket prepared by her handler. She was eager to change her socks, but maybe more ready to have a beer. I could not help but noticing that her red nail polish from the banquet had chipped away. The Dawson City stop was the only checkpoint on the race where the dogs and their teams were permitted contact and receive assistance from family and friends. The road to the camps was a busy place where well into the night fires burned and vets made their rounds looking like miners in the night with flashlights strapped to their heads.

Hanging out at the Dawson City camp
During the Dawson City rest, I hung around the camp and for a moment became an adjunct to the crew. I would take the dogs for walks and chop wood for fire. There were Kyla’s parents Roch and Katheryn Boivin. The jolly atmosphere included her childhood friends Sylvia Frish and her little baby, Madeline Derepentigny, or Mado as they called her. Of course, there was the steadfast team handler, Kristie Falkevitch.

Dawson City was Kyla’s hometown. Her father, Roch Boivin, was originally from the Lac St Jean area of Quebec and had headed up to Dawson City at eighteen years of age with the dream of becoming a bushman. He was inspired by the stories of his great-grandfather who had come here during the early days of last century.

“He told the stories of the Klondike. Of the dog teams, the horses, the miners and the can-can girls,” Boivin told me, “He would come back from Dawson five years later with enough gold to cover the top of a double bed; and that is what purchased our homestead land in Lac St-Jean.”

The mythology of turn of last century Dawson City is well known. Adventurers from far and wide came here for fame and golden fortunes. The city itself to this day has let time stand still. The architecture is much as it was, the town a tiny community. When Kyla’s father arrived here he found the quirky nature of the place as familiar as the stories and people that he had heard about from his childhood.

“It was just as crazy as he said it was. There were still all the crooked buildings, the mushers and dog teams and trappers. I never went back.”

Roch and Katheryn Boivin raised their children Kyla and Eli outside of the central Yukon First Nation village of Mayo where they spent months at a time in the bush, isolated from the outside world. The family spent the winters on trap-lines and summers building lodges, air-strips or working with horses. Dog mushing was not a sport for them but it was a necessity. It was the only mode of transportation that they had.

“She is socially awkward,” Kyla’s father admitted to me, resulting from years in the isolated north, “But when she’s on a dog team that’s where she wants to be. When she’s alone, she’s happy. Kind of like me.”

Kyla never finished the Yukon Quest last year. A one-line sentence in a CBC report said that race had ended for her on the steep climb up Eagle Summit in Alaska. She attempted to climb the summit but turned back when her dogs were unable to make the ascent.

She wasn’t at the Yukon Quest this year either. The last note I got from her read simply, “No racin [sic] this winter just workin [sic]. Thanks for your help last year in Dawson.” I am pretty sure that she will be back. She will return to watch the dogs run.

The ocean is Amanda Swinimers’ garden. Photo courtesy Amanda Swinimer.

The entrepreneurial women of Canada’s West Coast seaweed culture

(Sooke) I was taken aback when I caught sight of Amanda in her wetsuit at Muir Creek. The only clue that I was at the right place was her long dreadlocks that spread out wildly from her thick bush of hair. She was waiting for me in her tightly fitting wetsuit that revealed the silhouette of a true-to-life mermaid with her young daughters Mahina and Nesika milling about the beach with a friend in the distance.

Not being in tune with the tidal patterns of the ocean, the migration of the birds or even the frigid temperatures of the waters here, I suddenly realized how awkward my request had been to ask her to plunge into the sea. I had met Herbalist Amanda Swinimer of Dakini Tidal Wilds haphazardly in an airport mini-bus in Toronto, and was enraptured by her stories of seaweed culture and the small community of Sooke that sustained it. I had imagined that the sea was Amanda’s element. What I hadn’t considered was that it was early February, and the water temperature was about forty degrees and her underwater garden would largely be in hibernation.

No bothers, though, Amanda is one of the self-styled seaweed ladies of Sooke. The ocean is her garden. While it may not yet be green or even plush, I seemed to have enticed her curiosity about just what was going on under the cold and salty waters at Muir Creek these days.

For Amanda seaweed are both a passion and her livelihood. With her catch she makes curative salves that she sells at the local James Bay Market, while others will be prepared for consumption in foods like salads, teas, soups and even deserts. She will also prepare some for fellow seaweed ladies.

« This is the winter harvest. I’m not sure what I’m going to find, but bull kelp is a good stand-by, » she said optimistically as we walked towards the beach, « There might be something interesting underneath. »

For eight months of the year – from May to October – Amanda plunges almost daily under the surf of the ocean here to harvest seaweed on this scenic beach of this community on the southern tip of Vancouver Island – about a half-hour drive from the provincial capital of Victoria. While in British Columbia there are some 700 species of seaweed – with 250 in this harvesting area alone – Amanda’s main crop consists of alaria and bull kelp.

« I was always passionate about seaweed, » she says, « Figuring out how to make a living of it came after. I just started harvesting. I had never seen a seaweed garden as diverse as this. It’s incredible, and I still don’t know all of the species that exist here. »

Every year in April Amanda organizes the S.O.S Festival, or Save our Salmon, a festival of live music to raise money for the Muir Creek Protection Society. Her musical band of environmentalists – all but one member of whom are local women – share the stage with five other groups to play original music on these rocky shores.

The rare ecosystem of Muir Creek
The music they play is inspired by the rare ecosystem here that includes a spawning ground for three species of salmon, giant red cedars that can grow in excess of six feet in diameter and, of course, a plethora of a variety of kinds of seaweed. It all comes together at Muir Creek, Amanda says.

If writing is a lonely task, I thought, her daily routine of plucking seaweed from this ocean playground must be equally forlorn. But Amanda was a tree planter and she has probably spent as many hours planting – one seedling at a time – as she has collected her greens from the ocean. In season Amanda will wade daily into these waters for two hours hunting for alaria. She also pulls out loads of bull kelp – one of the fastest growing organisms on the planet. She even professes you can watch it grow with the naked eye on a sunny day.

Approaching the waters edge Amanda throws down her gear that includes fins and gloves, making her impermeable. She heads off about twenty meters into the waters from the rocky shores. In the distance I see her head bobble up and down intermittently as she scans bellow the surface of the cold waters, looking for signs of life.

After fluttering about for some time Amanda returns with a small bounty of bull kelp in the last stages of its existence. The life-cycle of this plant sees its reproductive cells almost swim to the ocean floor; latch onto a rock before speedily growing up once again – from 120 to 150 feet long towards the life-giving light.

« This one looks like it is good quality but if you feel it it’s very soft and in its dying days, » she says as she shows me her catch, « Normally it would be thicker and tougher than that. »

Amanda described what she sees below the water on a summer’s day as a blanket of kelp up to her waist floating in glacier-colored waters. Some fan out like the head of a palm tree growing from rocks on the distant ocean floor. Others look almost iridescent as the suns rays penetrate the water leaving traces of what look like little floating rainbows.

« Its like being in an underwater forest, » she describes, « You can see the big bulls going down but you cannot see the bottom as they just kind of disappear into the sea bellow. It’s very murky because there is so much algae bloom in the waters. Sometimes I can kind of see the side of an orca; I can picture those kind of things go by. »

Amanda also shares these shores with a resident seal that she says has staked out this land as his.

« He’s let me know that, » she says, recognizing that she is a visitor to these shores. « I have to be respectful of his territory here in the kelp forest. And I’ve let him know that I’m not killing anything. »

« I was scared a couple of times and I just put it out there. I didn’t go near his area, he likes to be on this side, usually, » she says as she points off in the distance. « He checked me out and figured I was ok. Now it’s easier every summer. »

Once her work collecting done, Amanda stacks about seventy or eighty pounds of seaweed and hauls it in by hand from the beach to her wheelbarrow.

« It’s very heavy and the water drains out of the bag, » she says, « before I am out of the ocean there is the weight of the water too and when there’s a big surf it’s a very serious trek. I take off my fins. I have to touch the ground by then, otherwise I lose mobility. It’s a bit of an operation at times. »

From there it’s only a couple hundred meters to where her truck is parked. She drives her catch to her nearby home where she individually hangs, inspects and dries each strand on a cedar beam, a natural antibiotic. Alaria will take thirty hours to dry while the bull kelp needs a day, she says. Once harvested, Amanda individually packs her seaweed for its different uses.

Sooke Harbour House: The focal hub
If Muir Creek is where Sooke hides some of the best of its seaweed, not far down the road is a focal hub for local seaweed culture. Sooke Harbour House overlooks a stunning bay that looks like a remote corner of the Galapagos Islands. Here too the lazy seals rest; an otter swims about gleefully, and eagles fly overhead in an area that is characterized by its sheer scenic beauty.

Sooke Harbour House is perched on a small elevation just meters from the beach at Sooke Inlet overlooking the Juan de Fuca Strait. In the distance you can see the peaks of the Olympic Mountain range, the first peeks of the neighbouring United States. The sounds of birds reverberate.

The Sooke Harbour House is an inn, a restaurant, a gallery, spa and an ecological way station where seaweed culture in Sooke meets. The inn prides itself on being distinctly local. The tasteful furnishings are made by local craftspeople, the art-works on the walls are local, and the food served in the restaurant is almost uniquely sourced in the surrounding region; including its seaweed.

It is here that two of the seaweed ladies of Sooke give tours to local and visiting tourists about sea-life, how to identify the seaweed, how to harvest it sustainably, how to cook and even garden with seaweed. This is an outdoor classroom where groups of six people to over a hundred people learn about this wild resource. To eat, wear and play with seaweeds.

On the shores of the beach at Sooke Harbour House I meet Diane, an entrepreneurial seaweed lady who was formerly a community activist and politician. Astute, communicative and self-assured, she is a true lobbyist for her cause. Just as fast as I arrive, she fits me with a pair of gum-boots and a durable hand-painted walking stick and we take a walk on the beach facing Sooke Harbour House. This is her ocean classroom.

Diane Bernard of Seaflora at Outer Coast Seaweeds has developed a line of skin-care products that she makes from seaweed collected around Sooke. Her line includes twenty-six products that she sells to upscale spas in Canada and around the world. She is the entrepreneurial magnet that brings together and likely holds together the seaweed ladies of Sooke. But the fruit of the ocean garden runs deep in her family history. It is deeply anchored on both of the Canadian coastlines.

« I am from the Îles de la Madeleine, » says Diane, « I have been here on the British Columbia coastline for most of my adult life but I am actually a third-generation seaweed person. When locally they call me a seaweed lady, I sort of chuckle. But it’s true. That’s what I am.”

Diane Bernard: A seaweed heritage
Diane says this while scrambling on chunky rocks in front of monster bull kelp that looks like a massive wound up piece of spaghetti. Of course she was a seaweed lady, I thought, it even says as much on her business card. Unusual vocations like these must be named as we call a spade, a spade.

The Îles de la Madeleine are a series of small gulf islands in the province of Quebec, a series of interconnected islands inhabited by story-tellers, fishermen and seal hunters. In the Gulf of the St-Laurence, they are wind-swept and isolated for many months of the year, and inhabited by so-called ‘Madelinotes’, mostly descendents of French-speaking Acadians. But what the islands bring back for her are memories of the seaweed culture of another ocean.

Her grandparents’ generation harvested seaweed to insulate homes, stuff mattresses and refrigerate fishing vessels. They used to keep lobsters cool as they were brought to market and she even remembers as a child when it was used as a poor-man’s chewing tobacco.

« They weren’t focused on the health benefits of seaweed at the time, » says Diane, « When my aunts cooked up lobster or clam bakes they would dig a pit and a add layer seaweeds followed by a layer of clams, after which they would water it and layer it again. They always drank the broth in the end. »

« I have to tell you that as a child I found that totally disgusting. But now when I look back on those years; they worked with what they had, » she reasons.

Diane bends down and picks up the long monster-sized seaweed from the beach, likely thrown ashore from a coastal storm. She lifts it in the air and appears statuesque, talking to me but looking out into the landscape.

« These are some of the healthiest plants on the planet. When you have clean oceans, you have clean seaweed. I am not hiding behind anything and our oceans are in a lot of trouble. But the ocean in this area is exceptionally clean. »

Commercial seaweed, she explains, is used as fillers for paints, varnishes, car polishes, toothpaste and even ice cream. It is even used in chocolate milk, ice cream and even paints.

« Over the course of the past hundred years seaweeds around the world are being harvested brutally, » says Diane, « What the world does in treating it as a commodity is that they strip it, freeze it, boil it and bleach it. They filter it, and filter it, and filter it until it is rendered down into a very fine white powder. After that whole process there would not be one decent vitamin left. »

Intent on creating a new model, Diane does more than rendering seaweed into a simple white powder. She developed a business based on overseeing the development of a beauty product from the time it was harvested from the sea to the time that it put into the users hand. Her idea was to bring real seaweed back into the seaweed products, focusing on their nutrient values.

As we move along the pebbles of the waters edge, suddenly Diane motions me to stop. Suddenly we hear three crisp cries of birds in the distance.

« They’re oyster catchers, » she whispers. But in front of us there are also ducks, gulls and cormorants. We move on and sitting idly on top of a series of rocks in the distance are lazy looking seals casually watching us. We stop for a few minutes enjoying the rays of the mid-afternoon sun.

Bathing in seaweed culture
On the move again I leave Sooke Harbour House for my third and final stop. I return to French Beach, not far from Muir Creek where I am promised another unique experience; the so-called French Beach Special. Christine was waiting for me for a thlassotherapy session. The word sounds rather complicated but in plain English it was basically a bath in seaweed followed by a scented aromatherapy massage, « especially suited to your individual requirements ».

Christine Hopkins had been practicing aromatherapy for more than a dozen years when she began to introduce seaweed into her treatments. A meeting with Diane six years ago – who at the time was researching her own seaweed products – resulted in Christine testing the use of seaweeds as a complement to her own aroma therapies. Today, she bathes in seaweed at least five times a week and believes in the healing power of a mixture of the use of seaweed and essential oils.

« About four years ago I was enjoying using the seaweed so much, » she tells me, « I started soaking with them myself in baths. I was not intending to do this, but I was able to get off of thyroid medication that I was taking as the result of a combination of essential oils and seaweeds. »

The health benefits of seaweed were not discovered yesterday. They are cited in ancient Chinese poems or even Egyptian papyrus. Christine hands me a book which describes the health benefits of various kinds of seaweed that includes its use in the treatment of cancer, fibroids, cholesterol, cardiovascular ailments, diabetes, hepatitis, weight loss or burns. Sure it’s not a panacea, I thought, but in a world of imperfect sciences age-old medicines certainly have a place.

Christine turns on the tap in a hot-tub that is speckled with various kinds of seaweed. She turns on some Irish-light spiritual music and leaves the room as I watch amazed as the small shrivelled up bits of seaweed expand into their original sizes. Floating in the water is what looks like an array of multi-coloured washcloths. One develops into a silk-like kerchief that gives off some kind of gelatine. Another is as rough as sandpaper, but all of them develop color and suddenly look as if they had been plucked from the sea by Amanda the day before.

I hop into the bath and begin to bathe in the seaweed that by now has expanded five to six times their shrivelled sizes, and turned into bright purples, greens and browns. You could really smell the sea, and l begin to play like a boy in his tub with the flimsy seaweed that were my magical discovery of the day.

The Boys Choir of Kenya in Washington for innauguration events. Photo Boys Choir of Kenya.

Destinations connected with Obama capitalize on associations with new president

(Montreal) From Nairobi to Waikiki, to the small Irish community of Moneygall; the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of United States has generated what is termed the ‘Obama effect’ on tourism destinations that are hoping to benefit from their association with the president-elect’s journey to the White House.

« We brought The Boys Choir of Kenya to perform at several events, » says Jennifer Jacobson-Rath, North American Marketing Manager for the Kenyan Tourism Board, reached in Washington on Monday shortly after an appearance on the US broadcaster CNN.

The Boys Choir of Kenya will be presenting at several of the pre-inauguration Washington galas. They perform a range of traditional chants from Massaai and Sumburu, and contemporary African pieces. They are popular in their native Kenya, which boasts over forty-two ethnic groups; their repertoire also covers European and American choral classics from Bach, Mozart, Negro Spirituals and Caribbean folk songs.

« They are treated like rock stars; there is a feeling on the street of celebration to the Obama connection, » says Jacobson-Rath of the reception of the choir.

Barack Obama, whose late father was born in Kenya, is celebrated as a national hero and a source of pride in the East African country. Kenyan officials are counting on using the cache of Barack Obama’s presidency to attract tourists to the country that only a year ago was undergoing a period of violence and civil strife.

Kenyan Tourism minister Najib Balala is scheduled to hold talks later this week in New York, Jacobson-Rath says, to examine the different marketing opportunities available to capitalize on the ‘Obama effect’.

Local tour operators in Kenya have already incorporated visits to the village of Kogelo in their travel offerings. It is where Obama’s father grew up and where his grandmother still lives. A project to build a museum in the village dedicated to Barrack Obama is also expected to attract large numbers of American visitors keen on learning about the roots of their first non-white American president. US carrier Delta Airlines has recently opened offices in Nairobi and will launch flights from Atlanta to Nairobi via the Senegalese capital of Dakar.

« It is obvious that it has given a lot of hope to people here, and you can sense that, » says Paris-based event organizer Patrick Jucaud of Basic Lead talking from the Senegalese capital of Dakar.

« It is a very special day. Every magazine, newspaper and television show have been talking about Obama. I had a meeting with the director of the national broadcaster and all he could talk about was Obama, so there is a huge impact on the morale of the people here. »

While already leading the production of a pan-African television market called Discop Africa – set to take place at the end of next month in Dakar – Jucaud would like to capitalize on the peaked interest in Africa following the Obama interest to develop a new tourism marketplace either in Dakar or Nairobi within the next six months.

« There are many expectations of the United States, » continues Jucaud, « With all the plans people here believe that it will be a powerful help for the development of Africa. And it has given them a lot of pride. »

« While there are many opportunities, though, it is still too early. The main thing is to find the right angle to bring the right kind of tourism. »

Some tourism insiders say that finding right angle came a little bit late in the game for one of the most obvious places on Obama’s biographical map, where he grew up in the leafy Hawaiian islands – a destination that is suffering the devastating effects of a recent downswing in tourism numbers.

Kenyan Tourism Minister Najib Balala is scheduled to hold talks in New York about a strategy on capitalizing on the Obama effect.

« They don’t really do enough, » says Juergen Steinmetz, President of the newly formed Hawaii Tourism Association, and long-time publisher of the travel-trade site eturbonews.

« When Obama was here for Christmas and the New Year, CNN was basically camped out at in Waikiki. That kind of publicity cannot be bought and you cannot put a dollar value to it: it’s tremendous and had quite an impact. »

But it was almost as if these islands had neglected the potential benefits of having the president-elect spend his 12-night vacation on the island of Oahu, says Steinmetz, who has spearheaded an industry-backed tourism promotion organization in order to attempt to rejuvenate the Hawaiian tourism industry – and initiate new opportunities.

« The Obama-effect has only been happening on a small scale here so far, » he says, « A restaurant has named a burger after him, a store has a sign that says ‘Obama was here’, and there is a tour that drives by the apartment where he grew up. »

The Barack Obama effect doesn’t stop there, however. Even a small remote Irish village is laying claim to its own piece of the next US leader’s heritage. An amusing local band’s video – which has been viewed almost a million times on YouTube – sings a tune that goes, « there’s nobody as Irish as Barack Obama ».

Stephen Neill, an Anglican rector in the small village claimed to have discovered a genealogical connect between Obama’s great-great-great-grandfather, Fulmuth Kearney, and claims that he was raised in Moneygall before leaving, at the age of 19, for America in 1850.

While the Obama team has reportedly not confirmed or denied his connection to the town of less than 300, it has not stopped the celebrations there; nor has it stopped the international media attention that the community has received in recent days.

It just goes to show that even a remote connection of over a century and a half ago can launch Obama-mania, the Obama effect.