I’m helping to build WhyGoCanada, a one-stop resource for travel to Canada.

Since BootsnAll is a sponsor of the upcoming TBEX11, a popular travel blog conference that I wrote about here, I’m starting with tips on Vancouver. I’ll be working my way across Canada slowly but surely.

I hope you’ll consider adding the new site to your RSS feed, and that you’ll come visit on Facebook and check in on Twitter too: @whygocanada.

I’ll still be posting here, but not so frequently and not only about Canada. Stay tuned while I figure out how to have my blog and make a living too…!

It’s a beautiful spread with photos by the extremely talented Deddeda Stemler…hope you’ll have a look!

If you’re 21-year-old Vancouver hockey blogger Richard Loat, you get Five Hole for Food, a 10-day traveling road hockey game that’s helping to replenish the shelves of Canada’s food banks.

The first ball dropped on June 29 in Montreal and after stops in Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton, and Victoria, the final game will be played in Vancouver on July 9.

Loat aimed to raise one tonne of food (2,000 lbs) for Canadian food banks. Today, with three games left to go–it’s Edmonton’s turn tonight–his total haul is 1,899 lbs.

“I’m really excited to be heading back to my hometown to end the trip,” says the SFU Communications student in an e-mail from the road. “We’re playing in the heart of downtown Vancouver and couldn’t ask for a better location.

“We’re going to surpass the goal we set for ourselves and I can’t wait for Vancouver to step up and beat the totals raised in the other cities we’ve been to. It will really set the bar for next year when we embark on this all over again!”

The fun’s all free–just bring your favourite jersey, a stick and something tasty for your local food bank. You’re welcome at the post-game meet-ups too.

Ball-drop for the Edmonton game tonight is 5:30 pm at Deer Ridge Park (in St. Albert).

The Victoria game gets underway  July 8 at 5:30 pm at Topaz Park. In Vancouver the next day, game-time is 5:30 pm in the 800-block of Granville Street.

So go for it all you Sid-the-Kid wannabes out there: here’s your chance to relive that gold medal goal!

I’ve just returned from the Travel Blog Exchange conference–aka TBEX10–in New York.

If you are a travel blogger, or a travel writer whose traditional media markets are rapidly drying up, or a travel industry PR person looking to keep your career currency high, then you were there too.

Or you should have been.

Depending on how active you are on Twitter, you couldn’t really miss the buzz about TBEX10. (Search #tbex to see what I mean.) You put 300-plus travel enthusiasts in a Manhattan theatre for a weekend and there’s going to be some chatter.

The dynamic sometimes reminded me of a high school dance: you had the the popular kids, the wallflowers, the class clowns and the stoners. (Do they still call them stoners?) Everyone quickly found a gang to hang with. Or drink with.

Whatever.

TBEX is still in its teething stages. Conceived by Chicago-based powerhouse Kim Mance and raised thus far by a savvy grassroots team, it promises to become a formidable player on the professional development circuit in the next couple of years.

It was sort of charming that this social media conference didn’t offer wifi, let alone coffee. Fortunately the next conference will be held in Vancouver, BC with some organizational assistance from the Canadian Tourism Commission and Tourism BC–two groups that have years of experience hosting large events for travel media.

My feeling about these sorts of conferences is that if you walk away with even one nugget that you can immediately apply to your work, it’s been a good investment of time and money. I’m pretty sure everyone walked away with a whole bag of nuggets.

Here are my 10 top favourites:

1. Your blog is your storefront.

• Sheila Scarborough made the point that “your blog is your storefront for whatever it is you really do to earn money.” It reflects your personality and your professionalism. Cast a critical eye on your wares and how they are displayed to make sure they are attractive to potential customers.

2. Don’t go all emo.

• In a discussion regarding how to use analytics to help increase traffic, Andy Hayes urged bloggers to “take the emotion out of the formula and keep trying.” As you begin the arduous task of building volume, don’t give in to the feeling that no one loves you, everybody hates you and you should go sit in the garden and eat worms. Make like the tortoise and keep steadily tweaking what you’re doing based on the evidence gleaned from your analytics.

3. “Co-opertition” works.

• Bootsnall’s Sean Keener was credited with this phrase during one of the panel sessions. The idea is that the web is a big place and there’s room for people who could be seen as competitors to actually cooperate to build traffic to both of their sites. You need high-value–that is, authoritative and relevant–incoming links to build your Google rank. And sometimes you just need to ask respected peers for them.

4. Ethics equals credibility.

• Spud Hilton said it. I always knew it. But it was good to hear it again–especially considering how fussy the FTC is getting about disclosure. (For the record, here’s my disclosure statement.)

5. Find your focus.

• Various PR reps claimed to be more interested in a blogger’s “sphere of influence” than their traffic volume. So you want to dig an online niche for yourself and you want to dig it deep across the social media spectrum: Twitter; Facebook; YouTube et al.

6. Stop, absorb & observe.

• Don George, the eminence grise of travel writing in North America, reminded everyone that people want to read stories–not itineraries. And the “telling detail” is the key to any good story–but you have to slow down long enough to really observe what’s going on around you. (On the way home I stopped at Union Square and sat on a park bench for a while. At dusk, I saw little children chasing fireflies. I have always wondered about what it would be like to raise a child in Manhattan and in that moment I found something of an answer.)

7. Live in a thank-you economy.

• Annemarie Dooling used this phrase to reinforce the message that the currency of the blogging world is collaboration and cooperation and (especially) giving credit where it is due. (I still see a lot of resistance to this notion amongst my old-school media colleagues who still value “the scoop.”)

8. Practice the slow sell.

• Annemarie Dooling made this point as did  Tourism BC’s Janice Greenwood-Fraser during a panel discussion about working with PR people.  If you’re just starting out, don’t expect to be hosted by a destination just because you’re keen and earnest. As ever, it all comes down to relationships. It takes time–and demonstrated results–to build trust. Once you’ve earned it, you’ll be able to close future deals more quickly.

9. Be an accessible expert.

• Jessica Spiegel observed that travel blogs are the modern-day Baedeker offering accessible expertise to would-be travelers. It reminded me that almost half the traffic to my Canada travel blog comes from Google searches–people looking for information about travel to Canada. I am in service to a real reader, with real needs–and that realization will help shape my future content.

10. Play the long game.

• Way back before some of the people attending TBEX10 were even born, Canada’s Evelyn Hanon created Journeywoman to help women travel more confidently. Evelyn is a 70-year-old granny now, and her popular web site is, by her own admission, completely outdated (and some might even say ugly). But still the clicks come. She got a laugh with her explanation of why she won’t bother to do any cosmetic enhancements to her site: “It’s like visiting grandma’s house. At your grandmother’s house you know exactly where everything is!” But the truth is, Journeywoman ably proves the old adage that “content is king”–and just about every other point on this Top 10 list too. Evelyn is a pro who knows when to self-promote and when to advocate for others; how to ask for the support she needs and then return the favour; and when simply to trust that things will work out. In a room crowded with hipsters, it was nice to take a lesson from the grey-hair.

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading. Let me know your thoughts about TBEX10 below and hope to see you at TBEX 11 in Vancouver–my beautiful hometown!

In support of Metro Vancouver’s recent campaign to promote the city’s excellent tap water (and significantly reduce plastic waste) the hotel is stocking rooms with reusable bottles in addition to the one-off disposables. The co-branded metal bottles cost $12.95–but the refills are free!

It’s an industry first apparently, but it’s an idea that’s so simple it’s, well, sustainable.

Kudos to Fairmont for getting with the program and let’s hope it’s not too long before other hotels start picking this low-hanging greenfruit…

Indeed I had–and offered to provide the VISA bill to prove it.

But it raised the age-old question (well, age-old for those of us who started our travel-writing careers in print) about whether there’s any such thing as a free–or even subsidized–lunch.

Can someone who is getting fed (or sheltered or entertained) actually offer balanced commentary on the experience–or are they in the pocket of their sponsor?

I recently heard Vancouver social media maven Rebecca Bollwit (aka Miss 604) on CBC Radio commenting on the need to introduce US-style transparency laws to the Canadian blogging scene.

Basically, she thinks it’s a good idea that bloggers be required by law to disclose freebies. She reiterated her blog post which said although transparency isn’t required, she does “offer some disclosure” (see her comment below).

My wish would be that it wouldn’t take a law to make bloggers do the right thing. I think it could be as simple as posting “Blogger X’s travels in Nova Scotia were sponsored by Destination Halifax” at the end of a post–much like Globe and Mail and Georgia Straight travel editors have been doing for years at the bottom of their stories.

Since the beginning, I have included a disclosure statement on this blog, but today I am putting it on its own page so that it is easier to find.

I ask that you read it and tell me: does it go far enough?

Do you still need me to tell you every single time at the end of a post whether this burger or that hotel room was sponsored? Or is it enough that you know what principles and values inform that post?

I really want to know, and I will bend to the will of my readers on this because I think trust and transparency are key to a successful travel blog. Please do weigh in below. I’m listening.

Related link: The great debate: To freebie or not to freebie

The view from my picture window over Chesterman Beach on the far left coast of Vancouver Island, BC is not unlike what I saw when I looked up from computer 18 months ago and realized many of my most loyal newspaper and magazine editors had been fired or “retired” and those who were left were offering meagre pay for fewer words.

As a long-time print-based travel writer, my career landscape was suddenly unfamiliar and frankly a little scary. I thought about hanging up my boots. Briefly.

And then I got busy learning how to surf in turbulent waters.

Ten months after launching TheseBoots.Travel as an all-Canada travel blog, I’m relieved to report I’m still upright.

There have been no ugly crashes. The site attracts many new readers and sponsors every month. I’ve had a lot of fun and even made a little money–but I sure haven’t done it alone.

So many people have helped me make this transition and for anything good that’s happened here in 2009, I thank:

• my husband Brad for always being my best teacher
• Rebecca Bollwit, aka Miss 604, and Evelyn Hannon, aka Journeywoman, for sharing all they know so freely with so many
• SFU friends Steve Ray and Josh Laidlaw for pushing me into the tech deep end and then making sure I didn’t drown
• UBC’s Alfred Hermida and SFU’s Richard Smith, whose understanding of and enthusiasm for the journalistic potential of social media makes wish I was in J-school again
• Gloria Loree and Michelle Glave of the Canadian Tourism Commission, and Darren Johner of Tourism Vancouver for “getting it”–and getting me
• Tourism Niagara’s Betsy Foster for buying the first ad
• Fairmont Hotels‘ Mike Taylor for sponsoring the first contest prize (and for the public nod as “Canada’s Wendy Perrin”)
• all the advertisers and contest sponsors who followed them
• Laura Serena (ImmediaPR), Lynda Kaye (KayePR), Jane Ince (JIMediaConnections), and Kate Rogers (TartanPR) for unwavering support in wavering times
• Travel Blog Exchange founder Kim Mance for creating a classy professional development event (TBEX10) for serious travel bloggers–and those who want to be
• all my wonderfully supportive and knowledgeable media and PR colleagues in the Travel Media Association of Canada–you know who you are!
• and you–the 30,000+ TheseBoots readers–for making all this more than a wank. It’s good to know you’re out there.

A hug of gratitude to you all and best wishes for 2010!

And here’s an early Twitter #followfriday for most of the above:

Brad Ovenell-Carter: @braddo

Rebecca Bollwit: @miss604

Evelyn Hannon: @journeywoman

Steve Ray: @seray

Josh Laidlaw: @joshlaidlaw

Darren Johner: @myvancouver

Mike Taylor: @fairmonthotels

TBEX10: @TBEX10

Kim Mance: @kimmance

Laura Serena: @immediapr

Jane Ince: @jince

Betsy Foster: @tourismniagara

Richard Smith: @smith

Alfred Hermida: @hermida

[This post originally appeared on Sept. 24/09, but since we're just a month out from the start of the 2010 Winter Games, I've brought it back...]

Just back from Whistler where a small group of international travel writers were this week treated to an impressive dog-and-pony about British Columbia’s upcoming Winter Olympics.

Let it be said that I did not cave to the hard-sell. There is no bandwagon in my future. Surely anyone with half a brain understands that the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games are the worst thing that has ever been unleashed upon an unsuspecting Canadian public.

Consider the evidence:

Sea-to-Sky Highway improvements will threaten family values.

Even before they spent $600 million straightening out the death-trap turns on Highway 99 between Horseshoe Bay and Whistler, this long and scenic road was named among the world’s top drives by Britain’s esteemed Guardian. Now, with the rough edges smoothed off, you can actually take your eyes off the road long enough to appreciate the glorious views–and that can only lead to one thing: motorcycle riding. What will happen when decent men—and even women—are tempted to leave junior with a sitter so they can hit the highway on two wheels?

The Cultural Olympiad will make children want to grow up to be artists.

It’s insidious how these things happen: one minute you’re a well-intentioned parent taking advantage of the Cultural Olympiad’s artistic bounty to introduce your youngsters to the wonders of Robert Lepage’s multi-media theatre spectacles or Tanya Tagaq’s mesmerizing throat-singing and the next thing you know they’re clamoring to enroll at Arts Umbrella. Then they’ll hit voting age and start lobbying the government to increase funding for arts and culture and before you know it, Canada will be a hotbed of creativity and innovation.

Taxpayer-subsidized video footage will bring more tourists to Canada.

Believe it: Canadian tax dollars helped produce stunning, professional-quality B-roll of Canadian destinations for use by international broadcasters before, during and after the 2010 Games. For months and possibly even years, friends, family and even total strangers from around the world will see this dramatic footage on TV and web sites and be inspired to come and spend money in our country. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Canada Line will lead to decreased workplace productivity.

No joke: the clean and green light rapid rail service that will whisk the Olympic masses from Vancouver International Airport to downtown Vancouver in 25 minutes for less than a cabbie’s tip will also be used by local commuters. Every day these hard-working Canadians will be surrounded by international visitors and their suitcases. How long will it be before they begin to waste precious hours day-dreaming about their own world travels?

The Squamish-Lil’Wat Cultural Centre will promote co-operation and cultural pride.

The striking new $30-million aboriginal cultural centre at Whistler is just one example of what can happen when Canada’s First Nations are consulted and included in the planning and execution of major projects. There are, in fact, four separate First Nations working together as co-hosts of the 2010 Winter Games. And to see what can happen when a nation’s racial rifts begin to heal, you need only look to the example set by our good neighbours to the south…

Are there other Canadian airports on Twitter? If you know, can you please add the ID in the comment section below? Thanks!

I was more comfortable saying “Queen Charlotte Islands”–the name that had been printed on every grade school map I’d ever studied.

But last week, the Globe and Mail reported that the traditional name–meaning “islands of the people”–will now appear on all official provincial maps. And this small act of reconciliation by the provincial government is wise and good, no matter what the Monarchist League of Canada says to the contrary.

My 21-year-old daughter, who spent a couple of weeks teaching in Haida Gwaii this past summer, put it best:

“It’s hard to grasp until you’ve actually been there, but once you have, you understand that of course it is Haida Gwaii. You see with your own eyes that it is the Haida’s ancient land, and everyone else is just a guest in their home.”

During my own visit, I toured the then-new Haida Heritage Centre and wrote about it for the Globe and Mail. When I emerged, I never again felt comfortable saying “Queen Charlotte Islands.”

I wonder how long it will be before the guidebooks catch up?

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