As the wind whispers through the cedars and a misty drizzle falls, Candace Campo raises her voice in song. The timbre ebbs and swells, and the forest seems to lean in, listening to her song and acknowledging Campo’s timeless connection to this land. Porpoise Bay Provincial Park is on the traditional lands of the shíshálh people and, as she stands beside the mighty trunk of a second-growth cedar, eyes closed and arms raised, Campo embodies her ancestral name. She is xets’emits’a (to always be there).

Campo’s voice is the backdrop to an exceptional three-day tour of British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast. The driving force behind Talaysay Tours, a First Nations Tourism company based in the region, Campo is both a teacher and a guide — a storyteller extraordinaire conjuring up the history of this land and its peoples. Teachings about place flow into teachings about forest medicines; teachings about fishing flow into gossip about the exploits of her aunties. This journey is an opportunity to acknowledge the land in a meaningful way; Campo’s words are expressions of hope. If we understand what was (and is), we will begin to understand how to live in balance with the natural world once again.

A tidal bore is a natural phenomenon that occurs when a wave surges up a river against the current. This creates reliably impressive waves and rapids, and despite its name (bore comes from Old Norse for wave), the homonym is not the least bit boring. Especially if you are on a Zodiac darting in and out of rapids churned by the world’s highest tide, turning Nova Scotia’s Shubenacadie River into a wet and wild river adventure. Welcome to the only place in the world, you can river raft a genuine tidal wave. You will get wet.

It’s Extreme Tide Day, and I’m feeling lucky. Not every raft trip with the folks at Tidal Bore Rafting Resort delivers seven-metre-plus waves. Depending on the tide cycle, it could be a Regular Tide (perfect for young kids) or High Tide, with plenty of action but not over the top. An Extreme Tide is equivalent to Class 5 Rapids, which the international scale of river difficulty (a sort of Richter scale for navigating rivers) reserves for Expert: ‘Very violent rapids which expose a paddler to added risk, may contain large, unavoidable waves and holes or steep, congested chutes with complex, demanding routes.”

High grades for a level-grade, straight-ahead rail trail crossing three distinct Eastern Ontario ecological zones.

I made this trek in late April — no bugs! — so it wasn’t until Day 2 on Eastern Ontario’s Cataraqui Trail that I saw my first fellow walkers. It was the whimsically named Curd n’ Birding group, who had worked their way along the farm fence lines, looking for birds while edging ever closer to the Forfar Dairy Cheese Store.

Although they shared sightings of rufous-sided towhees, brown thrashers and meadowlark, alas, they had no curd to spare. Sigh. I could see the dairy just 600 metres across the field, but was unwilling to break momentum so early in the day, so on I walked dreaming of fresh, warm curd. And after another 10 kilometres, poutine. 

On Nashville’s Broadway, a major downtown road called the Honky Tonk Highway, the smell of beer fills the air as throngs of tourists in cowboy hats crowd the sidewalk. Outside of Boot Country, a local family-owned boot store, sightseers take selfies next to a seven-foot cowboy boot while others take in the live music pumped into the streets. The sound of steel guitar and electric violin seeps out of bars, and although it’s only just past noon, it’s never too early for socializers at Honky Tonk Central – a burnt-orange, three-story country music mecca to start revelling. 

If the pandemic left lasting damage on some tourist destinations, in Nashville, known by some as “Nashvegas,” the party is back in full swing. 

When it comes to dining, there is plenty to choose from in the Broadway and Third area, the beating heart of Music City, but some of the finest options are found a short distance from the action.