The Current - The Current's ultimate travel list: Atlantic Canada edition
Episode Date: April 23, 2025Four more listeners make the case for their favourite vacation spots, hoping to win a place on The Current’s list of great Canadian travel destinations. Sandra Trask says that Cape Breton Island, N....S., is a place for everyone and every season; Lana Gauthier explains why her family fell in love with Basin Head Provincial Park, P.E.I.; Lisa Proulx shares what’s so special about Gros Morne National Park, N.L.; and Annette Barclay says you just have to visit Kouchibouguac National Park, N.B. You can see the full shortlist and vote for your favourite on cbc.ca/thecurrent.
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Fisherman John Coppock and his son Craig were hoping that their day on the water would finish with a good haul of cod.
Instead, they reeled in way more than they bargained for.
They had a net filled with fish and to their horror and surprise, the body of a man.
I'm Kathleen Goldthar and this week on Crime Story, a body in the ocean untangles a sea of lies.
Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts.
[♪THEME MUSIC PLAYING》
This is a CBC Podcast.
Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast.
You might know we are on a quest to create the ultimate
Canadian travel guide, places that you should see
in this country that every Canadian needs to visit of the thousands of submissions we received.
We have narrowed it down to 20 finalists.
There is now one more week for you to vote for your top destination in Canada.
We have a few more pitches to hear in the remaining days.
And I'll be talking to listeners who are championing their favorite destinations.
Places like the Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories, Stratford,
Ontario, the Bow River in Alberta.
You can vote for your favorites online.
Go to cbc.ca slash the current.
This morning, since I'm in Halifax, we thought it would make sense to highlight
some of the picks in Atlanta, Canada.
To that end, Sandra Trask is in Sydney, Nova Scotia.
Lana Gautier is in Ottawa and at Barclay is in Victoria, British Columbia.
And Lisa Proulx is in the Annapolis Valley.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Morning.
Sandra, you're up first.
What is your pick for the ultimate Canadian travel guide?
The place that you believe every Canadian needs to go to.
Thank you, Matt.
That would be Cape Breton Island.
It is Nova Scotia's masterpiece.
It has magnificent scenery and is rich in
culture. People are warm and welcoming. The island is consistently rated number one island
in Canada by Travel and Leisure magazine. I believe it was also rated top one of three
islands in the world by the same magazine. Cape Breton Island speaks to you with its natural beauty and its friendly people.
It has many picture-perfect communities.
And in those communities, Matt, you'll find French Acadian people, you'll find Scottish
people, you'll find Mi'kmaq people, and many other ethnicities.
Traditions are alive and well in these communities. There are hiking trails,
there's pristine beaches and lakes, there's fishing villages, and loads, and I mean loads
of talented musicians. Now let me stop you there because it's interesting. Every Cape Retina I know
says that it's the most beautiful place in the world. You may find yourself in a fight with other
Canadians saying that it's the best island in the country or even the best place in Nova Scotia,
but I'll leave those fights off to the side.
What is it, I mean, why do Cape Retiners
take such pride in their island?
I believe because of the beauty and because of the people.
They're very warm and welcoming people.
They're unpretentious.
They'll go what are their way to make you feel at home?
They're helpful. They're kind. They're friendly.
They're everything you want in somebody.
And they're scattered everywhere throughout the island.
What is the best time?
And people might travel there in the summer,
but the best time to go to Cape Retina is in the fall, right?
Yes, I would say year round is good,
but definitely the fall, the Cabot Trail is the reason for that.
Just describe for somebody who's never seen
what it looks like in the fall,
just try and paint me a picture of that.
Hmm, well, there's a spectacular array of vibrant colors.
It's outstanding to experience it in the fall.
The Cabot Trail is where I would take somebody in the fall.
It's a 300-kilometer scenic drive, one of the most beautiful drives in all of North
America.
And as Rick Mercer said on your program recently, it's just mind-blowing.
You have to see it to experience it.
The drive itself takes you along the northern
tip of the island and it passes through the Cape Breton Highlands National Park and several quaint
communities along the way. Its landscape resembles much of Scotland's coastline. It has breathtaking
views of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the west and the North Atlantic Ocean to the east.
There are mountains and coastlines in view and at the same time throughout most of the drive.
You may see some wildlife such as hawks or bald eagles, moose and deer. Yeah, so yeah, you can
travel the trail in about four hours, but you really want to take a longer time than that.
You can make a day of it or a weekend of it, and you want to stop along the way
and do some hiking, perhaps the Skyline Trail.
There's fishing in the Marguerite River where you may or you may not catch a wild Atlantic salmon.
You can eat some of the fine seafood we have here.
Visit some local breweries and markets,
or just soak in the view as long as possible.
Cabot trail is outstanding in the fall,
and that's why I would encourage people to come.
Do you go clockwise or counterclockwise?
You can go either way.
Personally, myself, I like to go counterclockwise.
You mentioned music.
Just finally on this point,
why is music and culture so important to Cape Breton Island?
Well, there are very famous musicians from here.
It's alive and well, the culture.
There's the Rankin family.
There's Rita McNeil was from here and Natalie McMaster.
Many more, many, many more. Culture is very alive and the music touches your soul.
Just a lot of talent and a lot of culture for sure. Pete It is a beautiful place and you've made a great pitch about it, Sandra. Annette,
follow that. You're in Victoria.
I'm in Victoria, yes.
Now, I mean, that's a, you know, you may have some fights as to what the best island
in the country is, but you're not pitching British Columbia, you're not pitching Victoria,
you are pitching an Atlantic destination. Why are you doing this?
Well, as you say, I've lived in Victoria most of my life, but I taught French.
And when you teach French on the West Coast, and I was teaching in the 70s and 80s and
90s, it's kind of a desert, a Francophone desert.
In those days, it was very difficult to get material about Francophone culture.
And I like to expose my students to all kinds of Francophone cultures,
not just that from France, which at that time was really the major culture that you'd find
in textbooks, etc.
And so I started with music in Quebec, and then I went to a concert and I heard this
young woman singing a song called Reveille, which was just so heartwarming and touching.
And I started investigating the Acadian culture and heard all sorts of things about Tanta
Mars and this.
And I thought, I have to go there.
But you know, it's a long ways away from Victoria.
It's very far for us here.
And so I just was determined when I retired, I was gonna go there. And so my friend and I got on our bikes,
well, we took our bikes to Bathurst
and we rode the Acadian coast from Bathurst to Moncton.
Determined, I was determined to go to the Acadian
celebrations and see a Tent Amar
and see all the things I'd been teaching my kids about.
And so on the map of where specifically
are you putting your pin?
I mean, through New Brunswick is beautiful
and that, as you mentioned, that Acadian coast
is a lovely trek, but there's one place
that you think we should all go to.
Coochie Booquack National Park.
It was just amazing.
I was so, I had no idea what to expect and I
really, you know, as I said, I wasn't going there to see the geography really.
And we came to this park, we rode our bikes in, I could not get over the
diversity of this park. There was a, it's a big lagoon, like it's a
river estuary and then you go through a lagoon, there's
bogs, there's forest, there's dunes, and then you go on this boardwalk and you arrive
at this beach, just sandy, sandy beach.
Very few people were there.
The water was warm, which for us West coasters, that's a paradise, you know? And there were two young women who
were lifeguards and we got into a conversation with them. They told us about all the different
programs that they have in the park. They have a lot of indigenous programs. There's a host who was
Mi'kmaq who told us about the circle drum, all kinds of, there was just so much
information. Yeah, it just looked like a really great place to stay. We were sorry we couldn't
stay more than, you know, we stayed two nights, I believe, in the area and then we had to
get on our bikes again.
What was it like when you're riding like that? I mean, you see things differently than you
would in a car or you would in a train or obviously on a plane. What was it like? I
mean, who did you meet when you were riding your bikes?
Oh, I can't, from the time we arrived in Bathurst, it was pouring with rain.
We were quite worried about landing.
At least the pilot told us, oh dear, we might have to go to Moncton and we're thinking,
oh my God, don't go to Moncton.
We've got our route planned.
Fortunately, we landed, got our bikes together, and had a bit of a problem. And
somebody from the airport came, helped us, insisted on driving us to our motel because
it was raining. And that was the start of it. Every day we experienced these random
acts of kindness. It was unbelievable. You know, people, we'd stop by the side of the
road, have our sandwich.
All of a sudden a woman appears and she says, you've got to have a drink of my fresh well
water and blueberries.
It got to the point where whenever we stopped, we were kind of nervous because all these
people would descend on us and ask us, do you need help?
Where are you going?
We had cars who accompanied us to the right route.
It was amazing.
At one point, just outside of Miramichi,
when you get to Miramichi,
well, when you get to any city,
they would have a sign saying, welcome to Miramichi.
And we think, oh good, we're gonna be there soon.
And then we'd find out, oh, that's just the outskirts.
We have another 17 kilometers to go.
It was hot, hot, hot.
We were having a drink of water, and all of a sudden,
this man appears.
Bottle of ice cold water, takes us up to the house,
insists on driving us to our B&B.
Just lovely people.
It was amazing.
It's a friendly part of the world.
Oh my gosh, yes.
Yeah.
I think a lot of people will be wanting to go to New Brunswick now, based on your pitch.
It's a fabulous holiday to go along the coast, stop at the park, spend, I don't know, I'd spend four nights, four days there.
And then there's so much to see.
Well, you have to go to the Acadian Festival.
We were there in, well, I was in Shidiak, and experienced a tent tomorrow where everybody
dresses up in red, white and blue and they take their pots and pans and they walk down
the street making as much noise as they can.
And then there's music, there's food.
It's fabulous.
Just fabulous.
Lanna, follow that.
Your pick for the best place in this country that
Canadians needed to know about.
So it's Basin Head Provincial Park.
I'm living in Ottawa.
I'm pretty landlocked.
So getting out east was a real treat.
And getting so close to the ocean, it was just
absolutely mesmerizing.
This is on PEI?
Yes, it is on PEI.
It's on the, I don't know, the eastern kind of south end of the island.
And we stayed about an hour away and we loved it so much that we went back twice.
And each time it was a totally different experience because of the tides.
It was really neat to see.
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Now, I'm not putting my thumb on the scale here by any stretch, but I was there last year,
and it was amazing.
Just describe for people who have never been, Annette was talking about a boardwalk and
some sands.
It's known as the Singing Sands, right?
Totally.
It reveals itself to you.
You park, it's free.
You walk up.
There are beautiful change rooms.
There's a fishing museum, and then you walk
out and you're at the top of the hill and in front of you is just blue expanse.
There are cliffs to your right and it just seems like the beach goes on forever.
And then you walk down and you see kids jumping off the bridge and you step on the sands and immediately
you hear the squeak and it stops you in your tracks.
That squeak is the sound of the sands singing in many ways.
Yes, and you know, you're squeaking along, you're finding your ideal place and it's
all full of families.
It's just families enjoying pure bliss in a really blissful place.
You went with your family, right?
You went with some teenagers?
Yes, with teenagers who are not the easiest to trudge along.
I was going to say it, but I let you say it.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, no, and like the hour-long car drive there, you're just like, look at that, look
at that, and you're just hoping that they put down their phones for all of 10 seconds,
and they were really good about it
They were totally immersed in the experience
I sat on sandbars with my kids and we just let the waves hit us and
At one point my two teenagers tossed a ball on the sandbars and as a parent just to watch your kids be kids
was such an
Awesome experience. We brought our dog. She loved
the ocean. I mean, that part in itself that they allowed dogs at this provincial park
was really lovely. And then, you know, there's volleyball court. You go and play volleyball.
We played a game of volleyball as a family. And then we walked the long, expansive stretch
of beach and it just went on
Forever and it got to a point where you go just a little bit longer
Just a little bit longer and you're finding all these beautiful little rocks in the sand and then you come across the shipwreck
Like I would have never known that there was a shipwreck there and it's full of little crabs and we're poking around and it almost
Looked like a car engine. I thought, how did this get here?
And then on the way, like we spent the day on the way home,
I was googling the shipwreck and then you're immersed in all this history of the beach.
It just was such a beautiful place because it allowed our family to experience such a great time together.
I mean, that's part of traveling, is you can go to a place, but it's also,
I mean, that idea, as you said,
of seeing your teenagers throw a ball around,
put the phone down, actually be in that moment
is something that you'll remember forever.
100%, like I have this family photo,
and it's all of us with the dog in our hand,
and the red cliffs in behind,
and my daughter finally got,
like she always pretends not to open her eyes in pictures.
She's opening her eyes.
There are no goofy faces.
We're all a little pink from the sun.
And it's just absolutely, like I captured a core memory for them and myself.
Wonderful.
Lisa, here you are.
You're in Nova Scotia in the Annapolis Valley, but you're not picking
something in the beautiful Annapolis Valley.
You're not even picking anything
in the province of Nova Scotia.
Nope.
What are you picking?
I'm picking Grossmourne Park in Newfoundland, Labrador.
And the reason I chose that is my mom and I
have visited it twice.
Back in 2003, she had cancer and she said, �If I survive
this, we�re going to start traveling.� And so the first place we went was Grossmourne
and the Northern Peninsula in Newfoundland and we just loved it and couldn�t get enough
of it. It�s designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of the geology.
They call it the Seven Wonders of Geology in the park.
It's created by plate tectonics and glaciers, so they're huge fjords with waterfalls and
the landscape is incredible. You can just drive along the main roads
and just see the table lands
and all these different types of geology.
And the weird and wonderful geology
creates weird and wonderful plants.
So my mom and I are both naturalists.
And so we were always just stopping the car and
jumping out and looking in the ditches for the wildflowers and we went in July
on purpose because of the wildflowers and we were following a bit of a trail
of the Newfoundland Wildflower Society that they had given us their plant list.
So it was a bit of a scavenger hunt and the type of soil or mostly rock that's there,
a lot of the weather, the extreme weather, birch trees would be just tiny and instead
of growing upright in some areas, they just snake along the ground and it's just like
something you wouldn't see here in Nova Scotia.
And the letter that you wrote to us, I mean,
what you described sounds almost too far-fetched to be true. You said we kayaked in the clear waters
of Bon Bay, we saw whales, moose, caribou, as well as icebergs. Come on.
Julie Yes. The icebergs weren't in Gros Morne. Like I said,
we went all the way up on the northern peninsula and the icebergs are up at that northern end and down around St. Anthony, and we also went on to Red Bay and Labrador,
and we actually up there found icebergs that were coming in and breaking up, and they called
them berge bits.
And we were actually able to scoop some little berge bits out of the water, take them to
our cabin and melt them
and drink them.
So it was pretty wild and you can actually buy iceberg beer in these beautiful cobalt
blue bottles that's made from the iceberg water.
We went to Western Brook Pond and you have to hike in about three kilometers and on the
way we came right up to a big bull moose on the other side of the trees, thank
goodness.
They got a really great picture of him.
And then when you get to the end, you take a boat ride in through the fjord and you see
waterfalls coming down where the glaciers carved out this billion-year-old rock cliffs.
And we also started off at the Discovery Center in Woody Point where they have, you
can learn all about it and then decide, okay, where do we want to go first? And the wildflowers,
the showy lady slippers and yellow lady slippers were in bloom in a lot of different places.
And we actually were driving along one time and there was a caribou running right
beside our car as we were going along and when we got to the B&B there was a
guy on a motorcycle and he said he had had the same experience and he said it
was really wild and yeah the kayaking in Bon Bay the water is so clear you can
look right down to the bottom and they have an aquarium there where you can go in and actually they have a touch and feel tank where you can pick different
you know starfish and things up and they teach you all about what you're seeing.
And on our way there like we the second time we went in 2013 we flew into Deer Lake and
went to the insectarium there before we drove up into Gros Morne. And it's this huge old post and beam building full of insects from all over the world.
But they have, they're not alive, but they do have a greenhouse full of exotic butterflies.
So that was a real interesting thing.
But there's beach combing, there's hiking trails, and some of the place
names are really fun, like Tickle Point Trail. And someone else mentioned the boat, the people,
and that was the other big thing that brought us back. There were how hospitable the people were,
the friendly and helpful. One time we were kind of lost and we stopped to ask
this gentleman directions, his name was Stedman, and he said, well, I'm not going to tell you,
you can chase me over there. So he jumped in his car and we chased him all around until we got to
the lighthouse we were looking for. And then he stayed and regaled us with stories of his life
he stayed and regaled us with stories of his life there for about an hour. And it was a lot of fun.
He was really friendly.
It sounds amazing.
I mean, having been there a little bit, it just makes me want to go back.
I'm going to let you all go, but just very briefly, the reason we're doing this in part
is to get people to think about this country and places in this country that they might
not otherwise know about. What's the opportunity here, Lisa, do you think,
just in a word or two, for people to explore
their own country? What do they learn when they
explore Canada?
When they explore Canada or specifically
Gros Morne?
Well, Canada. I mean, this whole idea is a chance
for people to maybe go, and we're focusing on
Atlanta, Canada, but to maybe go to a place in
this country that they wouldn't go. You could
travel to Europe, you could travel to the States if
people were doing that.
What about here in Canada?
What can you learn from that?
Well, I just think, um, you learn what a beautiful
place it is no matter where you go.
My mom and I have been to Yukon and BC and, uh,
Nunavut and Northwest Territories.
We've been all around and every time we go, we
get this new
awe and understanding for how vast and beautiful and incredible our country is.
You know, we usually pick the out of the way places where there's not a lot of people and
tourists because that's just what we like to do. But and you can find that anywhere.
what we like to do, and you can find that anywhere.
So I just really think it brings us together as a country because we meet people just like ourselves wherever we go.
And that, what about for you?
What do you think we learn when we spend our time
and our money exploring this country
rather than somewhere else?
Well, I agree with what Lisa just said.
And also I think it gives you a perspective on
how that part of the country thinks. So when you listen on the news about things happening, you go,
yeah, yeah, I get that, you know, fishing is hard, a hard way to make a living. It just gives you an
understanding. Well said. Sandra? There's so much to see in Canada. There's so many diverse cultures and you can learn so
much. It's so educational to travel. There's a lot to see and a lot to experience. There sure is.
Lana, what about for you? I mean, maybe this would be a word to the teenagers who would see,
you know, it's more exciting to go to France or to go to England or to travel down to the States
when people were doing that and not worrying about all the things that they're worrying about. Now,
what would you say about the importance of traveling here? It feels like home, even when England or to travel down to the States when people were doing that and not worrying about all the things that they're worrying about now.
What would you say about the importance of traveling here?
It feels like home, even when you're not at home.
It just is so warm and welcoming, no matter where you go.
You wake up in a different bed, but it still feels like home.
You've all made great pitches for the places that you love.
And I think there are a lot of people, this is going to be a very busy summer and maybe
fall as well as people explore this country and
you've given people some inspiration as to where to go thank you all for talking
to us thanks Matt thank you thank you there you have it four more cases made
for where you should spend your vacation time Sandra Trask championing Cape
Breton Island in Nova Scotia Lana Goetje casting her vote for basin head on
Prince Edward Island Lisa Proulx supporting Grossmourne in Newfoundland and
Labrador and Annette Barclay says you have to visit
Kuchibuquack National Park in New Brunswick.
Should one of those places, any of those places,
all of those places be on the top 10 list of finalists?
You can vote at cbc.ca slash The Current.
Vote once a day until the 30th of April.
And then on the 1st of May, we will
announce the top 10 that make
up The Current's Canadian travel list. Once again, you can vote at cbc.ca slash The Current.
That is The Current for this Wednesday, the 23rd of April. Q is up next on CBC Radio 1.
Thanks to everyone here in Halifax and Nova Scotia more broadly for their warm welcome.