The Current - The ultimate travel list: Lake Laberge and Stratford

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

Two 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. Richard Smith shares what he loves about Lake Laberge in Yukon, and Sharon McKenzie celebrates the vibrant cultural life of Stratford, Ont. You can see the full shortlist and vote for your favourite on cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current podcast. Our quest to create The Current's Canadian travel bucket list continues. There are 20 finalists. We've heard listeners champion places like Grossmourne, Newfoundland, Basin Head, Provincial Park, and PEI, the Bow River in Alberta. A long, long list of places that every Canadian needs to visit. And you can see that full list in Cast Your Votes online, cbc.ca slash The Current. We will reveal the final top 10 next week.

We have to get drums so we can have a drum roll for that reveal. We'll work on that. In the meantime, two more listeners join me now to pitch their favorite destinations. Richard Smith is in Mountain View County in Alberta. Sharon Mackenzie is in Stratford, Ontario. Good morning to you both. Good morning. Good morning, Matt. Richard, Mountain View County, which is between Red Deer and Calgary, is that right? That is correct. It's west of, as we know, Highway 22

in the west central Alberta and in the foothills of Alberta. This is lovely. You can see the mountains. It's a great place. You might recommend people go there, but you're not recommending that. What is your pick for the place that we all need to visit? Great question, Matt.

It's Lake Le Barge in the Yukon. In the letter that you wrote to us, you said this is a magical place. So tell me about the magic, paint me a picture of, of this beautiful part of the country. Well, I've been very fortunate at being there twice in the last six months, but I'll tell you my favorite time to be on Lake Labarge, Matt, is in the winter time.

No. And I just want you to imagine it's 24 below. There you are just outside of Whitehorse on the Yukon river and you hook up your last dog and your dog sled and you've got those six Huskies all lined up, the sleds load with camping gear and you take off from just outside of Whitehorse towards Lake Labarge.

You snake around the Yukon river and all of a sudden you go by the march of Lake Labarge. You snake around the Yukon River, and all of a sudden you go by the marsh of Lake Labarge, and you come out to Upper Labarge, which is the delta that opens up into the beautiful Lake Labarge area. And Lake Labarge is 50 kilometers long from Upper Labarge to Lower Labarge, up to three to five kilometers in width, and you're all by yourself with your

dog team. And I'm at night. I love running up there at night, especially when you have a full moon. And so what happens is that temperature, the dogs are running along, they love to run, and you're on the ice and the snow. And next thing you know, you see the moon's silvery glittery glow on the side of the dog's coats, and they're all silver from their breath, making frost on their coats. And also the moon is casting shadows of the dog team right beside you. If now you're going down the lake at three kilometers to five kilometers wide, and you still have 40 kilometers to go. And it's like you have a ghost team riding right beside you on that great big lake.

And up to your east, the right-hand side of you as you go north is the Tesla Mountains. And to the west are the other mountains that parallel the Klondike highway. And it's just a spectacular place. The lake is actually speaking to you. The lake is speaking to you saying, you are not the first person here You are now traveling through time because this is a major corridor for transportation going back thousands of years when the first peoples came over to North America with the Beringer Strait and Then down through this ice-free quarter onto Lake Labarge and there you are Traveling very traditionally on this lake and you stop You stop not too far from McGovern Island a very large island out in the middle of Lake Labarge and you can hear the ice cracking and creaking and moaning and the dog sensed that as well.

And so you take a break and as you squeak and you walk around on the ice giving each dog a pat on the head, you look at the lake and the lake is definitely giving you spiritual guidance to say it's good to be alive and then you get back on that dog team, that traditional way of traveling is definitely giving you spiritual guidance to say it's good to be alive. And then you get back on that dog team, that traditional way of traveling, because don't forget, a dog team is nothing but a winter canoe. And so off you go again with the dogs. And then you take it off towards lower La Barge, where the Yukon River again meets Lake La

Barge. And it's just the sound of the sled. It's the breath of the dogs. And as you look around at 360 degrees, that moon up there, you do catch the sound of the sled. It's the breath of the dogs and as you look around in 360 degrees that moon up there You do catch a glimpse of the northern lights in late February and March up to the northeast and it's just a spectacular place And it actually gives you that sense as I said that spiritual guidance that other people have been here before So we talked about indigenous people coming down through that corridor, having been there for years, hunting, fishing and trapping. But we also talked about the early explorers, people from the Hudson Meade Company, the

Northwest Company, and all those people that went up through the gold rush. And that's where you look around and realize this is that special place. That is something else. I asked you to paint a picture of a magical place and you'd wave some magic wand and I have to pack my bags and head up to head north because I want to be there. That is some pitch, Richard. Sharon McKenzie, follow that. You have picked the place. This is interesting. You picked the place where you actually live, right? Yes. Tell me about Stratford, Ontario and what you love about Stratford. Can I tell you how I found my way to Stratford?

Yes, please. Well, I was in nurses training in the, in the residence was a library. Librarian handed me a book called To Stratford With Love by Nicholas Montserrat. And he said, she said, I think you'll be interested in this. And I took it and read it overnight.

And by the next day I decided I wanted to come and see what the Stratford Festival was all about, because at that time it was only 11 years old. So I worked for a while and I got enough money to come the next spring. In 1964 I came on the train, and I've been here ever since. What was it that you loved?

I mean, the festival is one thing, and it's a huge part of what makes Stratford Stratford, but what was it that you loved that kept you there? Well, this is it. It was described to me by Nicolas Montserrat as a lovely, gentle place to live and to enjoy the theater, and it told the history of the theatre which was fascinating. It was so dramatic, it was as good as anything on stage, I have to tell you. But its beginnings

were a bit fraught because Stratford had lost the locomotives had been being repaired here for 150 years and then diesel came in and people were suddenly out of jobs in the early 50s. And so the Stratford Festival was formed and the community got right behind it. And it is an amazing community. It continues to be. It's a very beautiful, small city. When I came there were 24,000 people and now there are 36,000 people, so it hasn't grown that much. We're in the country,

we're not down on the 401. You know, when you come to Stratford, you come through the green fields and you get into a very self-contained, beautiful city with some Victorian buildings downtown, wonderful shops, huge park with a lake that you can access from downtown and the festival. Here we are. Is there one play that you have seen that, I mean of all of them that stands out to you in Stratford? In all these years, my favourite was The Winter's Tale in 1978. Oh, okay. What was it about that?

Well, I just loved it and it was Robin Phillips was directing here and it was a magical, very magical. But I've seen so many plays, for example, I've seen William Hutt three times in King Lear. He did it four times altogether, but I wasn't here early enough to see that. You know, the Stratford Festival started in a tent. And when they decided to go ahead with it, they had to have time to build the building. And so it started in a tent. And well, you probably know the story. I don't know.

Well, it's not an attempt now. And it is really the driving economic force in many ways of that small city, but a place that people go to for much more than that as well. You know, you've both made, we've been putting, I say pins on the map across this country. You have both made really powerful pitches for the places that you love and I hope people will follow them up and we'll see whether they vote for them, at the very least an opportunity to come and visit. Sharon, thank you very much for that. Very welcome. And Richard, thank you for the picture that you painted of Lake LaBerge. You're welcome, sir. Don't forget to go up there. You can also go up there in the summertime and come from one end to the other as well. Lovely. Thank you very much. Richard Smith is

championing Lake LaBarge in Yukon. Sharon McKenzie championing her hometown of Stratford, Ontario. She arrived there to see some plays and just never left. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca