As last summer’s eco-tour bookings declined alongside the economic slowdown, paddling guides across the country traded in their paddles, pancake flippers and natural history guidebooks for hammers, chainsaws and computers in an effort to put food on the table.
Although day tours did not decline appreciably, big-ticket, multi-day expedition bookings were down significantly across the board, with some large companies’ bookings down as much as 50 per cent from recent years.
This decline left many guides out of work and has forced them to take extreme measures: many of them had to find real jobs. This hardship had a significant impact on the lifestyles of these notoriously peripatetic individuals.
“I have been working for BC Ferries and for the Coast Guard,” said one displaced sea kayak guide.
“This keeps me on the water at least. But I miss the spontaneity and wilderness aspects of sea kayak guiding. On the other hand, I actually sleep in my own bed, see my family on a regular basis and have some money in the bank now.”
Other guides found themselves work in the construction trade, while some turned to other outside work as educators or forestry workers—but even those industries felt the pressure of the so-called recession.
Some guides, temporarily forced from the last wild reaches of the coastal world, resorted to the depths of homebound depravity, taking up computer-based work such as, well, writing.
