James Shearer

I’m staying in a beautiful rural resort hotel which has all the amenities, facilities, top chefs, great food, comfy beds, all the good stuff. But do you know what is the greatest thing about this hotel…. ever?
Answer: “Good Morning”.
Every where you go, each smiling staff member always greets you with a “good morning”. Of course, […]

Falling asleep to the sound of gunfire is not uncommon in Churchill, Manitoba. The members of polar bear patrol are out day and night regardless of weather and overly curious polar bears are scared off with blank firing cracker shells. When this doesn’t work there are a few options available which protect both humans and […]

Thirty-five hours after boarding VIA Rail’s Hudson Bay train in Winnipeg and 1710km of track covered, the small town of Churchill on the shores of Hudson Bay by the Manitoba-Nunavut border is finally in sight.
By all accounts two days and two nights on a train is a long time to be cooped up in a […]

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Pumpkins at the orchard, originally uploaded by jamesshearer.
Around about Thanks Giving, Vanessa, Rob and I were driving from Vancouver to the Okanagan. The route took us along BC […]

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Fresh produce at the market, originally uploaded by jamesshearer.
I spent a few days in the town of Lugano in southern Switzerland. Unfortunately for me it rained the entire […]

I am going to be adding my photographs from my travels over the past 8 years. This is a case of me going through the many DVDs and CDs I have burned with the photos on, selecting a few and uploading them. Considering that I have been to over 30 different countries / provinces / […]

I am pretty wiped out after a fun filled weekend in Whistler where I witnessed France loose the World Cup. Our stay in a retro 70’s log cabin in the forest north of Whistler was a great way to spend a weekend, socialise with friends and relax.

Vanessa and I took a drive around Whistler’s neighbourhoods to check out the huge houses and varied mountain architecture. Most of the building designs were straight out of the Swiss Alps.

This one caught our eye - perched on a rocky crag the entrance to this Whistler home is via a glass elevator up the side of the cliff (on the left) then across an enclosed bridge.

Here are a couple other images from our Whistler Weekend…

This afternoon I was a guest on the Mark Forsythe radio show on CBC Radio One. The topic was travel, in BC and further afield across the rest of Canada. Isabel Nanton, author and adventurer, was also on the show which lasted for an hour.

I answered questions and heard comments from callers. My background on travel across Canada was the reason for me being there and it was a great way to plug my website Trail Canada.

If you missed the show or loved it so much you want to hear it again, here it is:

James Shearer on CBC Radio (MP3 23mb)

With all that Canada has to offer and the constant flow of festivals and events it can be difficult to decide where and when to visit Canada.

Thanks to a handful of provincial tourist boards and the Canadian Tourist Commission, Trail Canada has launched a blog with articles by respected journalists and other sources.

This new blog is a perfect guide to inside information into very specific topics, be it dining in Prince Edward Island or visiting the Northwest Territories or exploring Victoria in Autumn, Trail Canada has a growing base of articles.

Visit the Trail Canada blog to read more and contribute your own articles.

From time to time I have run into instances in Canada where, as a Brit, Canadians haven’t been able to understand me because of my accent or because what I believed was a simple request, turns out to be something a little bit less simple or bizarre over here.

One of the more common occurrances is my use of English. It can differ, sometimes considerably, to the use of the English language in North America, Canada, and the West Coast. Regional dialects might not be as distinguishable as they are in the UK but they are present and the overall difference to British English can, in some cases, be extreme.

Wikipedia has some interesting articles about Canadian English but a good list of examples of the differences can be found on Dave VE7CNV’s website - whoever that is!

Even the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) admit they have some difficulty working out what words they should and shouldn’t use. The have a large archive of previous stories and reports on the Woe and Wonder of Words. A particularly interesting article is the one about the reliance on the CBC to promote English and standards.

Although many Canadian’s don’t realize what color is in the center or if they realise the center has no colour. At least the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms knows what it’s talking about!

One thing I do know is that Canadian’s say Pop, American’s say Soda, and in the UK we say tea , 2 milks and no sugar… please!