Like so many of you, I have spent a good part of my last seven weeks uprooting, reorganizing, and purging our home. It really is amazing to contemplate the gems (and junk!) that crosses one’s path throughout the years.
This past weekend, I set my sights on a dozen Adventure Canada boxes that have been gathering dust in my basement since the move to our new office headquarters last July. I knew that this would be a big project as I’ve kept every notebook, calendar, CD ROM and USB stick since I started working full-time for the company back in 2002.
I plunked myself down in our family room surrounded by boxes this past Saturday afternoon, and amazingly have managed to condense the keepsakes down to one box of memories. Thank goodness for scanners!
One piece that caught my eye was a four-page document entitled “The Voyager: The Newsletter of the Environmental Discovery Voyages. Vol. 1 No. 1 Fall 1993.”
It was Adventure Canada’s very first client newsletter!
Read The Voyager
Download Read The Voyager
Each part of the newsletter – text, images, graphics, and logos – had been glued onto a standard sheet of white printer paper, presumably to be photocopied and mailed to all guests that had travelled on our one voyage of discovery that year.
My uncle Bill had even cut out and pasted the name of the ship, World Discoverer, onto a Gary Larson cartoon, hilariously identifying a number of our expedition staff in the cartoon characters. As I read through the old newsletter, I was amazed by how far we’ve come.
Our Marketing department would be horrified by the design and rudimentary use of graphics – we are grateful to have Vladimir at the helm of our marketing now! Yet I was equally astounded with the similarities between then and now in tone, humour, and with a call to action. Bill Swan’s authorship was easily apparent, with one quarter of the newsletter dedicated to his helpful hints on wild bird feeding and indoor plant care.
Get this – last time Bill visited us here in Mississauga he bought me a bird feeder and watered all my plants! Most importantly, the newsletter was a reflection on the power of shared moments and the desire to build a community based on those very experiences. Bill’s contemplation from our very first voyage of discovery echoes what I feel every time I set foot on solid ground again:
“We each carried home impressions shaped by our own personal experiences and perspectives but what remains dominant for me was the sense of collective energy and enthusiasm that flowed among our ‘floating community’ over those ten days together.”
Bringing people together was the backbone of the world in which I was raised. I was seven years old when my father started Adventure Canada.
As a young lass, friends of Adventure Canada were in and out of our home regularly: powerful minds, passionate advocates, proactive individuals, community builders, change makers. It was a blessing. While I caught the travel bug early, it has always been the collective energy of shared experience that truly moved me.
Two years ago, my brother-in-law Brian Faber, who heads up our Client Services department, presented a plan for uniting the Adventure Canada community under a League of Adventurers banner. We are so thrilled with your response to it!
Thank you for being such a big part of our family!