American ‘Adventurers’ in Canada Are Not Into Roughing It All Day

Americans may admire Canada from afar for its rugged mountains, its empty wilderness, its pine-lined roads where a motorist can hum along for hours without seeing another car. But Canadian tourist-market researchers say that when Americans sit down to plan a trip to Canada, they tend to look for ways to dress up their “wilderness experience” with a touch of class.

“As opposed to hiking Mt. Everest, they want to walk out on a glacier in the afternoon or do a little salmon fishing--and then they want to retire to a five-star ship with a gourmet chef, a fine wine list and all the accouterments of a great resort,” said Rick Skinner, a spokesman for Seattle-based Holland America Lines/Westour, a concern that books near-shore cruises from Vancouver to Alaska.

Canadian market analysts also have noticed that while Americans say they want to enjoy Canada’s clean air and pristine lakes, they don’t want to spend much time or energy getting into the outback.

“They want the outdoor experience very quickly,” said Tracey Arial, a spokeswoman for the Ontario Provincial Ministry of Tourism. “You can tell by the kind of packages that are being developed.”

Indeed, the term soft adventure has become something of a buzz word in the Canadian travel industry these days, as operators respond to America’s new-found taste for wilderness pamperings.

Ontario boasts several resorts where visitors can vanish into the wilderness, live in a cottage surrounded by pines and blueberry bogs--yet never be out of shouting distance of a French chef.

Arrowhon Pines, for instance, is known in the resort industry for its cosmopolitan cuisine, yet it’s in the middle of 3,000-square-mile Algonquin Provincial Park amid moose, foxes and wolves.

Rates for cottages at Arrowhon are about $115 per person a day, double occupancy, including three meals in a central lodge.

Likewise, the Domain of Killien, near Haliburton, Ont., consists of log cottages on a 5,000-acre private estate; guests can choose whether they want their rustic abodes equipped with Jacuzzis or fireplaces.

Prices start at about $90 per person a day, double occupancy, and includes breakfast and dinner.

There is also “fly-in fishing,” in which a resort supplies its guests with helicopter or bush-plane shuttles to remote lakes. In some cases, Arial said, “You fish a lake that’s never been fished before.”

One fly-in fishing operator, Ramsey Airways in Sudbury, Ont., will fly a party to Lake Obabika Lodge, where guests can fish all day, enjoy dinner cooked by a Swiss chef at sundown and retire to their Jacuzzi and VCR-equipped cabin by night.

Round trip bush-plane air fare for two from Sudbury would be about $303, says Ramsey Airways owner Bob Merrilees, and a week at the resort would cost about $1,190, including everything from meals to boats to guides.

(Air fare for a larger group would cost more because they would need a larger plane.) Merrilees adds that he can still accommodate tourists who want an authentic adventure instead of a soft one, by flying them to outpost camps inaccessible to anything but plane and canoe, and leaving them to fend for themselves in the wild.

In roadless northern Manitoba, soft adventure seekers arriving by train or plane can ride out onto the tundra in “tundra buggies,” large vehicles that move about on treads, to watch the annual fall migration of polar bears down off the polar ice for hibernation.

In summer they can brave the chilly waters of James Bay aboard sonar-equipped boats, and listen to the underwater voices of passing whales.

In the Maritime provinces, bed-and-breakfast proprietors are cashing in on the “soft adventure” market by setting up shop in historic sea-captains’ houses.

One canoeing service in Nova Scotia will take tourists onto the open ocean in the tiny boats, paddling from island to island, digging clams and picking beach peas for sustenance along the way.

“You don’t get any of the rough stuff,” Nova Scotia Department of Tourism spokesman David Harley was quick to point out. “You’re always in sight of the land. That’s where we’re heading, going into the ‘90s. Soft adventure.”

Canadian tourism officials expect about 13.4 million Americans to travel to Canada this year, although they note that the figure may be padded somewhat by Americans making more than one trip.

Travel analysts say that the lion’s share will be going to Ontario, as usual, but the tourism growth rate in the Western provinces--which actively court California tourists--may grow slightly faster than the rate for the nation as a whole.

Officials in Alberta, who preside not only over the scenic and successful Banff and Lake Louise but also over a huge new dinosaur museum with thousands of fossils, say they expect a 6% gain in the number of American visitors this year.

And British Columbia, which normally vies with Quebec as the nation’s No. 2 province for tourism, has edged out its rival with about 3 million visitors from the United States and other countries last year.

Western Canada’s current popularity is due, in part, to the name Vancouver made for itself four years ago when it hosted Expo ’86 and improved its harbor as a cruise terminal. “Vancouver has become one of the largest cruise destinations in the world for summertime,” said Holland America’s Skinner. “All the major cruise lines have ships in the area.”

Western Canada is also cashing in on America’s current fascination with Alaska. Howard Clifford of Princess Tours in Seattle said his firm’s sales of Alaska cruises grew by 35% last year; he expects similar growth this year.

Americans buying Princess cruises out of Vancouver often make overland side trips into the Canadian Rockies, Clifford said. And other Americans cruise to Alaska first, then travel inland to Canada’s Yukon to see historic gold-rush sites.

“There are good hotels in the area now, which was a problem in the past,” Clifford said, adding that transportation has improved of late, too, because an old freight railway once used for hauling ore that was closed in the mid-1980s has been refitted and opened for passenger use. “They’re still using the old gold-rush rail cars,” he said. “Some of them must be 85, 90 years old.”

Holland America, for its part, books cruises on three new four-mast sailboats, the Wind Star, the Wind Song and the Wind Spirit, whose sails are furled and boom swung around by computer.

The ships sail from Vancouver to Juneau, from Prince Rupert, B.C., to Juneau, or from Prince Rupert to Los Angeles. Prices are from $2,095 to $2,495 per person, double occupancy.

Robin Tauck, marketing manager of Tauck Tours, a Westport, Conn., firm specializing in tours to Canada, said the Canadian Rockies is “one of the hottest areas” this year.

Tauck Tours is in on the soft adventure boomlet with “heli-exploring” sorties into the Canadian Rockies. In heli-exploring, Tauck’s summer tourists fly into remote mountain hideaways and stay at resorts inaccessible by road and previously known only to wealthy, winter-time, powder-skiing aficionados.

Tauck noted that her firm has been offering such trips for nearly a decade, but has seen them take off only in the last couple of years. She believes the spurt in popularity may be linked to the increasingly good physical condition of elderly Americans.

“The older market is healthier and more active,” she said. “They don’t always want to be in a motor coach.”

Tauck and virtually everyone else in the Canadian travel industry warn that Americans thinking of visiting Canada should book all reservations well ahead. With a brief summer, the tourist season is short in Canada, and the hotel industry has been slow to build new tourist-class hotels, knowing that they will stand empty during the long, forbidding winter.

That means there are room shortages during summer months. Tourists who don’t book ahead may find themselves driving for long hours on lonely country roads, seeing nothing but “No Vacancy” signs.

Over the longer term, Canadian tour operators are also worried about economic policy changes that may reshape tourism to some degree. Canada wiped some scenic but heavily subsidized passenger trains off the map this year to save money, and tourism promoters fear that other Canadian trains may follow them into oblivion.

Carl Fowler, general manager of Rail Travel Center Tours in St. Albans, Vt., said he is “having an extraordinary year for Canada because people are concerned that this may be the last year they can ride the train all the way across Canada.”

In the same way, hoteliers, tour operators and others are nervously eyeing the government’s plans to begin levying a 7% sales tax next year. The government has maintained that the tax won’t drive up prices, but those in the tourist industry are skeptical.

“This is the year to go to Canada, because next year we’re going to have a new goods and services tax,” said Harley, the Nova Scotia tourism spokesman.