Bucket list trip to visit every national park in Canada brings new perspectives of country

Bucket list trip to visit every national park in Canada brings new perspectives of country

'You won't fight to protect a place that you don't love, and it's hard to love a place you've never seen'

Yvonne Kyle is on a mission to visit every national park in the country.

After a vacation with her children paddling on the Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories, she realized she needed "a new bucket list."

Fortunately, the next year was Parks Canada's centennial and she saw a Canadian Geographic article about the parks, that contained visitor stats.

"I looked at Nahanni and it said 700-and-something people had visited there, and I said, 'Yeah, and we were four of them. That's cool,'" Kyle said.

"Then I looked at the one that's on Ellesmere Island, Quttinirpaaq, and it had had two visitors the previous year, and I said, 'I want to go there.' And then I said, 'I want to go to all of them.'"

So far, the Winnipeg resident has been to at least one national park in every province and territory.

What she and husband Colin do while at a park varies depending on where they are, but Yvonne said they try to spend a couple of days in each to explore, hike and canoe.

Their endeavour brought them to Greenwich, the easternmost portion of Prince Edward Island National Park, which Yvonne described as a highlight of her stop in the province.

"It's not just about 'go and take the picture and go home,'" she said. "I really do want to get to know the place."

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The couple's travels have also brought them to Nova Scotia's Sable Island, which Yvonne described as "mythical."

"We went and we found some horses at a watering hole and we just sat … and just watched the horses for like an hour," she said.

"It was just really satisfying and really peaceful … and so few people will get to see that."

Colin said visiting national parks reveals the variety of the country, with every park having something to offer.

"There's so much diversity within our country," he said. "People should focus and spend more time to see all the beauty from coast to coast to coast."

Yvonne said it'll take another decade to see all of Canada's national parks, but described her journey as a sort of mission.

"You won't fight to protect a place that you don't love, and it's hard to love a place you've never seen," she said.

"If we go to the national parks, we get to see the whole country … and we can see all these kinds of things and know why we should protect it and look after it."

Lucas McInnis is a journalist at CBC Prince Edward Island. He can be reached at lucas.mcinnis@cbc.ca.