Calgary women win national travel blog award
Two Calgary women, with a popular travel blog, captured a national award from the Canadian Tourism Commission during its recent annual media show, in Whitehorse.
Toque & Canoe is the creation of Kim Gray and Jennifer Twyman, who are self-described “Canadian travel hounds.”
They describe the blog, which began July 2011, as one about “real” Canadian travel culture and how they see it.
Gray, the editor-in-chief of the site, said the name for the blog signifies something iconic, Canadian and playful. Twyman is the blog’s visual and social media editor.
“The award has re-affirmed our belief that Canadians care to know about their country. They’re very interested. Every time we get a story up there’s always a lot of excitement around it,” said Gray.
The CTC said this about the travel blog award on its website: “There are thousands of travel blogs in cyberspace now. Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite, the popular social-media dashboard, had a tough call on his hands for the Best Travel Blog Award.”
He chose Toque & Canoe from a field of Canadian and international submissions for its “consistent personality, is warm and welcoming and is uniquely Canadian in a non-stereotypical way. I liked that it mixed wilderness and urban, sports and leisure and felt the theme was gorgeous overall’.”
Toque & Canoe has blogged on various places — from Canada’s only grizzly bear sanctuary to architecture in Montreal to a bakery on the south shore of Nova Scotia.
“We don’t just cover destinations. We like to say we cover ‘real’ Canadian travel culture — which means you’ll find a whole range of travel-related stories that speak to Canadians on our site . . . .”
About 70 per cent of the blog’s readership is Canadian with visits from more than 300 Canadian cities and towns while the rest comes mostly from the U.S. and Western Europe.
In another Calgary connection, writer Joanne Blain won the Canadian Tourism Commission’s award for top Canadian travel story, Prince Edward Island’s Seafood Nirvana, which was published in the Calgary Herald in October 2010.
That award was chosen by Rick Mercer.