New Saskatchewanderer looking forward to hitting the road
Felipe Gomez has been the new Saskatchewanderer for less than a week, but he already has a leg up on many of those who have come before him.
When you’ve travelled 8,000-plus kilometres on your bicycle with a bass strapped to your back, hitting every corner of the province in the process, well, let’s just say you have a pretty good idea of what it has to offer. Gomez plans to put that experience to good use over the next year, as he will soon head out on the road and tell the tales of the province during his time in the Saskatchewan Ministry of Parks, Culture and Sport and Sask Tourism position.
“I like to explore Saskatchewan and being the Saskatchewanderer, it’s just an awesome opportunity to show the rest of the world what we have here and I’m definitely looking forward to it,” Gomez said in an interview last week.
“Diversity comes from all over the province. If you’ve travelled from south to north, a few hundred kilometres makes a big difference. You go from down south and then to Big River and the Prince Albert area, you have the boreal forest, and then you go another 500 kilometres and you see the Canadian Shield and it’s a completely different environment.
“And different landscapes create different people as well. They’re connected and that’s what I’ll be looking for.” Gomez, who originally hails from Chile and became a Canadian citizen last year, is no stranger to long, time-chewing tours. In addition to his northern tour which as ‘Felipe the Bass Invader’ saw him not only travelling but stopping off at schools to play and deliver his message of positivity through arts and culture - Gomez has also ridden through northern B.C. and Northwest Territories, even hitting out east to Newfoundland and P.E.I.
That experience made applying to become the Saskatchewanderer a no-brainer, even if it wasn’t an immediate idea.
“My friend Lisa called me and said ‘you should apply to be the Saskatchewanderer’ and I was like ‘oh, sure, I’ll give it a try’,” Gomez said. “So I put some film and a script together and sent it in and to my surprise, they called me back. Then there were a couple interviews and they asked me to do a second video with some content. “I didn’t hear anything for a couple months, then they called me to offer me the gig and I was like ‘yeah, I’ll do it’.”
It certainly doesn’t hurt that Gomez has plenty of experience working with media. In addition to producing his own videos, he also writes his own scripts and scores all his own music for each production.
That’ll serve him well when it comes to actually hitting the road, with the key word there being ‘when.’ The ongoing pandemic has kept him home so far, but he is looking forward to that changing.
“For now, I have to be careful with everything that’s happening with COVID, I’m here in Saskatoon and working on some pieces here,” Gomez explained. “If I have to do it online, I’ll do it online; you can be creative and make things that are interesting, but I can’t wait to head out on the road and explore.”
His previous experience up north and throughout the province should only help with his content.
“I will say it’ll help lots, in that I have been in different places and know people and have friends in different places to start with,” Gomez said. “It will just grow from there as I approach unchartered territories. But I already know entrepreneurs, inspiring people, trappers in the north… so I’d say the list of interesting people I’ve come across is long and it’ll be fun to tell their stories.” And yes, Moose Jaw is definitely on his list.
“I’m eventually going to get down there, it’s a place called Moose Jaw, I have to go,” Gomez said with a laugh. “And I have to make sure whether or not you have the biggest moose, you have to be on location for something like that.”