Wandering Saskatchewan
Ashlyn George has had a busy year as the Saskatchewanderer.
She flew with the Snowbirds, toured a Hutterite colony and explored all the nooks and crannies the province has to offer, gaining more than 20,000 social media followers along the way. Before the 28-year-old leaves her post to pursue a career in social and travel media, we asked her about her experiences, her love of travel and how to make a living on social media. This interview has been edited for clarity.
Q: Why did you want to be the Saskatchewanderer?
A: I spent quite a bit of time travelling the world and I was in Madagascar at the time I applied for the job. I was writing for my own travel blog, travelling, exploring, sharing stories, and it was just a great opportunity to come back to Saskatchewan and have a job for a year.
Q When did you decide to dedicate so much of your life to travelling?
A That would probably have been on my fist trip. I designed my plan with a different area of the world to visit every year. My first year I went to Oceania — Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. There was a freedom to do anything you wanted to do and be anybody you wanted to be. So I started trying new and different things I’d never experienced before, and that’s when I fell in love with outdoor activities and the travel world of meeting new people, experiencing new cultures, new food, things like that.
Q After five years bombing around every continent except Antarctica, what was it like spending a year in little old Saskatchewan?
A I wouldn’t actually put it that way at all — it was amazing, there is a lot that Saskatchewan offers, and I don’t think people realize it. Everyone always looks across borders for experience, and you don’t actually have to do that. I had some pretty incredible experiences this year — I went windsurfing, snow kiting, I went underground in a mine. I guess I’m a really curious person. The more I learn, no matter where I am, that’s the most important thing.
Q What were some of the experiences people seemed to react to the most?
A I think the little stories you don’t always hear. It’s easy to hear ‘Cypress Hills is a great place to visit in Saskatchewan,’ because it is. But when you find the smaller stories in an area, people really appreciate those. For example, there was a little pottery place between Dafoe and Wynyard. It’s just this big pottery sign on the side of the highway and you can just drive in. You don’t need an invitation or anything, you just show up. She has a little shed that has pottery in it and it’s on the honour system. So if you go in and see something you like, you leave money and you leave a note and you take your piece of pottery. I think it’s little stories like that, people really resonate with.
Q More and more, you see people — YouTubers, or Instagrammers — try to make a career out of having a social media following. You seem to be well on your way to that. What is the key to actually doing that for a living?
A That’s a good question. It’s really difficult, and it’s very time intensive. You just need to have that relatable personality or that angle or that hook that keeps people coming back, and that’s not easy to do.
Content is king and you need to make sure you have great content every day, and that’s not always easy to do, especially when it comes to shooting a video. Shooting a video takes time, editing it takes time and marketing it takes time, too. It looks like a glamorous lifestyle, but there’s a lot of work behind it as well.