With free entry over, parks are attracting fewer people

OTTAWA — If you make it free, they will come.

Parks Canada’s free entry program for the country’s 150th birthday saw Canadians and other visitors flock to national parks and historic sites in record numbers. An extra 2.5 million visitors poured through the gates in 2017.

In the first eight months of 2018, the number of visitors fell 10 per cent from the same period in 2017. In some parks that saw the biggest jumps in 2017, visits are down more than 30 per cent.

“We expected we would see a big increase in visitation in 2017,” said Ed Jager, director of visitor experience for Parks Canada. “We also knew that we would see sort of a return to the previous trend.”

Jager said the good news is that the 2018 numbers are still higher than in the previous years when there were fees, reflecting ongoing marketing efforts to keep visitor numbers growing. Entry is still free for anyone under 18, which it didn’t used to be, but adults once again pay between $3.60 and $9.80 for day passes.

The number of visitors to national parks between January and August was up about three per cent compared to 2016. Visits to historic sites are about even, though final numbers might not all be accounted for yet.

Kathleen Yetman, owner of Birdie’s Perch restaurant and the Point Pelee Trading Post, said her business had never seen anything quite like what happened in 2017.

“It was a gift,” she said. The number of visitors to Point Pelee fell almost 40 per cent in the first eight months of the year, compared with 2017, but is still about six per cent higher than in 2016.

Banff National Park, with nearly three million visitors, is the country’s most popular, and its attendance numbers varied very little regardless of the fees.

But the Banff Park Museum inside it, with a normal entry fee of $3.90, saw attendance soar 230 per cent to more than 72,000 people in the first eight months of 2017.