5 outings that are reinventing ecotourism

“Just make your world the world,” Mr. Smiley said as he walked along a new 6-mile nature trail on the inn’s revamped golf course. If you make small changes every day, like reducing waste and dumping plastic, you will feel good.”

Deep River, Ontario

“I think the climate crisis can make people feel so paralyzed, like it’s almost too little too late,” said Shannon MacLaggan, who runs Anupaya Cabin Co. with her husband Pete. established as a wilderness refuge and incubator for climate action. in 2021. “There are huge esoteric concepts about how to tackle global warming, but this is something tangible and applicable.”

The 12-acre estate (nightly rates from $232), along the upper Ottawa River, has a lodge, private beach and eight renovated cabins, each with a kitchen, grill, fire pit and veranda overlooking the Laurentian Mountains. Anupaya invites every guest – youth groups in the inner city receive a 50 percent room discount – to join the environmental movement in any way.

This may mean that you participate in cleaning campaigns through the hotel One Pound Promise initiative (60,000 pounds of waste collected so far), foraging workshops, planting fruit trees and berry bushes, or learning to grow and harvest food in the garden, where guests often pull up invasive plants and pick salad ingredients. Visitors can also work with locals on trail management projects Friends of Rivière du Moine non-profit organization, or do trail maintenance in the neighborhood Four Seasons Conservancy. “The whole reason we started Anupaya is to remind people how we are all part of nature,” Ms MacLaggan said. “When you love something, you feel responsible for it.”

Anupaya will introduce more formal volunteer opportunities in 2024. The Sustainable Saturdays initiative, which runs from May to November, will offer free two-hour educational sessions on composting, starting a medicinal garden, raising chickens and more.