Lynn Holden first spied the unusual plaque in 1982. She was exploring Virginia Falls, the spectacular waterfall twice the height of Niagara Falls that carries the Nahanni River over a 90-metre precipice in the southwest corner of Canada's Northwest Territories. The plaque informed her she was on a World Heritage Site.
And what is that, the single mom and solo backpacker wondered at the time as she shifted the weight of her rucksack and trudged ever onward. As soon as she made it home, she hot-footed it to her local library to find out that the Nahanni National Park Reserve (Nah?q Dehé) had been designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to help preserve its cultural, natural and historical significance. Canada now has a total of 29.
Lynn was hooked!
She decided to visit every single one, which is precisely what this author/photographer and lecturer did over the next 40 years, setting aside her vacation time to explore each magnificent area. Over time, she noticed the changes at the sites - the inclusion of this country's Indigenous nations, whose ties to the landscape go back thousands of years. She travelled by bush plane and helicopter, sailboat and canoe but mainly back-packing mile after mile after mile. Neither did she neglect the more urban sites, such as Old Town Lunenburg, Old Quebec City and the Rideau Canal.
"Canada is a fantastic country, and so are its special places," she writes in 'The Beginning' to her coffee table book.
"Each day, as my feet touch the floor, life's adventures begin again. I never know the pathway that will open up for me. I do not resist. I just follow along and see where it will lead. How lucky I have been."
The requisite 'Acknowledgments' give examples of the help along the way experienced by this intrepid traveller: the surveyor on one helicopter flight who sized her up and her plan to hike solo through grizzly country along an unmarked trail in Assiniboine National Park, take pictures and then return. Concerned, he alerted the park warden and then made sure to be at her destination at the park's overnight cabin to make sure she arrived safely.
This colourful and entertaining volume begs to be read from cover to cover, at the very least leafed through, from the photo on the front cover of a spectacular highway carving its way through the snow-topped Rocky Mountains to the colourful map indicating the location of all the sites, from Mistaken Point on the Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland, to SC_ang Gwaay at the southern end of Haida Gwaii off the coast of British Columbia.
Each of the 29 sites has its own chapter, sometimes including charming anecdotes of Lynn's adventures and always explaining what is special about the designated area - SC_ang Gwaay is often referred to as the Galapagos of Canada - and including a sidebar on how to get there, the year it was designated and those wonderful photos that make you long set off immediately.
A decided bonus is that as you explore this book, many of us will find we have been lucky enough to visit some of these fascinating areas that are special enough to be UNESCO-designated: L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland - tick, Old Quebec City in Quebec - tick, and Wood Buffalo National Park, North West Territories and Alberta - tick.
Canadian World Heritage Sites by Lynn Holden was self-published in 2022 and is available on the author's website.