Travel
Tales of modern travel take flight in new book from Vancouver author
While trepidatious, Burgess took the advice. Luckily, what began to appear on the page was just what his friend suggested.
“When I started writing the book I realized he was right. And I realized, I can do this. I shouldn’t sell myself short,” said Burgess.
The result is the new book Reservations: The Pleasure and Perils of Travel.
Fans of Burgess’s Please Advise! Column in The Tyee, and other magazine works, know humour is his stock and trade. But while Reservations has its laughs, at its heart, it is a thoughtful and well-researched inquiry into why and how we travel.
“This is a book that has humour in it because all of the writing I do has some humour in it, but it’s not a humorous book. It is a serious book,” said Burgess, a multiple National Magazine Awards winner and a former CBC host. “It’s a book that uses my personal stories to jump off into examinations of the issues that are facing travel and tourism.”
Topping the list is the cost of travel regarding climate challenges.
“That is the central dilemma of the entire book,” said Burgess. “How do you balance the human need to travel with the new realities of climate and over-tourism?
“When I was writing the book, I kind of hoped that when I got to the end of the book that I would have a kind of neat answer for that question. I just don’t.”
One conclusion is that there is no substitute for long-haul air travel.
“Long distance flights are the kind we Canadians have to take in order to get anywhere, really,” said Burgess, who counts Japan and Italy as his favourite destinations.
“Those are damaging. And technological solutions are not going to come quick enough to really solve the climate problem in the medium term. And that’s a serious thing. The harm is real. How do you square that circle?”
Experts say limiting air travel is the step that needs to be taken. But who is going to tell the shipping companies, the military or the wealthy who support the US$33-billion private jet industry to stay on the ground?
“You are talking about an elite group of people who are punching above their weight in terms of emissions. And yet, conversely, those are the people that are the hardest to regulate,” said Burgess, adding that more taxes and regulations will only lessen the airtime for regular folks.
Also, there’s this little thing called political influence. After all, those who give big money to political parties tend to expect a big return on their investment.
“It’s going to be very tough to pass laws in which you have to go to the person who is funding your campaign and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m passing a law that says you can’t have a private jet anymore,” said Burgess.
The guilt trip of today’s modern travel aside, Burgess takes the reader along on a suitcase full of adventures. Adventures that he prefers to do on his own as he’s not a fan of plans and decisions by committee. And a bucket list? Forget it.
“Wandering is heaven, searching is hell,” he writes in the book. A daily itinerary is kryptonite to this traveller. He steers clear of guidebooks and other travel writing.
“I tend to want to go and wander around and find what I find,” said Burgess. “I don’t want to be infected by someone else’s attitudes and someone else’s observation. If I am by myself, I don’t have to confer with anybody.
“I can get up in the morning and do whatever the hell I want that day and discover whatever I discover. Serendipity is so much easier when you’re by yourself.”
Reservations, in the end, is not a travel guidebook. Far from it. A mixture of memoir and journalism, it is also a call to the gate of self-discovery.
“I hope that people will be able to ask themselves what the positives and the negatives are of what I’m doing and become more conscious of their own role and their own behaviour,” said Burgess. “Also, I hope they have a good time reading the stories. I hope that they’re inspired to explore, really explore when they travel and not just go down the same paths and see the same things with the mob.”
As for future travel, Burgess will be hitting the road this summer. But his shoes won’t be on European cobblestones, but firmly on the Prairie soil of his home province of Manitoba.
“That’s become a travel destination for me. That’s where I grew up,” said Burgess. “That’s a funny, ironic thing that: as we get older, we want to travel back in time. So this summer, I’m not going anywhere except Manitoba.”
Burgess will be discussing Reservations at a live event at the Vancouver Public Library’s main branch on May 2 at 7 p.m.
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