Thank you to Jennifer Bain of O’Canadiana for her little chat with Cargo Lit, and congrats to Jen on her three recent writing awards from the North American Travel Journalists Association! – Mo
My orders were to run travel as ethically and honestly as possible within this framework and to be fully transparent about the fact the stories spring from hosted trips.
mdc: How have you grown into your position as Travel Editor of The Toronto Star?
jb: I’ve been a journalist for 28 years and I can honestly say the two years I just spent as travel editor of the Toronto Star were the craziest and most intense years of my career. People don’t believe me. They think travel is just frothy and fun and a holiday. I came into it blind after 15 years as food editor and had to hit the ground running as a one-woman show putting out two weekly print sections, a highly visual interactive tablet section and the online content. That’s right – there was no deputy and no team. I did have some copy editing help. Add into the mix that most of the travel writing world works on FAM trips (short for familiarization trips, meaning “junkets” hosted by destinations, hotels, cruises and resorts) and the whole hidden back story is people jostling to get invited on these trips and get assignments for these trips. My orders were to run travel as ethically and honestly as possible within this framework and to be fully transparent about the fact the stories spring from hosted trips. What I quickly realized worked within those boundaries was to chose about 25 writers that I trusted and that understood our rules and to work with them exclusively. All press trip offers came to us (about 40 a month), and I chose the top 15 or so that gave us access to stories that we wanted to tell. I assigned them to my stable of writers and guided them through the process. I spent a lot of time as travel agent and troubleshooter since we would be juggling assignments months in advance. Technically I worked a 35-hour week as a unionized editor, but that turned into 100-hour weeks since I used all my free time to travel and write on the side. I took 50 trips over two years, partly thanks to my husband stepping up to take full care of our two youngest kids. Looking back on it all now, I’m not sure how I’m still standing but I’m glad i did it.
mdc: Who are your biggest heroes in travel literature and why?
jb: This is embarrassing to admit, but I don’t really have heroes, nor have I had much time to read literature since I dove into the “travel bubble.” But that has started to change now that I’m taking a one-year leave of absence. I just finished The World’s Most Travelled Man by a Canadian, Mike Spencer Bown. It was fascinating and the polar opposite of the type of travelling I had been doing for work. He funded his own travels, travelled deeply and cheaply and wrote the book after decades on the road.
Ryan Szulc
mdc: Tell us about your cookbooks. How much fun were they to research and write?
jb: I did two cookbooks back to back – Toronto Star Cookbook: More Than 150 Diverse & Delicious Recipes Celebrating Ontario (2013) and Buffalo Girl Cooks Bison (2014). The first was a big publisher and the book I had to do to get my foot in the publishing door. The second was a small publisher and was a passion project – my husband runs his family’s bison (buffalo) ranch in southern Alberta and I had an endless supply of meat. For Buffalo Girl, I called it an adventure cookbook because I went on a series of road trips to meet other buffalo people and write stories to launch each chapter. Nobody does cookbooks for money – they are absolutely a labour of love. Not only do you have to do endless grocery shopping, cooking and dishes, you are responsible for professional photo shoots. There’s a lot of secrecy about the publishing world, how to get a book deal, how much you get, how much you make, etc., so I wrote a story about my experience: The Making of the Toronto Star Cookbook.
mdc: How do you know if a story could be a good fit for The Star, and what should the pitch look like?
jb: We look for the new, the quirky, the untold. I didn’t take travel pitches from writers, but I received hundreds or maybe thousands of them. Most were fairly generic as in “I’m travelling here and could give you a story” which is not helpful. Many were based on the same press trips that we had already been invited on and just regurgitated the itinerary. As for how a destination should pitch, I liked to do deskside meetings when the destination reps came to town and came into the Star. We’d sit on couches near my desk and yak. The best story ideas, beyond press releases, would come out from these casual conversations.
We look for the new, the quirky, the untold.
Jennifer Bain, taken during the Mummers Festival parade in St. John’s Newfoundland in December 2017
I liked to show up early, stay late and lose myself in my work.
mdc: Describe A Day in the Life of a Travel Editor for a big Canadian newspaper.
jb: I’m a workaholic (recovering?) and was putting in 100-hour weeks. I liked to show up early, stay late and lose myself in my work to the point that I didn’t leave my desk for lunch and didn’t even like taking bathroom breaks. I’m trying to readjust that way of thinking because it obviously wasn’t healthy. But a typical office day might start at 7am, going over emails and opening up all my computer screens, making a to do list, editing stories, passing them on for further editing, fielding FAM [Familiarization] offers, researching a trip offer or destination, liaising with PR people for more detail, choosing a writer, liaising over their interest/availability, getting our “pages” (the editorial space left over for a section once the ads are laid out), writing a laydown (list of stories with lengths and photos to give to our layout people), having deskside meetings and planning many many months ahead. You’ll notice I didn’t say anything about the phone – I avoided it. I liked to keep paper trails. I needed them to help keep track of things.
Courtesy Jennifer Bain, taken at Taken at the ice floe near Arctic Bay, Nunavut in June 2017
mdc: What are you currently working on a book right now, and if so, can you share anything with us about it?
jb: I just got into grad school. I’ll be starting a two-year Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction in August. It’s with King’s College out of Halifax but I don’t have to live there. Basically you spend two years researching and writing a book. You spend two weeks every August in Halifax doing intensive workshops and writing sessions. In January you spend a week in Toronto or New York City learning about the publishing industry. I’m going to write a Canadian travel book told through a series of fishing trips. I’m going to criss-cross the country fishing for all kinds of fish in all kinds of ways with all kinds of people.
I’m going to write a Canadian travel book told through a series of fishing trips.
I pledged to create a special issue for each province and territory.
mdc: You have a passion for exploring Canada. Where have your favourite stories or travels taken you?
jb: For Canada 150 in 2017, I pledged to create a special issue for each province and territory. That means finding about seven or eight stories for each and that meant hustling FAMs from 13 different destinations. It was very very challenging and I promised my boss that if any FAMs didn’t come through and I didn’t have enough content I would pay for the trips myself and make sure everything got done. Luckily, I succeeded. I personally travelled to all 10 provinces and all three territories, as well as sending my writers out. It won’t come as a surprise to hear that Nunavut was the hardest trip to get (I went there twice) and the most incredible. I did a long weekend in Iqaluit and a camping trip on the ice floe near Arctic Bay. I’ll never forget my time up there and my Inuit guides. I’m already working on ways to get back. It’s ridiculously expensive to travel there and that breaks my heart.
mdc: Travel writing is a changing landscape. Do you have any advice for a young writer who is trying to break into the field today?
jb: If you want to be a writer, write. If you want to be a travel writer, then travel. I’m out of the FAM trip bubble this year, planning and paying for my own trips. I don’t have the Toronto Star as a platform this year, but I have just built my own website and will start writing there while I collect material for my book. I don’t know many people who actually make a living as travel writers – most are freelancers who pay their bills with other kinds of writing. So diversify and remember you’ll have to do some writing for money and only some for love.
mdc: What is O Canadiana?
jb: O Canadiana is my brand new travel website at ocanadiana.com. I debated whether to brand a site to myself or to a concept and went with the concept of travelling Canada and the world in search of quirk. It will host travel stories about Canada as well as global travel stories written by Canadians for Canadianas.
