Travel can teach youth so much

This past weekend I was discussing the value of travel in young people’s education with parents from Kenora and Dryden. It is interesting to note that the current generation of young people are more informed, more mobile and more adventurous than previous generations.
When I was growing up the big trip that I remember was travelling west to Saskatchewan to visit relatives of both my mother and father. After that, the only experience I had was travelling with the Muskies to the Centennial tournament in Sudbury in 1967.
Our family focused our vacations in the district.
My children however began their travel to cities and events when they were both only months old. They became accustomed to very early morning car departures with lots of stops during the day to release energy. I remember them clamoring over rocks east of Thunder Bay at the amethyst mine. We filled a small box with crystals they found.
At Drumheller Alberta, we scoured the badlands looking for dinosaur bones and took in the Royal Tyrrel Museum of Palaeontolgy.
My parents began taking their grandchildren to newspaper conventions, thus visiting cities across Canada.
Their granddaughter visited Montreal with gramma and grampa. Their grandsons saw both Quebec City and Winnipeg.
They were lucky to meet other youth their same age that attended those conventions with their parents. They learned about the diversity of Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
There were lots of long road trips and our sons saw every province except for Newfoundland. They played on the beaches of two oceans and several beaches of the great lakes. For a long time we dragged them through museums and art galleries and later an appreciation for museums and galleries flourished.
They took advantage of high school trips and travelled across Canada and to foreign countries.
Eventually they discovered the world and have travelled extensively learning about cultures and countries. It has broadened their understanding of the world and the diversity of peoples.
I must give credit to Dexter Fichuk who has spear headed an initiative to provide a scholarship for a Fort High student to travel on a “Me to We” trip to a developing country to see the importance of education, clean water and agriculture projects. It is a bold under taking and one I hope that will continue beyond this year.
Several students from Dryden under the leadership of Matt and Leanne Taylor have just returned from two weeks in India where they worked at an orphanage, painting walls and ceilings, cleaning kitchens and bathrooms and playgrounds, and playing with and helping orphans. Their tasks were not easy. Many of the orphans had AIDS, which in India is not even talked about. Those children were shunned. The Indian youth in the orphanage have very few opportunities. Coming back to Canada everyone who had travelled to that remote part of India really now understood and are aware of how fortunate they are to live in Canada.
Two told me that they would like to return to that part of India again to help at the orphanage.
Their world has expanded. They have learned much that could never really be understood by reading the book or listening and watching videos. Travel has shown them new opportunities. The educational benefits of travel cannot be measured.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher