Deer Lake -
It began as a promotional cross-country trek to show off the new Honda Insight hybrid vehicle.
Now the Insight Into Canada marathon drive, led by adventure driver Garry Sowerby and his wife Lisa Calvi, has led to an online collection of page after page of true Canadian eco-positive tales. They are stories showing strides being made by everyday Canadians, independent companies and even entire municipalities towards more environmentally conscious lives.
The Insight Into Canada drive began on April 21 in Victoria and is scheduled to end on May 22 in St. John's. The tour has allowed the first Insight hybrid in Canada to be driven and reviewed by automotive journalists across the country.
To accompany the tour, organizers Sowerby and Calvi also created an online blog.
Stories in the blog entries include a class of grade school children in B.C. who came together to save a marsh near their school from development, the work of the City of Sault Ste. Marie in teaching all of their city workers to go idle-free, and Duane Gorman of P.E.I. who has his very own backyard wind turbine.
The story of Neddies Harbour Inn in Norris Point as relayed by the Gros Morne Institute for Sustainable Development (GMIST) has also called the attention of the drivers and, following a visit to the inn on Wednesday, will likely be added to the collection.
"They (owners Bettina Lori and Herbert Schuhmacher) went to talk to them, to GMIST, about how to build this hotel in a sustainable way," said Calvi, speaking with The Western Star in Deer Lake. Calvi said the inn was an illustration of the very concept of sustainable tourism. "Just the fact that they took an old building and rebuilt it. I mean they recycled the building."
The stories have been collected as a planned companion to the promotional tour, meant to highlight the fuel-efficient vehicle's environmentally-friendly 74 miles to the gallon.
They have even been written from the point of view of the vehicle, with the narrative voice masking the human minds behind the entries.
Yet, said Calvi, the stories she and Sowerby have encountered, along with the automotive journalists who have joined them in stretches of road along the way, the stories now on the blog, have defied any expectations.
"What we've seen along the way ... It's all about big corporations to individual Canadians seeing what they can do," said Calvi. "It's been an amazing trip so far."
The hybrid-fueled, environmentally-focused trip is a shift for Sowerby, who has created a business in the past 30 years in taking cars and gas gauges to their limit - promoting vehicles through long and winding tours across countries, across continents and around the world.
As a driver, Sowerby has been named to the Guinness Book of World Records four times for his distance runs. His book, "Sowerby's Road," was published in 2003 and includes stories and hundreds of photos from his award-winning travels, travels in which he is normally joined by his wife, who is also his business partner.
The drivers will continue to blog as they make a planned stop in Gander Wednesday evening, before continuing on to the Trinity area. They are scheduled to arrive and end their cross-Canada tour in St. John's on Friday, but are currently looking at the possibility of continuing the Insight blog to keep collecting stories beyond the end of their current tour.
Weblinks:
http://www.adventuredrive.ca/news/
http://www.insightintocanada.ca/
