Banff Redemption Tour

Two weeks ago, I took my third trip to Banff. 

The first time I passed through this part of Alberta – majestic, vast, gorgeously wild – was as an angsty teen on a family roadtrip to British Columbia and back. We traveled by tent trailer, a towable hybrid accommodation with neither the ease of a trailer nor the charm of a tent. Each night, we unfurled ourselves at a different campsite: my parents took one bed, my brothers took the other, and I slept on the flattened kitchen table, forever cementing my status as a hotel girl. I remember little apart from my existential malaise, my Dad’s snoring, and the color of Moraine Lake.

Eight years ago, I came back for an afternoon as part of a Fraser family Christmas vacation. My husband Emmett’s family possesses something I don’t: a deep and abiding love of nature. While they unabashedly donned snow pants and rightly ooh and aahed at the Cascade mountains rising above Banff Town, I shivered in a too-thin coat and made a break for the nearest coffee shop.

All of which is to say: I’d been to Banff, but never my way.

Thankfully, third time’s a charm.

I came for work – to sit on a panel about the economic value of community at a marketing conference called The Gathering. 

I stayed at the “Castle of the Rockies,” the famous Banff Springs Hotel, in a room with a criminally small bathroom that was offset by a wonderful view of Mount Rundle.

I saw many of my Toronto advertising friends for the first time in more than a decade and had extreme waves of high-school-reunion-style nostalgia.

I walked into town every day – you know the saying about “being able to take the girl out of the city, but..”? – and hit the thrifting jackpot at Last Temptation Vintage.

I visited The Whyte, which has a museum gift shop that bills itself as “Banff’s only bookstore,” for a beggars-can’t-be-choosers bout of book shopping.

And, most importantly of all, I brought Emmett with me.

In between work and the conference and a million “I can’t believe I haven’t seen you since 2012” hugs, he and I did all kinds of touristy shit – the Banff Gondola, Emerald Lake, Natural Bridge, Marble Canyon, Lake Louise, and a spooky lake with a submerged ghost town at its bottom. Because it was off-season everything felt very relaxed. We also went to the hotel spa, where we had the uniquely northern-Canada experience of being snowed on (freezing) while in a hot tub (divine) in mid-October.

So, no disrespect to the tent trailer experience of my youth (ok maybe a little disrespect), but as far as future Banff trips are concerned, I think it’s going to be my way from here on out.