Vacay.ca Contributors are a mix of the most experienced travel journalists in Canada and emerging talents who are uncovering the best things to see, do, experience and taste in our country. Check ’em out and don’t be shy — email to let us know if there’s something you’d like to see covered by our team.
EDITORS
Adrian Brijbassi, Managing Editor — Adrian is a Canadian travel and food expert. He is the founder of Vacay.ca, an online magazine focused on Canadian destinations and culture, and TopRestaurantsInCanada.com, which rates the nation’s best places to dine out. A former editor at the Toronto Star, Adrian has won numerous awards for his travel writing and fiction. A Huffington Post travel columnist and CTV National News contributor, Adrian is also a judge for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants and is editing a nutrition-focused cookbook featuring recipes from leading chefs. He is the author of the novel “50 Mission Cap” and the forthcoming novel and short film, “Triumph the Lion.” His favourite places in Canada are Tofino, British Columbia, and St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador. Contact Adrian at adrian@vacay.ca.
Rod Charles, Deputy Editor – Rod is an entrepreneur with a passion for travel, adventure and good food. He’s worked for Canoe.ca as an online editor and has ghost-written blogs for several elite athletes. He’s also worked as the travel editor at AOL / Huffington Post Canada and his travel articles have been published in the Toronto Star. Rod has used his skills to help several non-profit organizations, including the White Ribbon Campaign, a charity that worked to end violence against women, and an anti-poverty initiative in Hamilton, Ontario. He has also been a proud volunteer with Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Toronto for 10 years. Living in Toronto, but raised in the small-central Ontario village of Holstein, Rod is a country boy at heart who has never met a farmer’s market he didn’t like. Contact Rod at rod@vacay.ca.
See the Media Coverage that Vacay.ca has earned in its short existence!
CONTRIBUTORS
Paul Knowles contributes regularly to Vacay.ca. Paul is President of the Travel Media Association of Canada, an organization whose almost 400 members include accredited and qualified travel communicators, and travel industry representatives and organizes and leads tour groups, most recently, a 24-person, two-week tour of southern England, from Canterbury to Cornwall. In the past year, Paul has visited and written published articles in the Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, Broadview Magazine and Dreamscapes about Dominica, Mexico, Ireland, Winnipeg, Myrtle Beach, The Florida Keys, Fort Myers, Philadelphia, Nova Scotia, Ottawa, Sudbury, Niagara, New Brunswick, Québec and southern England. Contact Paul at pknowles@golden.net
One Comment
Ian Bron
January 9, 2024 at 3:00 pmI’m curious about whether your journalists do stories about negative experiences in travel. My family had a very bad experience in South Africa recently involving two giants in the travel industry: Flight Centre and TripAdvisor/Viator. In a nutshell, they put us into a dangerous situation which was also a rip-off (quality-wise) and have been refusing to properly compensate since. We’ve initiated a small claims action against them. Despite that, there’s level of arrogance in their communications that suggests they feel untouchable; the icing on the cake has been the repeated explanations by White North Americans to my Zimbabwean-Canadian wife about what quality she should expect in South Africa – a country in which she has lived and worked. One of the key arguments both are relying on is that despite recommending the excursion and selling us the tickets, they have no responsibility for anything that went wrong. We did pay Flight Centre for the service, by the way. If anyone is interested, the link to our claim is https://www.scribd.com/document/693656986/Statement-of-Claim-IB-and-TC-v-FC-and-TA.