How Fogo Island is redefining luxury with community at its heart: Zita Cobb, Fogo Island Inn

Speaker A: 00:00:30

It's such a powerful place where light behaves unexpectedly and it's such an unusual landscape for most people are accustomed to who maybe live on a continent or in a city.

So I think it awakens your imagination immediately because you are busy trying to orient and then as you're busy trying to orient, you realize fairly quickly you forgot about yourself, which is the most wonderful feeling in the world.

Speaker B: 00:00:57

Welcome to into the Hearts of Canada, the podcast where we share the stories of extraordinary people transforming Canadian tourism. I'm your host, Matt Leadham, checking in from Byron Bay on Bundjalung Country, Australia's most easterly point.

In this episode, I'm honoured to welcome Zeta Cop, founder and driving force behind the award winning Fogo Island Inn, which is literally perched on the rugged shores of Newfoundland and Labrador.

and a resilient of just over: 2000

Through the iconic inn and the Shawfast foundation, she's redefined luxury as cultural immersion, environmental stewardship and social impact. For travellers and travel professionals. Her story is both inspiring and practical.

A blueprint for how tourism can sustain communities, protect heritage, transform the way we connect with the destination. Thank you so much for joining us today, Zita. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on with us. Start by asking you, where are you today?

Speaker A: 00:02:10

Today I'm in Ottawa, which is central Canada and a little bit further west than home, which is how far away.

Speaker B: 00:02:20

Exactly are you from home there?

Speaker A: 00:02:22

I think it must be in miles. It's probably a thousand miles or close to it. It's along. Canada is the second biggest landmass in the world as a country.

Speaker B: 00:02:32

Yeah, it's a little bit of a trip home. Let's talk about Fogo island now.

I think for many people listening probably to this podcast, it could be certainly for us down in Australia, we'll treat it as a little bit of an introduction. So can you give us a little bit of a sense of where Fogo island is? And I guess you know what makes it so special?

Speaker A: 00:02:49

I think what makes every place special is what makes it specific. And what makes Fogo island specific is that it is kind of the near north.

It is located on the most eastern part of Canada and off the coast of Newfoundland. Labrador, that's the province. And we are at 49 degrees, 44 minutes north, which is about the same as Paris.

However, we are Located in the Labrador Current, which is one of the coldest, fastest ocean currents on the planet. And it comes right by our doorstep, and it shapes our home as being a part of the subarctic terrain.

So if you look at the plants and the berries, it's all subarctic. However, we're only at 49 degrees, 44 minutes north, so we don't have the same darkness in the year.

But we're shaped as a culture and as a place by the Labrador current. Absolutely. And that's what makes it very special.

Speaker B: 00:03:47

You're an eighth generation Fogo Islander. I hope I got that right.

Speaker A: 00:03:50

That's it.

Speaker B: 00:03:52

What's life like living on Fogo Island?

Speaker A: 00:03:54

Fogo island is big enough to hold your heart and your mind and your attention, but small enough to love. It's four times the size of Manhattan.

It's just under 300 square kilometers with 10 different little communities that all have a different orientation to the sea. So we say we have a harbor for every storm.

And seriously, you could move your boat around to the other side of the island if you're expecting a big window. And so to grow up there was to grow up feral and to grow up with a deep, deep sense of nature and culture and of community.

And I think Fogo island is still like that today. I mean, we didn't have cars when I grew up, but we have cars now.

But it's still a place where you feel the relational world with nature and with other people.

Speaker B: 00:04:43

And I know you talk about seven seasons on the island. Can you give us a bit of a sense of what that is?

Speaker A: 00:04:48

You know, everything in a place that is an Atlantic island, especially a North Atlantic island, is shaped by the weather. And we learned to love the weather, whatever it was. My father never, never grew up with this idea that there were four seasons.

So when he heard tell of this from away, he couldn't figure it out at all. So he started counting seasons, which he had never really felt that he needed to count seasons, but when he counted, he got 17.

And the 17 really just had to do with winds and the wind direction and what we were doing that time of year. And so when we were starting the inn, we thought, well, we can't possibly describe 17 seasons. So we settled on seven.

So there are the four that you would know, plus the pack ice season, which is coming soon. That's when the pack ice breaks off from the west coast of Greenland and comes down with the Labrador current, bringing with it seals.

And then after that, and then we have trap birth season. Which is the month of June. That's when the cod fishery starts. And then we have berry season. And in the fall starts around the middle of September.

We have 26 kinds of wild berries that grow out on the barrens and bogs. That's when time to go berry picking.

Speaker B: 00:05:58

So huge amounts of change constantly.

Speaker A: 00:06:02

You are never, ever bored in such a place, obviously.

Speaker B: 00:06:06

We'll talk about the inn in a second and the story behind that. What do you think draws travelers to Fogo Island?

Speaker A: 00:06:11

I think that what draws them is that probably the location in the sense that it's an Atlantic island, it's the near north. You can experience what it's like to be in a subarctic environment without having to go all the way north.

And to cope with the darkness, you get more darkness or more light, depending on the time of year. And so I think it's because of where we are, people come. And also because we are part of Newfoundland and Labrador, which is a part of Canada.

We joined Canada in: 1949

Music comes out of every rock. When you grew up, you were expected to be able to give a song or music.

If you couldn't play an instrument, you certainly were expected to tell a story. And so this kind of strong culture of being with each other in ways that are entertaining and giving are part of the place.

Speaker B: 00:07:15

Well, I guess gander in particular, of course, has its own, you know, rich history and story around putting gander on the map to the world, I guess, for a very different reason. But, you know, things like the Come From Away musical, which. An amazing introduction to the people of the area and just how very.

Yeah, very unique they are.

Speaker A: 00:07:34

I think it is maybe a good example of the difference between hospitality and service. They are related to each other, but they're not the same.

And so people like the people of Gander, like the people of Newfoundland and Labrador generally, that are deeply, deeply, deeply rooted in their place, have a kind of a confidence that comes out of the rock and where aren't so many people. Like, the entire province only has half a million people. So it's not a very populated place.

And so when somebody arrives, well, we are super excited about that, and we're very nosy about other people. It's very open and welcoming place.

And because we have this depth of love and confidence in the place, it makes us naturally open and Hospitable and in service. Like when we were going to build an inn, it's like, okay, well, now we have to layer more professional service on top of that hospitality.

And that's what we've done. But, you know, if we make a mistake at the inn, we might make a service mistake. Not so many.

We will never make a hospitality mistake because that's just.

And certainly the people of Gander, Gander, I don't know, at the time maybe had 12,000 people and 7,000 people showed up during 911 and they cared for them and housed them. And as one woman said. She said, and they loved us too. And relationships formed from that time that have endured.

Speaker B: 00:09:00

It's still one of the most beautiful stories to come out of that. What obviously was a terrible, terrible time. It still resonates today as overwhelmingly positive for so many reasons.

Speaker A: 00:09:11

Well, you know, it's interesting, between all this tariff talk now and now with borders becoming thicker, it's good for us to remember that we're friends and nothing more than experiences like 911 to remind us of that.

And actually, Gillian Kiley, who is the director of the play that has now come to Gander of Come From Away, was on the CBC reminding us that we're friends.

Speaker B: 00:09:37

Very important point. So let's talk about the inn itself and how it all originated.

So you had an incredible career working in Silicon Valley and then you chose to come back to Fogo Island. What was it that inspired you to return and build something as unique as Fogo Island Inn?

Speaker A: 00:09:52

In my career, I was in wave division, multiplexing, and I was on the finance side of that technology and that business. I spent a lot of time traveling to many, many, many places in the world, including Australia. I was buying companies and technology a lot of the time.

And I came to see that this globalization that had moved so quickly in the 80s and 90s really wasn't always having good outcomes for places that people lived.

And I really love business, not as much as I love place, but I love business because I think it's a wonderful tool to achieve the things that support our dreams and make. Make life good for people. And I could see that not everything that we were doing in the business world was good for place.

And I could see in my own home that it was. Was slowly kind of declining. And I thought about the world and.

And the specific place that we are, and I realized that in specifically we lacked investment. That was real development because most investment is not development.

And I saw that this both a need and an opportunity to do Something at home that would strengthen the place, the economy of the place, so that the economy had another leg on it to complement fishery. And we could do it in a way that strengthened culture and strengthened the things we loved.

And because I think that is the unique thing that tourism as a sector can do, we can do economic and social and cultural development all at the same time.

Speaker B: 00:11:31

Absolutely. Just to give us a bit of a sense of time, here was this around 10 years ago.

Speaker A: 00:11:35

ow a bit more. I went home in: 2006

We started with the question of what can we do, what might we do?

What should we do to give Fogo island at least another run, at another hundred years and we still had a fishery will always be the most important thing, because the fishery is about our relationship with the sea. And if we don't have that relationship with the sea, well, I don't know what our culture is. I think we'd be lost. And so we want to complement that.

a whole lot of sense. So from: 2006

ed construction on the inn in: 2010

And we started something called Fogo Island Arts, which is a residency based contemporary art program for artists from around the world.

Speaker B: 00:12:41

I heard you say recently in an interview, I can only imagine when you came back that a local had said to you, I don't think you came home to make things worse. Which made me laugh. Did people think your idea was crazy?

Speaker A: 00:12:53

I took what, what that man said as trust.

And I think that because we started with art and we started with contemporary art, which is not, that's not always obvious to understand what that has to do with anything, let alone the price of fish. So I think people were maybe surprised and confused would be a way to describe it.

And it took time, you know, for it to unfold so that people could see, see the path. I mean, it wasn't that we weren't saying it, but it's that you just have to live and do. And that's how we come to understand things together.

But I'm sure people, some people thought I was crazy, no doubt.

Speaker B: 00:13:31

Well, I guess everyone has their own level of, you know, change and how quickly they can adapt to it. And I'd imagine it's a. It would be a pretty out there concept to come back and suggest that we're going to build this, you know, this inn.

We're going to have people come from all over the world. I would imagine there would be a lot of questions and concerns from a few people in changing the status quo.

Were there big challenges that you had to face with that?

Speaker A: 00:13:54

There are lots of challenges.

I mean, we were also building something that was a very contemporary building, very leading edge technologies in a place that was not easy, like a lot of the things we needed around some of the engineering. But I think, yeah, maybe the hardest is just sort of mindset shifts.

We kind of organize our work around this idea that the strength of a place is its ability to hold on to itself and to reach out and belong to the world. So that's a mindset.

And if you have that mindset, then it just is a question of how do you belong to the world and how do you welcome the world when the world comes in a way that is revealing of the things you love and care about in your culture that creates a strong and memorable experience for people that are visiting. I have to say, the process of thinking that through and making an in. And we could tell you, every object in that inn was put there with intent.

If we could make it, we made it. And if we couldn't make it, we would acquire it from as close to home as possible. Because every object tells a story.

Every object is a set of relationships embedded in an object. So in the doing of that together, it's like we're kind of interrogating ourselves as a culture. And, well, what did our granny do? What did they value?

And how does that manifest in the contemporary? If our grannies and grandfathers came back, would they recognize themselves in the things we built in the contemporary? Because culture evolves.

At least the strongest cultures evolve.

Speaker B: 00:15:28

Was that why you called it an inn and not a hotel?

Speaker A: 00:15:31

You know, the inn is owned by the charity, and so the de facto owners are the people of the island. And one woman said when we were making it, she said, I suppose it's like a home for people that are temporarily without a home.

And so that's why we don't call it a restaurant. It's a dining room. So, yeah, it's more like a home.

Speaker B: 00:15:50

And architecturally, it's absolutely stunning. I mean, the building itself is absolutely beautiful. And of course, it's many awards and accolades for it.

The actual story behind it is so, so much more than that. Can you share the story a bit more around its purpose from a community perspective?

I know there's so much to touch on with that, but on face value, we've got this amazing architecturally beautiful building. There are a lot of architecturally beautiful buildings around the world. This is completely different.

Speaker A: 00:16:17

The design brief we gave to the architect, and his name was Todd Saunders, and he grew up in Gander, the very gander we were just talking about, and his practice is in Bergen, Norway. But the design brief was very simple.

It was, please find a way to express in contemporary architecture what we have learned in 400 years of clinging to this rock.

Speaker B: 00:16:38

Wow.

Speaker A: 00:16:39

And so I think he did that.

The building looks radically contemporary from the outside, but if you study the vernacular architecture of the island, you will see that it's a contemporary expression of the same way we've always built. It's made of wood, inside and out, has a steel frame that holds it.

And every gesture, like every board on the outside and inside of that building was touched by human hands 14 times. And we know who those hands were. And so with every stroke, we put care and love into the building.

And then came the opportunity to really think about, so, what are. What are people going to eat and how will we feed them? And.

And then, of course, if you think about that, but then you think about sourcing and you buy from local growers and local hunters and local fishers. And so it's like a big knitting project.

And that is, I would say, what the inn really turned into was a way of knitting ourselves into our past and to bring forward the things that might be lost around how to make a quilt, how to hook a mat, how to catch a fish, although I don't think we're going to forget that any day soon.

And then how to do something that is contemporary, that is still is the essence of us, but gives the, you know, the kids that are coming along now a sense of the future, you know, that leans into the future and holds onto the past, gives our culture a place to be expressed and shared.

Speaker B: 00:18:07

Yeah. So really about achieving that beautiful balance. And I love that what you just said as well, about clinging to this rock.

I mean, there's something in that, and I think that's really apparent when you see the building. It's about coexisting, isn't it? Not dominating the landscape. It's a very different approach.

Speaker A: 00:18:22

As Todd says, the building walks delicately on those rocks. And those rocks are not just any rocks. They're 400 million year old rocks that know everything and they remember everything. If only they could talk.

Speaker B: 00:18:34

Now let's talk about SureFast foundation, which underpins everything you do. How does it support Fogo island and.

Speaker A: 00:19:06

Its people economically, culturally, socially and in all of those ways? I mean, we obviously create economic activity on the island in everything that we purchase.

We have the island at the center of that and we buy things as close to home. We started something, we pioneered something which is now trademarked, called an economic nutrition label, which we put on everything that we sell.

And of course, the inn has also given rise to a little furniture business now as well. And we have an ice cream shop as well. And for everything we sell, we show you where the money goes. It is these enterprises.

We run them as community businesses and so they are economically nutritious for our place.

And actually that's one of the things that we're working on now, is to build an institute for community economy so we can create a platform to share good and best practices for community economic development. And I think that travel and tourism is the sector that has the most potential to do that.

And so every move we make on the island, we do it with the intention to strengthen place, to hold on to knowledge, share knowledge, advance knowledge.

Speaker B: 00:20:15

The youth. The youth, we'll call them the young crowd. Yeah, those young un's, the young crowd.

Such a big part of travel story and travel's future, but often overlooked and left out. How big a bigger role does the younger people play in Fogo Island Inn and the community part?

Speaker A: 00:20:35

Well, they play a role in absolutely everything. One of the things we keep a very keen eye on is the enrollment at the school and how many kids are enrolling.

Because we have suffered as a community great decline that happened, started in the late 60s when I was a 10 year old, when the inshore fishery collapsed and we had a great loss of population. I mean, there's a loss of population from rural regions everywhere in the world. We want our young crowd to be at home, see opportunities at home.

And even if they go away for university, I mean, you can finish high school on the island as I did, but you have to go away for university. And not all do need or want to go to university, but for the ones that do, we hope that they come home too.

So to create the opportunity for them to pursue careers in different things. And I think that's another thing about hospitality, that if we think about it as hospitality and not just service.

And so one of the things, the business model for the Inn, for example, we have absolutely no tipping because we want to have a comfort and sort of equal footing between guests and hosts. And I don't think it's good for you as a guest if you have to spend your entire time with a local person wondering, is $20 the right amount?

Should I do this? Should I not do this? When should I do this?

And the person who is orienting you to the island and sharing their understanding of their home doesn't want that moment either. So we take that away from the relationship so the relationship has a chance to be real in those moments that it's not.

And I think for our young people, that feels a lot more.

Not just our young people, for any of our people, it's a lot more dignified way to make a living and to come into something as hospitality, where you are bringing your whole self into it and your whole knowledge, and then it becomes about knowledge, sharing knowledge. And so that's why I think that in the sector of hospitality sometimes gets into trouble, because we just play in the shallows.

It's all about the top inch and we don't access the actual wealth that's in the cultures of places.

Speaker B: 00:22:36

Your initiative with tipping is done, like I've heard that before and I would imagine, particularly for a North American market where tipping is of course standard for everything. It's a bit different down here for us in Australia. But what's the general response like when people realize that they actually can't tip?

Speaker A: 00:22:50

Confusing and surprising to people that are accustomed to this in their travels. I mean, we try to make sure guests really understand it before they arrive. And certainly all the team at the inn and on the island know it.

And we, we have a. A revenue sharing plan. So, you know, when the business does well, the team who worked there do well from that.

So way we structured, other than alcohol, everything is included. Then you don't have to spend every day thinking, oh, my gosh, I need my underwear washed. How much is that going to cost?

We'll just wash your underwear too. There's no need to have this transaction in the middle of every relationship.

Speaker B: 00:23:27

Yeah, you include services and experiences. It's all, it's all included. Don't worry about that. Just get on with relaxing and.

Speaker A: 00:23:34

Exactly. And being here. Yes, just being here.

Speaker B: 00:23:37

So let's talk about that word luxury. By definition, you are bundled into that luxury category. Again, it's such a subjective word in today's travel industry, I guess.

What does luxury mean to you from a travel proposition?

Speaker A: 00:23:51

It's very clearly that you Know what you're doing brings more good than harm. That's number one.

And that good will feel good to you the closer it is to the people that you are spending time with and in whose communities you are. I mean, because of the way too much of the travel industry is structured, it's hard to know. It's hard to know where the money goes.

It's hard to know what's really going on. So I think the luxury is that kind of visibility in what happens in the business model.

I think the luxury is to be at ease in a place with people that, you know want you to visit, like want you to be there with them.

I mean, the true luxuries are the simplest things of the freshest, freshest air you want the creature comforts, of course, of a bed, a sleeping space that is as simple as possible. And. And to know that everything around you was chosen with intention because each object around you carries the integrity of place.

You can be sure that we chose mattresses that are not only exquisitely comfortable, also made in Canada, but we chose ones that, when they come to the end of their life, they will have the smallest negative impact on the environment. That's luxury.

To know that all of these impacts that we've gotten as close as I think you can possibly get to negative externalities in the way we built it. Now, we know that you're coming on a jet plane, and we know that that has implications for the environment.

And so if we're going to get on a jet plane and we're going to go somewhere, let's make sure that we're not adding additional negative externalities from our visit. I think that's luxury. When you arrive and we serve you hot Newfoundland made bread with molasses and butter. That's pretty luxurious, too.

Speaker B: 00:25:42

I'm guessing a lot of people take a lot of big deep breaths when they arrive because it's such a place of solitude and just so different to their everyday lives as well, which in itself, again, is luxury. Getting time back and kind of forgetting about what's their life back home, as it were.

Speaker A: 00:25:57

It's such a powerful place, you know, where light behaves unexpectedly and it's such an unusual landscape for what most people are accustomed to, who maybe live on a continent or in a city. So I think it awakens your imagination, like immediately because you are busy trying to orient.

And then as you're busy trying to orient, you realize fairly quickly, well, you forgot about yourself, which is the most wonderful feeling in the world.

Speaker B: 00:26:25

You clearly do a great Job of the storytelling.

So it's not just all of these amazing, different curated pieces and the way that it was, all the artisans and all of that, but you're actually educating people as well as to how this has all been brought together.

Speaker A: 00:26:39

I think in the way it's built and in the way we practice hospitality, it offers people an opportunity to kind of deeply understand what life is in a different kind of geography and in a different kind of culture. In a way, the place is kind of naked. Like it's. The landscape is naked. The hearts are very open. It's.

I think when people leave and go home, I think they see place differently. They see their own place differently. They see places different. I think maybe they just see place.

I could maybe just stop it right there, that you just see place.

Because in our busy lives, especially the way our lives are organized around too much around the digital world these days, it's easy to forget, to just take place for granted. And when we take place for granted, we lose our sensitivity to the joy and beauty that is there in all of the little bits.

But when you're in a place like Fogo island, it presses up against you in nice ways, and it invites you in.

Speaker B: 00:27:38

Truly transformative travel in all. In all its forms.

I mean, in terms of transforming, you know, travelers, I mean, are there any standout stories for you where you have seen just dramatic transformations or people come back?

Speaker A: 00:27:51

Absolutely. We have many, many, many return guests who return many, many, many, many times.

Sometimes they want to have all those seasons that we talked about, but I would say mostly because they value the relationships with people that they met on the island. It's not just quiet. I mean, it's a deeply quiet place. And when you spend time with people, you know, we are of English and Irish descent.

The music and the stories came with us 400 years ago, and we've added fairy Newfoundland twists to it. And I think those things stick with people.

We sometimes get people who come for the first time because they've come through some terrible thing in their lives, you know, some sickness or a loss of some kind. And there's something about the place. I don't know if it's the visuals that I think sends a kind of healing energy, and people are drawn to that.

And I think that it follows through, it delivers on that sense of. As my old boss used to say, the most important thing is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing.

And places like Fogo island, they just help us remember the most important things.

Speaker B: 00:28:57

So what are you most proud of do you think?

Speaker A: 00:29:01

I am most proud of the fact that we as Fogo Islanders were able to build and, and open and this in to people to come.

Like, like, I think our, our grannies are really proud of that and I am proud of all of the team as business people who, because I think we have done a really, really great job of balancing money making and meaning making and these things can be in better balance than they've been in the world. And I think we are proof of possibility of that.

Speaker B: 00:29:38

Fabulous. Fabulous. You talked a little bit before about some of the impacts that obviously what you're doing has had on the island itself.

Is there anything else that you want to share on that?

Speaker A: 00:29:46

Well, I've seen the relationships that have formed. I mean, there was one young fellow who, I mean he's grown up since we opened the inn. When I first knew him, he lived next door. I think he was 6 or 7.

And I walked into the inn one day last summer and he was working there and I knew he was a local man, a young man. I did. But he said, you don't remember me now you're that six year old and here you are.

And so he's coming back again this year and he is made of Fogo Island.

And when I watch him walk across the dining room with a confidence and interact with someone from super far away, wherever from, with the confidence that place has given him and we've, we've created a platform for him to have that learning and that exchange, I think that's us humans at our best. That's hospitality at its best, that's development at its best, both for the guest and for him.

And guests are super interested in talking to people like him. That I think is what travel is supposed to be about.

Speaker B: 00:30:46

All right, now let's talk about some practical insights for our travel professional audience out there. What would be the best way to introduce their clients to Fogo Island?

Speaker A: 00:30:55

I think first we got to get their minds around eastern Canada and wake and you know, start, zoom out. Now start to zoom in and then go to the very east of Canada.

The island is focal island is big enough to hold you and hold your attention and all enough to reveal a lot about Canada, to reveal a lot about Newfoundland, Labrador, and of course to reveal an awful lot about its own self. And so for people that are looking for nightlife, it might not be your place.

For people that are looking for a really deep experience in a still wild world, it's your place. And it is a still wild world. And as Thoreau Said as long as there's wilderness, there's hope.

And the North Atlantic is, of course, one of the last great wildernesses. Hiking. We have 200 kilometers of hiking trails.

If you spend time with community hosts, if you're there in the fishing season, you will definitely catch a cod. Being out on a boat is obviously a way to experience an island. We have a herd of caribou that live on the island. We also have whales.

Again, that depends on the time of year. If you're frightened of nature, you'll be frightened.

Speaker B: 00:32:00

Maybe that's a reason to come.

Speaker A: 00:32:01

And every once in a while, doesn't happen so often. Only in the paci season. We usually get a polar bear or two a year that comes down.

But if you're frightened, there are all these lovely people who are the navigators of the place who know how to be safe. We're now a part of the relay chateau, or association, which we love because it's a set of independents that have all come together.

And this association are very focused on culture and on the food as we are. And last year, the Michelin people made the decision to give us three Michelin keys for our inn. So we're proud of that.

So that's just an indication for people that don't know us yet who can rely on the hospitality and the service at the inn.

Speaker B: 00:32:41

And how long would people typically come to stay for?

Speaker A: 00:32:44

It's increasing as time goes on and return guests tend to stay a bit longer. Three to four nights, for sure.

Speaker B: 00:32:50

What would be a good time for, certainly for us in Australia to come.

Speaker A: 00:32:53

The busiest, busiest time would be in sort of classic summer, which is July, August, like middle of June to the middle of September. It can be really warm, like by Newfoundland standards, super warm. And so last summer, you know, we got temperatures that are in the high 20s Celsius.

Frequently we don't like that so much. It's just too hot. And for us. But in the berry season, it'll be cooler. It will be, you know, around 15 to 20, which is kind of perfect.

June can be anything. June is one of these months that you can have the entire year in a month.

Speaker B: 00:33:31

No, sure.

Speaker A: 00:33:32

The weather changes really quickly because we're at the edge of the continent. It's super dynamic. So as we say, if you don't like it, wait a minute. And there's nothing not to like about any weather, really.

March and April, we will still have ice and pack ice. So for a chance to see ice and pack ice, like it's come April, May.

Speaker B: 00:33:53

All right. And I love that here in Australia we have Melbourne. We often talk about four seasons in one day.

It sounds like you may have four seasons in one minute there by the sound.

Speaker A: 00:34:02

Yes.

Speaker B: 00:34:03

I'd just like to wrap up today by asking you to. Yeah, just give us a little message for our travel industry here in Australia.

Speaker A: 00:34:10

I wish I had spent more time in Australia and that's still ahead of me to do. But it's an amazing continent.

You're a whole continent onto yourselves, much like Canada, not so heavily populated, and you have a tyranny of natural beauty and culture. And so I think that Australia probably already is.

Certainly I've learned an awful lot, an awful lot about economic development and local development from people who are Australian and communities in Australia. And so I think Australia, as much or maybe more than any other place, can lead in figuring out this truly community based, place based hospitality.

Speaker B: 00:34:48

Hear, hear. Thank you so much, Sita, for our conversation today. I've absolutely loved it.

It's been so inspirational and I know our listeners will have taken so much from it too. Congratulations on everything you've achieved already. Thank you again and yeah, I look forward to seeing you very, very soon, I hope.

Speaker A: 00:35:05

Thank you, Matt. I enjoyed conversation.

Speaker B: 00:35:10

Don't forget to check the show notes for useful links and resources and for more information on today's episode.

Into the Hearts of Canada is a Carry On Podcast original series hosted by me, Matt Ledham, Executive producer for Carry On Podcasts is myself, Matt Ledham, and all podcast production is by Cassie Walker.