Former Thompson resident and Richmond, B.C. travel writer Irene Butler will be reading from her new book Trekking the Globe with Mostly Gentle Footsteps: Twelve Countries in Twelve Months at the Thompson Public Library June 23 at 7 p.m.
Butler belongs to a cadre of seniors who travel the world in search of exotic adventures, often as husband and wife teams, producing upbeat accounts and breathtaking photos of their many journeys for online travel e-zines - and in this case a book, just self-published through Granville Island Publishing in British Columbia. She travels with her husband Rick.
They had trekked through 72 countries in a recent count, she said.
In November 2007, Butler wrote about Spirit Way in for TravelLady Magazine, a Dallas e-zine that says it gets more than five million hits per month. She lived in Thompson from 1963 to 1991. "I came to Thompson by train to meet my first husband who was working with Inco.Nosidewalks on most of the streets and one Bay store to shop in were a shock, afterworking in Regina\, but soon the friendliness of the communityand the adventure of living way up north soon overcame any reservations of having moved here," Butler told the Thompson Citizen June 14. "I got a job in the secretarial pool a week after arriving I worked at the Inco office when I first came to Thompson, and later for the School District of Mystery Lake, and also sold real estate with GJ Sherry & Associates and Locker's.
"I married and raised threechildren inThompson with my first husband, than latermetmy current husband in Thompson. We left Thompson in 1991 to live in several communities across Canada. We left Thompson in 1991 and lived in several communities across Canada, and finally retired in B.C. We have been back to Thompson almost annually since, to visit family and friends."
Trekking the Globe with Mostly Gentle Footsteps: Twelve Countries in Twelve Months is an account, Butler says, "of their trials and tribulations on a journey across four continents."
Their personal challenge, she says, "was to travel for the same cost as staying at home, while still adhering to their older traveller's motto 'we are not here to suffer.""
As they immersed themselves in other cultures, their intention, Butler says, "was to tread with gentle footsteps leaving behind favourable impressions. The 'mostly' refers to times when their footsteps, as a result of misunderstandings," were less than ideal leading to bizarre, hair raising or humorous incidents."
The adventures, she says, included being forced off a train at gunpoint at the Polish border and having their motor scooter collide with a truck in India.
Butler freelance works has also appeared in a variety print magazines including Air Canada Vacations, Canadian Traveller, Outpost Magazine, and Senior Living Magazine, as well as some lower mainland newspapers in British Columbia. She won an award in the Destination Category at the 2005 B.C. Association of Travel Writers Symposium. She is also a member of the Travel Media Association of Canada (TMAC) and the Federation of B.C. Writers. Her work for TravelWise, an online travel magazine published buy Tsavo Media Canada Inc. in Guelph and Waterloo, Ont., include "Patagonia Travel - The Land of Giants, Penguins and mountain peaks" chronicling South America's Patagonia area of Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan's southern Argentina and Chile, and "Zanzibar Africa - Zephyrs of Zanzibar Zanzibar's sites, smells and colourful past abound," looking at the old Stone Town of Zanzibar in Tanzania.
"Off the Gringo Trail in Peru," based in Sipán, was published in Travel Thru History e-zine.
Butler also writes for Travel Writers Tales, another British Columbia online travel site, co-owned and edited by Margaret Deefholts, and also co-edited by Jane Cassie, both of whom also operate their own freelance travel writing websites.
Cassie, of Surrey, B.C., and her husband, Brent, offer "A Partners Retreat and Workshop: Travel The World Together and Get Paid For It!" which "for optimum teaching and learning, space is always limited to three couples" at their property on Big Bar Lake in British Columbia's Cariboo.
"You'll learn everything from how to write the perfect pitch and set up assignments to getting tips on photojournalism and marketing your stories," the Cassies say.
