Aboriginal & Eco-Tours (formerly Talaysay Tours) offers you authentic Aboriginal cultural and eco-tourism experiences in and around Vancouver, Squamish and the Sunshine Coast. We also offer on-line Live virtual tours via Zoom, including corporate tours for your employees. Our First Nation guides will share ancient and contemporary stories, legends, and our Aboriginal ways of living as we take in the sights of old growth forests, wildlife, beautiful northwest coast views and the flora and fauna of the season. Join us as we share our knowledge, and delve into the rich history and landmarks of our remarkable west coast.
Question: How are you supporting other local businesses?
Answer: Our head office is in West Vancouver. Everything that Candace & Larry Campo do is local. We hire local guides from the Squamish Nation. We have 4 full time guides and up to 15 people total – we operate year round with our contracted Guides dependent on how many tours we have booked. During COVID-19, we managed to pivot into offering online Live Virtual Tours, so we managed to keep many people employed. Because of the educational content of our tours, we book many schools from Kindergarten to University for in person tours and our recently developed virtual tours have become popular as well. Due to COVID-19, our Virtual tours are becoming very successful and we recently booked a virtual tour for a major corporation based out of New York for 100 guests. We are gearing up to continue with virtual tours post COVID-19 to an international market that are interested in Indigenous ways of knowing.
We support local suppliers whenever we can. We use a local person as our accountant, we hire local people to manage our website. Our insurance is with a smaller company. We also contract to local companies for our kayaking and biking tours. We worked with a local professional filmmaker to launch our online tours recently. When we book bike tours in Squamish, we work with Pat & Donna Alexander from Vertical Reality Sports. For our kayaking tours, we work with Pedals and Paddles and Alpha Adventures. We strive to collaborate with other local businesses such as the Sea to Sky Gondola and Stanley Park Aquarium. For example, we had a collaboration with the Sea to Sky Gondola where we met people at the gondola and provided our Talking Trees Tour through an Indigenous lens. When we do in-person tours, guides often eat locally. We are also in the process of collaborating with local attractions to sell admission tickets around the areas of Vancouver, Sea to Sky and the Sunshine Coast.
Question: What social and environmental practices are you proud of?
Answer: We are a First Nations company, designed to bring awareness about indigenous people and to educate locals and tourists about indigenous ways of knowing. There is a Turtle Island saying “We are the land and The land is us”, there is no separation. First Nations people have been living on, and taking care of the land for millennia. Our goal is to help spread the knowledge about this way of life, teaching about indigenous ways of knowing through tours focused on nature, history, and art. Our focus is on education, and especially on educating youth. During the school year we work extensively with the schools educating teachers and students in aboriginal knowledge and ways of living, outdoor education: canoeing, kayaking, hiking, snowshoeing, hiking, nature walks, Coast Salish art.
The company is owned by Larry & Candace Campo are from the Squamish & Shishalh Nation respectively. Candace is the operator, lead guide and teacher. Candace is a school teacher and an anthropologist, so she’s a great leader and collaboration comes naturally to her. We hire local guides from the Squamish Nation, and have about 15 staff. We have 4 full time guides, and another 11 people we hire under contract depending upon how many tours are booked. We conduct extensive training with our guides and staff and have training every Wednesday evening about specific curriculum. We do tours for a tremendous number of schools and recently did a virtual Talking Trees Tour for over 100 teachers in a school district. We love to make it fun opening our tours with a song and truly wishing our guests to leave the tour with a good feeling in their heart. We have been told by our guests that they come as one person and leave as another, which makes us very happy.
We support a lot of local organizations such as Parks & Recreation, Environmental organizations, Women’s Groups, LGBTQ2S+ and Gay Pride and many more by offering Gift Certificates for our tours. Candace also donates a lot of her time to teach and sit on panels, such as Destination BC, BC Teachers’ Federation and Indigenous Tourism BC. Candace often assists in educating people about how to approach Indigenous protocol and respect for Indigenous culture.
We are experts of the Salish Sea & Northwest Coast. Our goal is to provide our clients with unique outdoor cultural experiences that will last a lifetime. Many of our tours are family and child friendly, and require no previous outdoor experience.
We welcome you to join us!
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