West Coast Vibe

We caught up with Canadian teen celebrity Jordan Francis as he tours Canada for CBC’s “CROSS COUNTRY FUN HUNT”, hitting every province across Canada from British Columbia to Newfoundland. Canadian kids aged 16 and under have uploaded videos and photos showcasing the best of their towns. Kids can vote online to help Jordan decide where to visit during his trip and can even follow his van on the virtual map in real time via GPS tracking.

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I’m on a trip-of-a-lifetime as I put these words to paper y’all. I’ve been blessed to have seen a good bit of our planet already when I did my concert touring a couple years back, but this journey is happening right in my backyard. Well, if you can call Canada from the West to the East my backyard… and why not? I’ve got 50 days to cover about 25,000 clicks as I criss-cross the country in my ride… with some flights thrown in there to the more remote places.

The West Coast, where my epic road trip started just a few days ago, has been a blast. As a  T.O. city boy, I gotta give props to the people out in BC for their true outdoor lifestyle straight up. These guys aren’t joking around and take their extreme outdoors stuff super seriously. But at the same time they’re super chill and laid back. I guess it’s a West Coast ‘thing’ and it’s everywhere – I was on the ferry from the mainland to Nanaimo and when they announced that someone lost their shades, it sounded like a friend making a toast at a party, instead of the stiff formal words of authorities back out East… it was a trip.

I hung out with the boys in Comox Valley and these guys were like every parent’s dream kids – active, outdoorsy, building their ‘rad’ jump ramps, biking ‘sick’ trails in the woods, wakeboarding and tubing all summer long… the girl I met in Nanaimo dreamed about her upcoming 12th birthday when she would FINALLY be able to bungee jump off a bridge with a head dip in the river below! Crazy.

Days pass and the active vibe is growin’ on me. I hung out in Squamish, a world-class spot for kite-boarding. Another first for me, and I’m diggin’ it big time. If I lived in Vancouver, I could jump up here on weekends. Or, for something even more unique, I’d drive up to Whistler to snowboard in my T-shirt in the middle of summer! For most of us in Canada, this would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing… for the Whistler girls? – Just another Monday.

We’re running real fast across the country though. I gotta remember to stop and smell the roses or else I might forget all of these awesome moments. Glad someone’s filming it all and snappin’ pics! Onwards we roll….

-Jordan Francis, Host of CBC’s Cross Country Fun Hunt