Based in Ottawa, Laura Byrne Paquet has become one of Canada’s most distinctive voices in place-based storytelling through her work for Canadian Geographic and other outlets. Her writing navigates three primary lanes:
We’ve followed Laura Byrne Paquet’s work for over two decades as she’s carved a unique niche at the intersection of travel journalism, historical narrative, and environmental stewardship. Her career trajectory reveals a writer deeply committed to unearthing the layered stories of places and their people.
Paquet’s journey began with an unconventional start—a birth announcement mistakenly published under "Livestock for Sale" foreshadowed her knack for finding humor in life’s oddities. After earning her journalism degree from Carleton University in 1987, she honed her skills at Ottawa Business News before co-founding Cornerstone Word Company in 1995. This entrepreneurial leap allowed her to blend commercial writing with passion projects, leading to 13 published books including the acclaimed Wanderlust: A Social History of Travel.
This immersive itinerary piece transforms a historic waterway into a living classroom. Paquet interweaves 19th-century engineering marvels with contemporary kayaking adventures, profiling locktenders-turned-storytellers and farm-to-table restaurants reviving canal-town economies. Her methodology combines ethnographic observation with archival research, revealing how infrastructure projects can shape regional identities across centuries.
“Walking the towpath where mules once hauled barges, I felt the echo of 1825—the year the canal first connected Atlantic tides to Great Lakes waves—in every footstep.”
In this service piece for Ottawa Road Trips, Paquet demonstrates her mastery of hyperlocal storytelling. She doesn’t just list seasonal openings but contextualizes the Long Sault Parkway as a Depression-era job creation project that now serves as a biodiversity corridor. The article’s impact lies in its ability to turn routine maintenance updates into portals for historical discovery.
This ambitious listicle defies genre through its granular specificity. Reason #23—a Newfoundland outport preserving Elizabethan dialects—showcases Paquet’s ability to spotlight cultural preservation. The piece’s significance lies in its rejection of predictable landmarks (Niagara Falls appears only as a footnote) in favor of living cultural ecosystems.
Paquet consistently amplifies stories where landscapes serve as memory keepers. A successful pitch might explore how Montréal’s Mount Royal trails preserve Haudenosaunee trade routes through interpretive signage. This approach aligns with her ECW Press book Secret Ottawa, which maps the city’s hidden histories.
Her coverage of the Quyon ferry—a century-old cable-drawn service—demonstrates interest in tourism systems that adapt rather than replace. Pitches about adaptive reuse projects (e.g., converted railroad hotels) should emphasize community input and sustainability metrics.
While Paquet reports on climate change impacts, she avoids planetary-scale abstractions. The Erie Canal piece examined invasive species management at lock systems—a model for pitching hyperlocal environmental solutions with replicable frameworks.
At PressContact, we aim to help you discover the most relevant journalists for your PR efforts. If you're looking to pitch to more journalists who write on Travel, here are some other real estate journalist profiles you may find relevant:
