Tourism Manager Paul Pepe(left) and Fort William Historical Park GM Patrick Morash(right) examine the 2023 Thunder Bay Experience Guide
Tourism Thunder Bay is once again launching its Tourism Experience guide for 2023.
The guide highlights activities and attractions in the city and surrounding area. This year’s edition, according to Tourism Manager Paul Pepe, has a special feature.
“We’re particularly excited to celebrate Fort William Historical Park’s 50th Anniversary,” said Pepe at a media event Friday. “The Fort is a foundation of our tourism industry locally, millions of people from around the world have visited The Fort, and its also been a place of employment for thousands of Thunder Bay residents and a lot of local youth have gotten their first job in tourism here at Fort William Historical Park…myself included.”
Pepe adds the Fort William Historical Park is a special part of the community and the city’s tourism ecosystem.
60 thousand copies of the Thunder Bay Experience Guide are distributed globally as well as digital copies are available.
Fort William Historical Park General Manager Patrick Morash says he is feeling positive about the upcoming season.
“Our New Year’s Eve event this year we brought back a family focused event as a bit of a kickoff to our 50th, and we had more than 1700 people here. That was a really good indication of the kind of excitement that’s in the community we hope.”
The next event being held at the park is the Voyageur Winter Carnival, set to take place on the Family Day long weekend.
Other events set to take place this year include:
- Canada Day
- Great Rendevous Celebration, July 8-16
- Anishinaabe Keeshigun, August
- Haunted Fort Night, October
- New Year’s Even Family Frolic, December
Additionally Pepe is feeling confident for this year’s overall tourism season, even with Covid-19 and its variants still around, he says 2022 was a very successful year.
He notes Thunder Bay actually outperformed many other cities in the country.
“As a smaller city with a focus on outdoors and connection to nature, people were just looking for things like what we offer in Thunder Bay., So I think we’re really looking for a full return of tourism visitation, in 2023.”
Pepe understands many businesses within the tourism sector went into debt and the industry as a whole has a few more years to recover, but he believes a robust return will come as a result of the borders being fully open allowing for many Americans to tour the country and Europeans being more comfortable and having more confidence to travel to North America.
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