Food, heritage and technology come together in a new app for iPhones and Android devices as part of the newly-released Banff Audio Tour.
Produced by Edible Heritage Technologies, the Banff Audio Tour combines over 15 points of historical interest with the best places in Banff to get Canadian cuisine and to buy Canadian gifts.
Carolyne Kauser-Abbott, Canmore resident and owner of Edible Heritage Technologies, said recently she decided to create the app modelled after a similar app she built for Aix En Provence in France.
Like that app, the Banff Audio Tour is built upon an historical walking tour and offers suggestions for places to eat and buy gifts with a Canadian flair from shops that are unique and locally owned and operated.
“To me, Banff has a historical side, lots of people come to Banff for sports or the beauty of the mountains. They don’t necessarily come for the history, although that might be something they discover while they are there,” Kauser-Abbott said from France via Skype.
“I feel the history of Banff should be told; there’s a deep history there and the start of our national parks. I felt very strongly it is a history that Calgarians and Banffites and everybody else should be proud of and should know, as well as tourists.”
The Banff Audio Walk, available through iTunes or Google Play for $2.99, is a circular walk that begins at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel and leads down to the Banff Administration Building. From there the tour carries on along Cave Avenue to the Buffalo Nations Luxton Museum and Cave and Basin National Historic Site before doubling back to the Banff Park Museum National Historic Site, the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies and then down Banff Avenue to the Ski West Museum located in Cascade Mall.
The tour then guides walkers to the Luxton house, Tanglewood and the superintendent’s house before heading up to The Banff Centre.
“It’s a solid walk,” said Kauser-Abbott. “It covers a lot of hi the hotels, the residents who were there, the fact that there is a rich archival history in Banff, and that is evident in the museums that are there today, the Cave and Basin site where it all happened. I tried to cover as much as I could without overwhelming someone.”
Rather than just offer historical walking tours, Kauser-Abbott said she wanted to broaden her scope, keeping it in line with her other interests, travel and food.
“There’s a story to be told about a lot of the restaurants. They’ve been there for a long time, or they are relatively recent, but they are very focused on regional or seasonal dishes. People ask what is a Canadian dish; it’s hard to put your finger on it, but when you go to some of those restaurants in Banff, we’ve got some great cuisine,” she said.
Kauser-Abbott grew up in Montreal and moved west, landing in the Calgary region 20 years ago. She has a background in economics and construction and project management, but switched to writing over three years ago.
Along with her two Edible Heritage apps, she runs the weekly food and travel blog Ginger & Nutmeg at gingerandnutmeg.com
