Portrait of an outdoor pro: Renée-Claude Bastien

What outdoor enthusiast has never dreamed of turning their passion into their profession? Take a few moments and imagine what your workday would look like: you would have to go on a beautiful hike and you would get paid to spend the day on the water in your canoe. No longer a weekend activity, being in the outdoors would become a way of life. Certain people have decided to take the plunge and live off their passion.

Portrait of an outdoor pro: Renée-Claude Bastien

At the peak of a great career

Renée-Claude Bastien discovered the outdoors at sixteen through a course at her high school in Gatineau. It was hooked right away and started to do activities that took her into the great outdoors. After she studied les téchniques de loisir at Cégep, she worked for two years at Horizon Roc as an events coordinator. She realized rather quickly, however, that she preferred being active and out in nature. In 2002, she went back to school to become a guide. Since, she has completed her diploma and walked the path of many businesses in the “outdoors” milieu. She was also the recipient of Québec’s Adventure Ecotourism’s top guide prize in 2005. Maybe you’re asking yourself what activities a full-time guide can guide? The list is rather long, but Renée-Claude has had the chance to guide hiking, snowmobiling, canoeing, dog sledding, snowshoeing and backcountry skiing.

Renée-Claude and her dogs

For the last six years, she has spent her summers in the West of Canada where she guides river canoe trips and hiking trips. Why the West in the summer? For the mountains, she’ll respond with a big smile. She also prefers the climate there, which is less hot and humid than in Montreal. She spends most of her winters speeding over the backcountry of northern Québec, comfortably seated on her snowmobile.

Her favourite article of outdoor clothing is without a doubt her Mountain Hardwear Sub Zero SL with a hood. She says enjoying the outdoors is all about comfort. Because it’s a lot harder to stay warm in winter, it’s important to be well dressed so you can really enjoy the season.

If you ask her what her dream trip to guide would be, she’ll tell you it would probably be 10 consecutive days minimum somewhere with mountains and snow, either in the Andes or in Nepal.

Renée-Claude in the mountains

Does she have a routine? These are obviously foreign words for her lifestyle. It’s one surprise after the next in the life of a nomad. Her last words are: I won’t end up a half-connected soul living in the suburbs.

Translated by Judy Murphy

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