My Story
I grew up in a small town in Quebec, Canada — in the kind of place most people dream of escaping to.
Fresh air instead of office walls. Bush planes instead of subway trains. Remote lakes instead of parking lots. I flew floatplanes, worked in the wilderness, fished rivers that most people will never find on a map.
It sounds like a dream. And in many ways it was. But nobody sees the 5am wake ups. The dirty work. The months away from everyone you love. The parts that aren't pretty.
What kept me going was simple: breathing that fresh outside air every single day instead of being locked in an office. That's worth more than any salary I've ever seen.
I dropped out of college.
Not because I was lost, but because I was found. I chose to work in what i loved and start seeing this world of ours.
And the moment I started traveling, I realized I knew absolutely nothing.
Traveling is the best school that exists.
You don't find yourself traveling.
You just finally stop pretending to be someone you're not.
So if you're sitting there continuing school just for the sake of it, going through the motions, feeling like you're moving forward but not sure where...
Stop.
Seriously. Stop right now.
Go out there and see for yourself that the real version of you is hiding underneath a shell built by someone else's idea of what your life should look like.
Go to school all your youth. Work all your life. Call a week of vacation "living." Run after bills until you're too old and too tired to do anything about it.
Or don't.
Take the leap. I promise the world is waiting for you.
My goal isn't to see as many countries as possible. It's to live as much as possible. And living — real living — means understanding, not just seeing.
Experiencing the hard moments, not just the beautiful ones. Taking risks. Giving back. Connecting with people whose lives look nothing like yours and realizing you're not as different as you thought.
That's what travel actually is. Not your feet in the sand in front of an all-inclusive hotel.
The real thing.
I was lucky enough to grow up with parents who never once told me that having unusual goals was wrong.
My dad especially.
He showed me how to fly. How to navigate wild places. How to show up for people no matter where in the world you are.
We lost him last year. And the best thing I know how to do with that is keep going the way he showed me.
That's why I created Oli's Road with my sister Thalie — a giving fund in his memory, to spread some good along the way.
“I'm not here to inspire you from a distance. I'm here to show you — in real time, honestly, including the hard parts — that another way of living is possible. Not for everyone. But maybe for you. You already know if it is.”
— Tyler