Parks Canada sees record demand for N.S., P.E.I. camping bookings

Parks Canada says more people are looking to get outside and stay outside during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Online reservations opened Friday for Parks Canada campsites in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island,and officials say the demand was higher than ever.

The number of people booking sites on opening day this year in New Brunswick, one day earlier, was double the amount from last year, and the trend was the same in the other Maritime provinces.

"It seems that camping is going to be the activity for the summer," said Marie-Sophie Desaulniers, manager of visitor experience for Parks Canada.

Interest in camping in national parks has been growing for four years, she said.

"Definitely, the pandemic has helped that along significantly by making it one of the few activities that it is still possible to do and people feel safe when they are camping outside," said Desaulniers.

Allan Dunn of Halifax went online several hours before the booking system opened at 8 a.m. AT on Friday.

He wanted to make sure he got the four backcountry sites he wanted, on the weekends he wanted, at Kejimkujik National Park.

"I had put myself in the queue fairly early this morning and when the timer went up at 8 o'clock so that people could start booking, I was at about 800 people in the queue and that took about 10, maybe 15 minutes, before I could make my first booking," he said.

"I was lucky because I was early on the first one, so I managed to get exactly what I wanted in the first sites, with my first booking."

Big interest in camping at Keji

Dunn said he had to wait an hour or so to make another booking, but the system got easier with time.

"I think it works pretty well, or my experience with it today was pretty good. Everybody that I talked to managed to get through in the end," he said.

At one point, more than 15,000 people were waiting online to book a site.

Desaulniers said there was plenty of interest in camping at Kejimkujik, likely in part because the main campsite was closed last year for renovations.

Demand for sites in Cape Breton Highlands National Park was even higher, with bookings at noon reaching more than double last year's numbers, she said.