Once Zane Buchanan left Saskatchewan he grew to appreciate it even more.
After graduating from high school in Balgonie, Buchanan left the province to pursue his dreams and further his education. Now, the 26 year old is returning home as the Saskatchewanderer for 2019 and is looking to showcase his home province with fresh eyes.
"I don't take anything for granted. The sunset I see every day, you don't see anywhere else," Buchanan said. "I don't think I could do this job anywhere else. I don't have that sense of pride for B.C. or Ontario or anywhere else. I loved living there, but it's not really home."
Buchanan earned the Saskatchewanderer job and returned home before it was announced. He is excited about the job and the chance to return home and tell the stories of its people.
"I missed the people," he said. "Even when I worked in the service industry (in other cities) people would call me out 'you're not from here, you're too nice.' It was always weird, when I came home for Christmas people would be smiling and waving and I was wondering 'do they know that I have this job? It's supposed to be a secret.' Then I realized that they're just nice people who smile and wave to you. It's something that I wasn't used to again."
Buchanan moved to Victoria to study theatre and earned his diploma. He then moved to southern Ontario to get a bachelors degree in music theatre performance, but changed his mind before completing his degree. He lived in Toronto before moving to Vancouver to study broadcasting and communications and then accepted a job in that field back in Toronto.
Living in big cities, he ran into a lot of preconceived notions of what Saskatchewan is from people who have never been here.
"Having lived far away my big thing is addressing stigmas that exist about our province -- particularly the fact that we're not overly diverse or that we're very staunchly conservative and redneck," Buchanan said. "There are all these untrue stereotypes that exist about our province. I kind of want to address that and show the opposite. I want to challenge that and I want to do a lot of stuff about diversity."
During his application video, Buchanan said he was of a Métis background and he wants to try to tell stories that have maybe slipped between the cracks with previous Saskatchewanderers.
"I already have a lot of indigenous immersion activities on the go that are planned and I want to shine a light on that because it hasn't been overly addressed by prior Wanderers. I really want to go further in depth with that and also I want to pioneer the exposure of LGBTQ and two-spirited communities because they are growing in Saskatchewan, even since I left," Buchanan said. "I am a member of that community and I was not open about it until I left because I was kind of afraid, I guess. It's kind of my mission to show that there's nothing to be afraid about; the people here are very open-minded and welcoming to all kinds of people. That's kind of my mission in this job, while promoting tourism, of course."
Buchanan wants to make it clear that he's not pushing an agenda, but believes instead on reflecting the true diversity of the province.
"I'm not pushing any liberal agenda here, that's what I'm trying to say," said Buchanan who noted that he's trying to honour and reflect the complexion of the province with his content as it was shown in the last provincial census.
That hasn't stopped some people online from engaging with him in the days following the announcement that he was the new Saskatchewanderer and his application video was uploaded.
"I've gotten a couple of negative messages, but the thing that has really surprised me is that everyone that has messaged me, I've messaged back and it's almost always resolved the issue," Buchanan said. "They've been very responsive to my answers and said 'I never saw it that way.' And my friends from Ontario and B.C. are looking at these 'online battles' and they're like 'this is the most wholesome and kind exchange I've ever seen online as far as an online battle goes.' That's Saskatchewan for you. At the end of it we're shaking hands and if we agree to disagree that's cool."
Buchanan grew up on an acreage outside of White City and wants to provide a broad range of content that will appeal to the nearly 90,000 Saskatchewanderer social media followers, but he also knows he can't please everyone.
"I got one message from one person who said that they don't choose to follow LBGTQ/two-spirited things and he said 'all the best, I'm not going to follow you any more.' That's fine. I would love to change that human, but that's not my job. My job isn't to do that. My job is to showcase Saskatchewan, not my social or political agenda," he said.
"I'm not the focus. Saskatchewan is the focus. I'm just the voice."
The Saskatchewanderer program was created in 2011 as an inter-ministerial partnership that involves Tourism Saskatchewan and the Ministries of Agriculture, Trade and Export Development and Parks, Culture and Sport.
Buchanan has been training with Kevin Dunn, the 2018 Wanderer, as he settles into the role. He has had a busy few weeks of meetings and has a couple of stories in the works and is going to hit the road to the end of the month with his dog Stedman in tow.
"The freedom I've been given is out of this world. I can't believe it," he said. "I keep waiting for someone to say 'Zane you can't do that.' But so far everyone has been really supportive about what I've been doing."
Buchanan is still organizing trips and planning his adventures, but he is planning a trip to Castle Butte before the end of January.
You can follow Buchanan's adventures by visiting www.saskatchewanderer.ca or by following him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/skwanderer, Twitter @skwanderer, Instagram @saskatchewanderer or YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/skwandererofficial.
